Causes Of Dominican Migration

In the book Alvarez informs us that this takes place during Trujillo 's reign over the Dominican Republic in the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Throughout history dictators have risen and fallen all across the world. Many have been seen as evil, and sometimes good to others, but no matter what a persons view tend to be there are some who even consider them god. Due to a dictators extensive powers and complete control over every aspect of a persons life this is what comes to be. Trujillo is just the same, at first his true motives were questioned and it wasn’t apparent to all what he really was. As the Mirabel sisters grow up it becomes clear that Trujillo is in control of more of their lives than it may seemed. Trujillo leads a complete authoritarian rule over the Dominican Republic with spies everywhere, this can suggest that he trying to assume the role of a terrible god, who is always watching and ready to punish. While all

The United States of America has been known to be a land of opportunity and freedom with the persisting idea of the “American Dream”. The "American Dream" is defined as the equal opportunity for all citizens to become successful through hard work and determination. This guarantee of a better life has inspired many generations of immigrants to move to America in order to be included in the dream. Julia Alvarez, the Latina Leader Award winning author, reflects on her own personal experiences of immigrating and assimilating into American society in her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. The novel is about the Garcia family’s life in America before and after they fled from the Dominican Republic to escape the tyrannical dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Alvarez depicts the persistent struggles of racism, inability to find work, cultural identity, and rebellion of which all immigrant families faced while living in America. These struggles as a result can influence one’s perception of the meaning of being an American citizen. Alvarez accomplishes these changing perspectives within the Garcia family by writing the story in a form of a reflection within itself by the characters. The characters share their own perspectives of the meaning of being an American citizen, which indicates that outside influences have shaped each character differently. The Garcia Family 's views of being an U.S. citizen is divided individually based on the

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.

“Between 1961 and 1986 more than 400,000 people legally immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. More than 300,000 Dominicans lived in New York City by 1990, and the total was expected to reach 700,000 early in the millennium, making Dominican migration one of the largest to this country of the past forty years”.(117) The causes of the Dominican immigration

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” (Andre Gide) In the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, written by Julia Alvarez, four sisters are led through a risk infested journey in which they must overcome hindrances with hollow consequences. This historical fiction novel takes us through a rollercoaster of events, incorporating everything from the partialities towards women, to life below the oppressive administration of the Dominican Republic’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo. The events painted by the four sisters give us some insight as to the positives and negatives of life in the Dominican Republic. As the novel progresses, we see the diversity in relation to the

In the mid-1960’s, a large influx of Dominicans came into the United States, specifically New York City, after the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s assassination (Foner, 2001, p. 252). Because of the sudden influx of immigrants in NYC, the Dominican immigrant population encountered many socio-economic problems. These socio-economic problems stem from the disadvantages Dominican women experience in New York City from few job opportunities and low wages. Because many Dominican women are the head of their households, their disadvantaged lifestyle transcends into their home life. Politically, Dominicans are seen as “invisible immigrants” - overlooked in policies created because of their unlikeliness to become citizens (Foner, 2001, p. 257). In the late 1980’s, progressive changes for the Dominican community began to come into fruition (Foner, 2001). Dominicans were able to garner representation in the political sphere advocating for Dominican citizens and immigrants. Dominican immigrants have also found ways to connect their country of origin to the United States through political relationships. This is an example of transnationalism: “the processes by which immigrants “forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that

Therefore, Dominican-Americans already have a familiarity with the country to which they emigrate. Also, these migrants become disparaged as they can

Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost their Accents demonstrates the distinct experiences Dominican men and women face entering a foreign country by challenging their respective ideas of themselves. Numerous times during the novel, Alvarez displays the cultural differences the García family have to adjust to after moving from their home country of the Dominican Republic to the United States. They’ve endured sexual harassment, mental breakdowns and a loss of culture due to their immigration to America. These experiences have effectively altered their lives forever, transforming them into new “selves” that may have never came into fruition had they stayed home in Dominican Republic. Throughout their journeys, the Garcías had started their lives with the potential to become one self -- but encounter experiences in the surrounding culture -- that ultimately change them. As a result, they lose their much of their Dominican heritage trying to assimilate to American culture, but never become truly successful in doing so. Alvarez shows these immigrants, who travel to the United States, are neither American or non-American but borderline in between. They exhibit characteristics of both cultures, and thus, belong in a culture of “selves” that places them directly in the middle.

Migrating onto the mainland, the first generation of Puerto Rican migrants established communities in cities throughout the country, including Chicago, Philadelphia, and Newark, as well as mid-Atlantic farm villages and the mill

The history of the Dominican Republic itself is complicated and its culture is made from fractures of multiple others – the colonial Spanish, the native Dominican, and the slave African, all of which accumulates to the questioning of the self and ones heritage even before de León family moves to the “New World” of New Jersey – Beli, for example, was treated differently, sometimes negatively but oftentimes in a fetishized manner, than other, lighter-skinned, Dominicans while she was young and living in Baní due to her dark coloured

Fifty-four years ago an economic and political crisis struck the Dominican Republic, sending thousands of Haitian immigrants to “America the Beautiful”. In a stunning collection of short stories titled Drown, author Junot Diaz explores the brutal struggle immigrant’s faced to excel from “rags to riches”. Repeatedly immigrants found that “…two hands and a heart as strong as a rock,”

Fifty-four years ago an economic and political crisis stuck the country of Dominican Republic, sending thousands of Haitian immigrants to “America the Beautiful”. In a stunning collection of short stories titled Drown, author Junot Diaz recounts the brutal struggles immigrant’s faced to achieve a dream of “rags to riches”. Repeatedly immigrants found that “…two hands and a heart as strong as a rock,” isn’t always enough (page 168).

Many push and pull factors may have led them to come to America. If I go to the Dominican Republic someone will ask me if I am from New York. Dominicans came from money and for jobs the country is economically unstable. “My mother tells me you are either rich-rich or poor”(182). Their is no middle class in the Dominican Republic and this may have forced Dominicans to come to the U.S.

Oppressive regimes forced Dominicans and Central Americans like the El Salvadorians into diaspora because their lives were threatened if they stayed in the country. Diaspora is the dispersing of a group of people (ethnic or religious) from their homeland or adopted homeland to different areas across the globe. A major dictator from the Dominican Republic was Rafael Trujillo; the most violent time in El Salvador was during the 1980s and early 1990s when the military and death squads were torturing and killing civilians. Furthermore, many Dominican writers and artists discussed their diaspora in length because they wanted the world to know about the violence of Trujillo. For example, Andres Requena, a Dominican writer in the US, wrote Cementerio

The migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States occurred in two major waves. The first wave was in the 1910s-1940s and the second wave was from the 1960s to the 1990s. Each wave of migrants brought new generations of Puerto Ricans to the United States. Both waves of migrants believed that they were going to live a better life in America and migrated to major cities such as New York City, Chicago, Hartford, etc. The early migrants looked for industrial jobs such as in cigar factories while the later migrants found agricultural work such as in tobacco fields. The communities in which they lived grew larger and larger due to chain migration and because of this, the need for politics evolved.