Life On The Hyphen: The Cuban American Way

Being an immigrant of another country in a new country can change someone drastically.How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a novel by Julia Alvarez, about how 4 sisters started their lives in The Dominican Republic and then had to the move to the United States and adjust. Yolanda moved from the Dominican Republic to the United States at a young age and it changed how she saw herself and how she defined herself. Yolanda being a Dominican Immigrant changed her name, made her have an early loss of innocence, and eventually made her lose control of herself.

Julia Alvarez’s book, How the García Girls Lost their Accents, illustrates the struggle of finding an identity as an immigrant. The four girls, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia seem to be lost in their new American culture but even more lost in their home culture as adults. Finding what culture they belong to is a lifelong struggle that results in acculturation, deculturalization and culture shock.

Balancing out two different cultures can be burdensome. It can cause a roadblock to assimilating to the new culture just as it did for Changez for wanting to belong. Language is also a fundamental aspect for belonging and it can also conflict with one's identity. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, language played a huge part in their lives and identities as Dominicans growing up in America. When they first immigrated, language and sexuality are the two most troubling aspects of their cultural displacement. Each sister had a different perspective on learning the new language and also embracing it. Yolanda, the third sister out of the four, developed a sensitive yet troublesome feeling through English. In her years in America, she endured

From April 15 to October 31 in 1980, over 125,000 Cuban migrants arrived in the United States. Family members from America ferried relatives and institutionalized Cubans from the Cuban port of Mariel, in what was soon coined the Mariel Boatlift. Mirta Ojito, one of these ‘Marielitos’, as they soon were termed, grew up to write “Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus”. In this text, the author provides a historic account of events leading up to the Mariel Boatlift, narratives from important figures surrounding the event, and a personal narrative describing the struggle of her family to gain freedom from the socialist dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Throughout the story of the years preceding the boatlift and the influence that living in Cuba held on her life, Ojito describes the positive and negative elements of the both the political climate and personal life on the communist island which led to her eventual emigration to the United States.

People wonder what it would be like for aliens to come to Earth. Being bombarded with so many new things at once would overwhelm them. It would be difficult for the aliens to assimilate within human society. However, that experience is what immigrants face all the time when coming to a new country. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a family from the Dominican Republic escapes to the United States as immigrants. In the family, two of the four sisters named Yolanda and Carla have difficulties assimilating into their new environment. The two sisters face the problems of understanding their surroundings. Down the line in their future, they will face sacrifices in order to understand themselves. Alvarez uses Yolanda and Carla’s experience with immigration to demonstrate the difficulties of assimilating and the sacrifices an immigrant must make to completely acculturate.

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.

She struggled with not letting go of too much of her origins and not becoming too much "Americanized". Her mother tried to instill in her that even though they were not any longer living in Puerto Rico the Puerto Rico should always live in her. In the book, Jamie, one of the guys who worked as an actor with Negi in Buda, mentioned something that was very important and that I think every Puerto Rican or anyone from another ethnicity deals with. He said that Puerto Ricans that live in New York have to be more Puerto Rican than those living in Puerto Rico so as to keep the culture alive in them and in New York. This statement, it think summarizes what all people of different ethnicity have to deal with when they go to a foreign land and have to learn a new culture. This is why I decided to reflect on the different roles my mother has undertaken in comparison to Negi Negi's mom and me. I found that many of their roles were not very similar to those of Negi or Negi's mom. This could be because they lived in different times.

After watching Cuba Libre, The Forgotten Revolution was particularly interesting because it discusses events and people fundamental to the eventual overthrow of Batista that are not once mentioned by the Netflix documentary series. Frank País, for example, helped lead the Cuban underground rebellion in Santiago de Cuba, where he was well regarded for his teaching experience, his prolific writing, and his willingness to sacrifice his own wants and needs for the good of the cause. In fact, rather than focusing on establishing his own revolutionary force, he subverted himself to Fidel Castro when Castro was in the Sierra Maestra mountains. He sent men, supplies, and vaccines to Castro and it is impossible to deny the important role País played

In the early 1900’s, Cuba was a stomping ground for many of the rich and famous from the United States. Many famous movies stars and wealthy business entrepreneurs spend their vacations there along with a substantial amount of money. Trade and commerce between the United States and Cuba flowed freely and abundantly. Even with the Dictatorship-like regime of Batista, the countries benefited from the economic trade between them. This was all about to come crashing down as revolts against Batista occurred and Fidel Castro came to power within Cuba.

Gustavo Lopez (2013) tells that Hispanics from Cuba are a big proportion of the United States. Cuban Americans are affiliated with Hispanics. (Lopez, 2013) “Cubans in this statistical profile are people who self-identified as Hispanics of Cuban origin; this means either they themselves are Cuban immigrants or they trace their family ancestry to Cuba” (Lopez, 2013, pp.1). In 2013, Gustavo tells that the Cuban population in the United States was very large. (Lopez, 2013) Cubans who live in the United States prefer to be called certain terms (Lopez, 2013). Most often, Cubans prefer the term “Cuban” and only a few Cubans prefer to be termed as an “American” (Lopez, 2013). Also, when the Cubans were asked about being termed “Hispanic” or “Latino,” both terms were not favorable (Lopez, 2013).

On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his band of rebels overtook the Cuban government. Their Revolution was based on massive agrarian reform and equality throughout. It was not based on Communism or communistic ideals. The US government was against the rise of Castro and his people. They had been able to control the Cuban government by controlling the successive presidents, since the Spanish-American War early in the 20th Century. The rise of Castro was undertaken with a distinct anti-American flavor to it. Castro was able to expand his popularity by fusing the anti-American fever with massive reforms intended to give social and economic equality to all Cubans. The economic presence, of the US, within Cuba was great at the time of Castro’s

From the time, Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba tensions ran high between the Cuban government and the United States government. Relations between Cuba and the United States grew during Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Not as much during the Eisenhower administration as the Kennedy administration did tensions between between the two countries intensify. Kennedy faced many a different situations as President. He faced such situations like the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tensions have mounted high for a long time between Cuba and the United States.

My cultural ancestry comes from a Cuban and Mexican decent. I have chosen to write about my Cuban side because I can relate to them more than I could with my Mexican side. I was raised around my Cuban family and would occasionally see my Mexican side due to them living so far away. I have spent a lot more time associating with Cubans and have adapted to more of their habits.

economic growth comes from agriculture and exports to and from Europe. Since America has had an embargo on Cuba since 1962 neither countries trade with each other because of many disagreements about governing techniques and Fidel's unwillingness to comply with U.S. instructions. Cuba’s long history and culture has contributed to many economic and social growth through out the world, but Cuba is still struggling to try to stable their economy.

Living in Mexico throughout her teen years was very rough. Unlike other teenagers where their parents constantly provide for their children, Marisela’s life was a lot different than the usual parent- child relationship. She lived with her Abuela ( Grandma) Lupe, along with her 3 brothers and sister. She constantly had to take care of her brothers and sister at such a young age, that she became the mother-like figure of the