The Rudy Elemenhurst Story Summary

I found “The Rudy Elmenhurst Story” by Julia Alvarez to be an extremely non-traditional written piece. For me it a confusing read for several reasons. First, The story is written in reverse order. The story begins with Yolanda as an adult and moves backward in time. Second, the story is told through narrators in different perspectives. The author shifts the story back to a first person narrator to the individual to whom the chapter is devoted.

The story focuses around the Garcia family who fled the Dominican Republic due to Political persecution when the father got into trouble for trying to undermine the military. The four daughters struggle between their Dominican and American selves as well as in their coming of age. Yolanda is the primary daughter whose full struggle is detailed throughout the text. The other daughters are interlaced into the stories, however, without as much detail as Yolanda. Yolanda, the self proclaimed wild one of the daughters, was very popular because of her personality at boarding school. This went away at college as she refused to sleep with any of her admirers. Yolanda struggles with language, the open sexuality at that time, her religious beliefs and the sense that her family unit is being torn apart as they try to conform to the culture

Each member have a chapter exclusively devoted to them. In their sections they each support the reasons that each girl, in their own way, gives an explanation of who they have become and of why they “'turned out' the way they have." After overcoming my early difficulties with the reverse order that the story was written and having to read and reread several paragraphs and sections to figure out that the narrator changed I did find the story to be interesting. I can only imagine how difficult it was for the girls to go through the process of immigration to the United States in such a time of sexual and political