Analysis Of Julia Alvarez 's ' The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents ' Essay

Barrientos starts with sharing her embarrassment to sign up for Spanish classes—the language used by her parents to communicate. Society’s expectation on her fluency of Spanish based on her Latina appearance causes self-questioning: where do I fit in? However, Barrientos initially refused to face her ethnicity as a Latina, beginning at a young age. The poor reputation on Spanish Americans causes Barrientos to isolate herself from the stereotype, by speaking English instead of Spanish. However, society changed: different

Kandiyoti, Dalia. 2004. “Host and Guest in the ‘Latino Contact Zone’: Narrating Solidarity and Hospitality in Mother Tongue.” Comparative American Studies 2, no. 4: 421–46.

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

Acculturation can determine whether a first generation Salvadoran American student’s pursues higher education. As new immigrants immersed in the American culture, they have to adapt or comprehend the culture acceptable “behavior, values, language, and customs” in order to educational succeed (McCallister 2015). Moreover, California is a diverse state that first generation students come across a dilemma of longer period of time to dominate the native language. For instance, Lucy grew up in Central California, in a small Hispanic enclave. As a result, Lucy was exposed to Spanish conversations at home and in the community, except in the school. School provided Lucy the opportunity to apply the immersion technique:

New Country, New Me: Taking Back Control in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Amy Tan and Junot Diaz on their stories they talked about they don’t speak their languages. Both of them find it difficult to speak different languages like Junot Diaz he went Santo Domingo for a vacation with his wife and it’s been twenty years that he has been over and people over there looking at him cause he doesn’t look Dominican and he barely speaks Spanish. For Amy tan she talked about how her mother was a stockbroker in New York and the people she work with doesn’t understand her English and she is Chinese. People this world will look at different cause of your Ethnicity and if you don’t speak their language they will treat wrong.

Although this novel has been a joy to read thus far, I had a lot of trouble writing this response because I was not exactly certain what I thought of it, and how it related to the topics being discussed in class. This may be attributed to the reverse chronological order in which the events of the novel are presented. However, the wonderful flashbacks that Julia Alvarez uses to spice-up the novel through dialogue between the characters and omniscient narration, helps to connect the past and future of the members of the Garcia family.

Julia Alvarez displays a beautifully written piece of literature in “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, describing a family's experience during the revolution in the Dominican Republic and how these drastic changes to their lives impacted them individually. In this piece of literature Julia actively portrays Dominican teenagers adjusting to American life and desperately trying to discover themselves as they’re struggling to comply with their parents strict rules and Americans heinous ridicule and judgement. Alvarez is often congratulated for accurately portraying the cultural shift majority of foreigners are impacted by, and especially those who’ve shared similar experiences with the Garcia family such as being pushed away from their homes and sense of security, family, and everything they’ve known since they were kids solely by the cruel revolution going on there during that time. In the beginning of the book, Alvarez begins with Yolanda finally returning back home to the Dominican Republic for

In “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, It’s shown how being engulfed into a new culture can cause people to struggle with keeping their own culture alive because they are around so many people that are living the American culture. Even though there are so many different races and religions in America, we all as Americans know how things work around here, therefore, it can be tough for a different culture to live out their own ways in such a mixed country. It’s impossible to adjust to a culture without changing and being exposed to cultural discrimination.

In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the characters caught between their native homelands the Dominican Republic culture and their new found country the United States culture which is not the only factors in this novel. Yolanda, a character in the story the third child, encounters sexuality and freedom vs. religious beliefs raised as a Catholic no premarital sex. She also faces prejudice against their race, language barriers and in earlier years adjusting to a different economic status. Therefore, placing her between the issues of understanding the English language and unwilling to commit to a sexual relationship with her boyfriend in college during the sixties social, sexual revelation. Although

In “How the Garcia Girls lost their accents” Carla Garcia’s cultural identity depends mostly on her background. In the beginning of the story the Garcia’s are celebrating their anniversary and they are asked to make a wish, “‘Dear God’, she began. She could not get used to this American wish-making without bringing God into it. ‘Let us please go back home,please,’”(226).

In her essay “Se Habla Español,” Tanya Maria Barrientos raises the question of self-definition by discussing the struggling to find her ethnic identity in American society with Latino heritage. The essay starts with the author expressing her embarrassment facing society’s expectation on her fluency of Spanish based on her Latina appearance, in particular when she signed up to learn Spanish—the language her parents use to communicate. As a child who grew up in the United State, Barrientos learned the poor reputation on Spanish americans and developed the wish to isolate herself from the stereotype, which she approaches by not speaking Spanish. Then, as America became more open to different ethnic groups, the author suffers from finding a place

“Hey look ‘la niña de afuera’ (the outsider).” That’s all I ever hear when I go visit my “Hometown.” As soon as I arrive to the airport and I breathe that satisfying fresh air, an air so pure and so fresh, breathing becomes so much better; I become so content until I reach the door of the airplane and I start to make my way down the stairs and they’re already giving me stares. No matter how hard I try to fit in I will never be “one of them.” I can dress like them, I can talk like them, and I can even become “one of them”; because I am one of them and still they’ll look at me weird and they’ll treat me differently. They seem to forget that not so long ago I used to be just like them, And now I’ve become “the stranger” in the village, of my own village. It’s like no Cuban American teenager has ever set foot on this island.

Who am I? Who are we? Where do I belong? What is self identity? These are a few questions that people will ask themselves within their lifetime. Self identity is the way in which one person identifies themselves within a social environment. In How the Garcia Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, we are able to see four girls who move from the Dominican Republic to the United States where they begin to lose their heritage and values of being Spanish women, and create new lives. When moving to a new country one recreates their identity through language, they endure the struggle of not fitting in, and they also become isolated from society.

In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, The girls have a hard time with assimilation. Because of this it has the girls confused on how to adapt to America. In America, the girls cannot ask for as much as they use to in the Dominican Republic. The reason for this was because Carlos cannot find a job so they were short on money. Because of the Garcia girls moved back and forth between two places, they tend to struggle to fit into America.