Analysis Of The Story ' How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents '

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

In the book, How the García girls lost their accent, by Julia Alvarez, who utilizes rhetorical devices in the passage chosen to develop the conflict that Yolanda is facing in the story by using imagery, simile, and anaphora in order to evince how Yolanda’s conflict with her husband John plays a role in her horrible breakdown and her journey to revive the love she had for her native language and culture.

     As a young child, Rodriguez finds comfort and safety in his noisy home full of Spanish sounds. Spanish, is his family's' intimate language that comforts Rodriguez by surrounding him in a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed using

The novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, illustrates these challenges. Throughout the novel, we see how different aspects of culture shock impact the Garcia family. In this essay I will discuss how particular events change each family member’s Dominican cultural values and identity.

¨The receptionist asked me in Spanish, ’Are you here for the English class?’... ‘I’m sorry. Our new session starts today, so I just assumed that’s why you were here.’ I was about to say no, but I stopped myself. Maybe it was luck that brought me here, or maybe it was providence... Maybe I would even learn enough to be able to help Maribel with her homework¨ (Henríquez 58). Alma does not know how to speak English when she comes to America. She is willing to learn and her sole motive is to make Maribel do well on her homework. Language is a huge part of life since it is a major way to communicate with other people. If she knew how to speak English, she would be capable to talk to Maribel’s teacher and discuss her advance and problems. Thence, they can get a better plan of education for

The complications with learning to live in completely new surroundings and new liberties also affected Yolanda (Yoyo/Joe). Alvarez mentions a monkey experiment that Carla read about in a psych class of hers. “These baby monkeys were kept in a cage so long, they wouldn’t come out when the doors were finally left open. Instead they stayed inside and poked their arms through the bars for their food, just out of reach.” (131) this passage strongly relates back to Yolanda’s character. In the scenario involving

Many people immigrate to the United States from different countries to begin a better life. Once in the American territory, the first step for success is to learn the English language. Richard Rodriguez, the writer of "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" describes the language decisions he faced as a child: "Outside the house was public society; inside the house was private" (16). The English language is the primary language in the United States, and it must be learned to be able to communicate with the public world. The language that we speak at home is considered to be private because it is only used in the presence of the people we feel comfortable with, our family. Families immigrate to

In Richard Rodriguez's essay , “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood ” he writes about how he struggled as a child who only spoke Spanish language but lives in a society where the “public” language is English . He believes that speaking proper English will somehow help him fit into society and find his “true” identity. Throughout the essay he contrast the Spanish language identity and English language identity. As a young boy, Rodriguez finds consolation and safety in his home where they only speak Spanish. He feels that he only has a true identity when he is at home surrounded by those who speak the same language as him . On the contrary , he becomes trapped and disoriented when not being able to speak / understand the English language . He feels as if he is not part of “their world” and has no identity in society. By comparing and contrasting Spanish language identity and English language identity . Rodriguez's essay is an example that speaking different languages should not make anyone choose an identity . In fact being able to speak and understand multiple languages in his case Spanish and English makes the language a part of his identity, but with two different sides .

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

English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize

As a result, Anzaldua illustrates her hardship to the attention of an English speaker as an audience. Throughout the reading, she consistently switches from English to Spanish in many paragraphs forcing a non-Spanish speaker, such as myself, to look up translations an order to make sense of the story. An example of this would be when her mother expresses her disappointment saying, “I want you to speak English. PA hallar buen trabajo hablas ingles con un accent” (206). By forcing this task on the audience, this allows a sense of empathy and understanding of author’s struggles of what she had to go through growing up. She had spoken English but is still sadly looked upon from her mother due to having Spanish “accent”, that with this accent putting her through school is pointless.

Rodriguez is ashamed. He is ashamed with the fact his espanol is no longer his main language. The author presents, “I grew up a victim to a

The remainder of the poem's setting takes place in the United States, where the speaker and her family now reside. Living in the United States, the speaker's miserable tone results from the fact that she feels alienated from her children, but now they, "go to American high schools/ They speak English" (Line 8-9). English, a language she does not understand and is, "embarrassed at mispronouncing words" (Line 16). This barrier of language has broken off a major form of communication between her children and her. There once was a time when she would laugh along with her children as they told jokes, but now all she can do is, "stand by the stove and feel dumb, alone" (Line 11). The speaker's setting has distorted her self image. The fact that she now feels dumb is a completely different feeling from how she felt in Mexico where she, "understood every word they'd say" (Line 4). Yearning for that familiarity of the bond between her children and herself she, "bought a book to learn English" (Line 12). This is her only way to adjust to her new setting and because she feared that one day she, "will be deaf/ when (her) children need (her) help" (Line 21-22).

    America is a country that was created and settled by immigrants from many different lands. These immigrants came to America in search of the "American Dream" of freedom and a better way of life, and their narratives have been recorded by various authors in both fiction and non-fiction stories. But can the fiction genre be considered a reliable source for studying the immigrant narrative? If American immigrant literature is to be used as a reliable source for understanding the immigrant experience, one needs to justify that this literature properly tracks the history of the immigrant narrative.

He now has to stop keeping Spanish, his comfort zone and gets into a language of an “alienated world.” When he thinks of his parents, he probably blames them for forcing him to give up Spanish and he somehow also believes that makes him run to find some security elsewhere and makes him and his parents lose the connection. As Rodriguez always believes that Spanish at home is his privacy and he treasures it when he was young, “Like others who feel the pain of public alienation, we transformed the knowledge of our public separateness into a consoling reminder of our intimacy.” (Rodriguez, 102) Before, he felt the constraint even when he only heard English words, and he felt separated from that English-speaking world. Maybe the pain from the language that is given up makes him tries to resist it more now; he hurt. It was some sort of the revengeful mind that he had in his childhood, but it was a big loss of a native culture.