How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent Summary

Furthermore, in most cases, it may seem the United States has a system in which immigrants are not given the chance to form a bright future. In the novel, “Antonio soon found himself settling for jobs that were clearly beneath him. He stood under the baking sun at the on-ramp to the Santa Monica Freeway, selling oranges for two dollars a bag: a dollar fifty for the guy from the produce market, fifty cents for him,” (Tobar, 53). Many of the immigrants that live in the U.S. have little power that allows them to succeed. Some races have benefitted from it more than others. The Cubans, for instance, have had it much easier than most immigrants who have migrated to the United States; whereas, Antonio, a Guatemalan, had trouble finding a stable job that allowed him to sustain himself. In contrast to many other races, many Americans described Cubans as being visitors who represent, “all phases of life and professions, having an excellent level of education… More than half of their families with them, including children brought from Cuba to escape communist indoctrination in the schools,”

Sandra Cisneros writes about growing up as the only daughter in a Mexican household with six brothers. This presents many difficulties for her growing up because she constantly yearned for the approval of her father; a father who believed her only purpose in this world was to get married and start a family. Throughout her whole life she sought to please him, and when she told him she had plans to go to college, what she did not realize what that her “father thought college was good for girls—good for finding a husband.” To go a step further, her father would constantly tell people about his “seven sons,” as though it were some kind of merit. This clearly and understandably bothered Cisneros because she said that she would “tug [her] father’s sleeve and whisper: ‘Not seven sons. Six! and one daughter.’” Despite all of these hardships, she finally was able to impress her father. After she had gone to college, become a successful author, and had a story published and translated to Spanish, she presented the story to her father. He was clearly very impressed with her work and she finished by saying that out of all the great things that have happened to her, this moment was by far the greatest.

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.

In today’s society, family is often attempted to be organized within a social structure. Within this structure family typically is consisted of mom, dad, daughter, and son. However, many families do not fit into this configuration. These families may include same sex couples, separated or divorced families, extended families, or even blended families. Even though these families may be happy and healthy, to many they are not considered real families. Going along with the topic of imperfect families, both Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Rodriguez try to break down the traditional family structure through their writing. While Kingsolver’s “Stone Soup” and Rodriguez’s “Family Values” explore the ideas of different family structures and traditional American values, “Stone Soup” breaks down what an actual family is like while “Family Values” expresses the value of family in different cultures.

One of the main sources of tension in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez, are the sisters search for a personal identity among contrasting cultures. Many of the characters felt pressure from two sources, the patriarchal culture that promotes traditional gender roles and society of nineteen-sixties and seventies America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female empowerment or individuality, whereas in the United States, the sixties and seventies were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped the identities of the characters in Alvarez’s novel and often tore the characters apart for one another.

This poem shows that all immigrants move to the United States to look for the “American Dream”. They risk their lives to obtain a better life for themselves and their families. When the author says:

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

Immigrating to the frontier with nothing but the belongings they could carry, these families would have to start from scratch. The novel portrays how immigrants of this time started out behind as they were forced to take loans from whomever they could to start their lives at their new homes. Mr. Shimerda makes a point to explain to their new neighbors that in his former home, Bohemia, they were not poor, but they became poor moving to America (p. 61). Immigrants struggled to have enough money to begin their farms and often had to take out loans. A Russian immigrant in the novel had to take out several loans to get by. These loans only grew from interest as he was unable to pay the dues (p. 44). This resulted in him only growing more and more in debt and being buried in mortgages. As most immigrants were in debt, they had to continue to labor vigorously on their farms and were not able to gain the skills or education many non-immigrants were able to get. This meant they would not be able to one day obtain a higher-paying knowledge job in the city. For example, Ántonia desired to attend school, but when asked about it by her neighbor, she insisted she was too busy with farm work to attend (p. 97). While Ántonia was unable to attend school, her neighbor, Jim, was able to. As adults, Jim was a lawyer in the city while Ántonia remained a mother in the frontier. This is just one example that unveils the different levels of upward mobility and how they affected the immigrants in contrast to the

ersity of North Carolina Charlotte Americanization of the Garcia Family Patrick Daniel Smith Student Number: 801038231 AMST 2050 Dr. Benny Andres 19 March 2018 Julia Alverez, the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, tells a story of four sisters who adapt through their Americanization. The Garcia family moved from the Dominican Republic to the United States, fleeing the Dictator Trujillo. The Garcia girls develop more individuality in America than they would in the Dominican Republic due to having more freedom of expression, and the lack of status quo that was previously held over them in the Dominican Republic. This ability to adapt to American society seems to be easier the younger you are. The newly American family

As a Hispanic that grew up in the American culture I can relate to numerous parts in the book where I have had that obstacle come my way and having to think why did I chose to do this instead of that. I can relate to this book for all the gender stop point and obstacles that are put in place by the Hispanic culture. But just how in the book the father overcame the Dominican dictatorship, I have learned to overcome the hesitations that are thrown at me for being an independent Hispanic woman. I can see why the Garcia sisters are faced with being in between two worlds and finding a place to call home. It may be difficult to chose, but the right decision to take is always outside of what society or everyone else is expected of you to be seen as.

For Julia Alvarez and her fictionalized counterparts in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the family dynamic dramatically changed in America from the way it was in the Dominican Republic. After going to boarding school the Garcia girls were made aware that their American peers were free to socialize with their friends outside of school and were given more freedom. Back in the Dominican Republic they were only allowed to socialize with their cousins once they had their parents' permission and were under supervision. For instance, "as the oldest Carla [had] to ride with Fifi in Manuel's pickup as la chaperona" (Alvarez 123). Adopting the same manner in which their American peers were raised, the Garcia girls voiced their discontent with

The novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents focuses on four sisters and their attempts to fit in after moving from the Dominican Republic to the United States. The third sister, Yolanda, returns to the Dominican Republic at the beginning of the story to visit family and finds that instead of fitting in as she always had, she instead felt like an outsider in the land that she loved so much. Throughout the story, Yolanda continually tries to do things the way she always had, even though she experiences pushback from people around her. Yolanda is used to life in America, which is significantly safer than life in the Dominican Republic at the time. Instead, she

In chapter six, “South, Central, and Eastern European Americans” talk about one of the largest immigration periods of immigrants from Europe (1880- 1920). Escaping inhumane condition, persecution of religious and political change in their native land, they sail to America where opportunities and the job growth were much better due to a rapid growth of industrialization. European immigrants came to America to better themselves; searching for their American dream, just like many other immigrants. Based on my own personal experience it really saddened me to learn how the immigrants who came from the south, central and east Europe suffer in their hope of a better life. I can relate this because my family has gone through a similar situation of survival and have faced discrimination base of our cultural and language differences.

As Immigrants would come through Ellis Island and other places with a gleaming amount of hope, they would experience something totally different on the other side. Inside the US was this feeling of Anglo-Saxon superiority and therefore immigration was frowned upon in may areas. An immigration officer from this time period cited “early economic opportunity came to an end” as one of the major things that affected immigrant life. They [immigrants] were left to find day jobs working at the first opportunity that presented itself and then return to the tenement. Out of this pattern grew an extreme feeling of isolation. Immigrants lived in their own communities, socialized with their own, and slept with their own. Nativist feelings from the american-born community were real and present and ultimately the belief was to sleep, eat, and work for someone else and be content.

In her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Dominican author Julia Alvarez demonstrates how words can become strange and lose their meaning. African American writer Toni Morrison in her novel Sula demonstrates how words can wound in acts of accidental verbal violence when something is overheard by mistake. In each instance, one sees how the writer manipulates language, its pauses and its silences as well as its words, in order to enhance the overall mood of each work.