How Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent Essay

They finally reach the city where Pablo is from and meet Abuelita and the rest of Pablo’s family. They stay there for a week and Sophie is worried that Pablo will choose to stay with his family instead of going back to America with her. Sophie treats Pablo like a little brother, while Pablo admires Sophie like an older sister they don’t want to leave each other. Sophie and Angel start to develop romantic feelings for eachother and start dating. Sophie gets a sense of culture and even tries to help Pablo’s family with the

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

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.

A dream can push people into the upper level, but dreams do not always come true. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez is about immigrants who move to America. This is a book of the story collection; also, it combines different emotions, especially love and guilt. Alma loves her daughter, Maribel, more than anything else like every parent does, so Maribel is the only reason they are in America. Alma does as much as she can to Maribel. Although Alma is a newcomer to America, she becomes stronger because of her daughter.

When Sofia was with Manuel her mother sent her to Dominican Republic as a punishment for finding a bag of marijuana behind a bureau. Smoking was just one of the ways Sofia tested what was expected of her. Sofia also was able to find her sexual independence in America. At one point in her life, she was never without a boyfriend. She was brave and was her own person throughout most of the novel , but as soon as she was with a man that expected certain things from her and in a place where society agreed with those demands everything changed. Geological setting did not only affect Sofia’s beliefs in a patriarchal culture. The girls noticed a difference in the way their cousin Mundin treated them. “When he’s in the States, he’s one of us, our buddy. But back on the Island, he struts and turns macho; needling us with unfair advantage being male here gives him.” (127)

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.

Sofia was sent to the Dominican Republic as a punishment for using marijuana, though she ended up getting into more trouble by spending time without a chaperone with her illegitimate cousin, Manuel.

suffers her life by being in jail because of joining the revolution. Since Trujillo controls the three

Sofia was sent to the Dominican Republic as a punishment for using marijuana, though she ended up getting into more trouble by spending time without a chaperone with her illegitimate cousin, Manuel.

In addition, Trujillo was friends with the head of the armed forces, and friends with his wife’s lover. One day Trujillo told the general about his wife having an affair with another man, and Trujillo became the head of the armed forces soon after the general shot his wife and her lover. (17). Even though the sisters didn’t want to believe it the accusations against their president, but began to realize how true they were. Over time the sisters met others that didn’t agree with their president’s ways, and that is how the Mirabel sisters came to join the Virgilio Morales.

The teenage years and transition to adulthood is in itself a very difficult period. Blending or fitting in are omnipresent issues that must be dealt with. For children of immigrants, this difficulty is only intensified through language. Both Amy Tan and Khang Nguyen strategically use narrative anecdotes and employ several rhetorical devices to illustrate this struggle in their works, “Mother Tongue” and “The Happy Days,” respectfully. Amy Tan chooses her childhood home as the primary setting of her work. This allows her to focus primarily on her conversations and interactions with her mother. However, she also gives several anecdotes in which her mother’s background and improper English negatively affected her, outside the home. Through

Julia Alvarez also uses language to show how the four Garcia girls adjust to living in a new, and to them alien, culture. The protagonist in this novel is the family Garcia de la Torre, a wealthy, aristocratic family from the Santo Domingo, who can trace their genealogy back to the Spanish

Glancing over to the forest edge where most of the adults were gathered for the shade, she spotted her mami stirring a small caldero over one of the smaller pits, while laughing merrily with great-abuela Concha. Consuela wrested with telling her mother about ‘Rique’s unusual request, but thought now was not a good time, if ever, because if he was scolded in front of everyone or tried to place the blame on her she would die from shame. Consuela had never kissed or hugged a hermanito other than her father or close family members, and had never done all those weird and nasty things she often heard some of the fast girls at school stage-whispering about. She didn’t ever want to be considered a una puta. She instinctively knew a reputation like that would be hard to live

talked for a long time. Later, her Mexican siblings take her to the shopping center. At the

Márquez created the character of Victoria Guzmán to display the power of women, even when they appear to be at the hands of rich and wealthy men. Victoria Guzmán works for the Nasar family as their cook. After Santiago treated Victoria’s daughter, Divina Flor, poorly, Victoria “showed him the bloody knife. “Let go of her, white man,” she ordered” (Márquez 9). Despite the fact that Victoria works for Santiago, she still has the power to order him around, and does not get in trouble for doing so. While Santiago is displayed as a rich, white man who has others cook and clean for him, it is Victoria Guzmán who has the upper hand in their relationship. She even goes as far as to speak to Santiago in a derogatory way, and sees no repercussions for