Julia Alvarez is a famous author from the Dominican Republic. She is most known for winning the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles book award in 1991 for her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Barth). Alvarez’s Dominican background and her immigration to the United States influenced her writing, especially in the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
Alvarez was born in New York in 1950 but lived the first ten years of her life in the Dominican Republic. At the time, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, a ruthless tyrant, held a dictatorship over the Dominican Republic (Barth). How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents takes place at the time of this dictatorship. Alvarez’s father was involved in a plot to overthrow Rafael Trujillo and moved his family back to New York when it failed (Barth). This abrupt uprooting was a culture shock to Alvarez who was used to the traditional Dominican culture (Shuman). In her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez describes the struggles that result when children are uprooted from their Dominican culture.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents explores the complications four sisters face when trying to immerse themselves in American culture. This includes religion, language barriers, fitting in at American schools, physical appearance, and family dynamics. Alvarez writes about many of the same struggles she faced during her own cultural transition.
In both Alvarez’s and the Garcia sisters’ experience, learning the
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
Francis Martinez Literary Analysis “First Muse” The story “First Muse” by Julia Alvarez tell us about her childhood in the Dominican Republic and her life in the United States. Since she started reading the thousand and one night book under her bed she saw herself reflected in the dark haired almond eyed girl on the book cover. Alvarez compared herself with the bright ambitious girl stuck in a kingdom that didn”t think female were very important. Scheherazade gave Julia the courage to explore the power of storytelling. When Alvarez came to the United States it was very difficult for her especially for a child who got teased on the playground because of her accent. Julia had a lot of obstacle in her life but she overcome all
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The autobiography When I was Puerto Rican, written by Esmeralda Santiago, tells a story of a poor girl trying to succeed. The settings in this novel have an important influence on Esmeralda. They influence her behavior and change her ideals as an adult. Negi goes through many changes based on the challenges she faces by moving to new locations where society is different. All of these changes allow her to become a stronger person. When she lives in El Mangle, Negi has to face extreme prejudice against her upbringing as a jibara. When she leaves Puerto Rico to move to Brooklyn, she is forced to face an entirely different society. All of these events that took place in Esmeralda’s childhood had a significant impact in shaping her into an adult.
Julia Alvarez in her book In the Time of the Butterflies uses lots of describing, connecting and helping us to realize things that happened in 1960, in Dominican Republic. The book genre is historical fiction, in this genre truth is often based on emotion validity rather than factual reality. Author looks up the ways to demonstrate the essence of each person's thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In this book it tells about three sisters that with the revolution have released people of their country from the dictator’s oppression. It is not a secret, for Dominican Republic it was a very hard time. Throughout the novel, Alvarez uses violent imagery, which I think supported the deeper immersion into this time situations. In the book there are four
New Country, New Me: Taking Back Control in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author
Mrs. Garcia is a middle age Mexican American woman, first generation acculturation into the societal beliefs
Rafael Trujillo, a Dominican dictator, developed a harsh reputation as being one of the most violent and domineering leaders of South America in his thirty-one years of power. In The Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez provides insight into the effects of Trujillo’s infamy by sharing the stories of three Dominican sisters and their struggles to gain independence and speak their truth. The Dominican-American author dramatizes the lives of the Mirabal sisters, three historical women who were assassinated in 1961, for their involvement in the anti-Trujillo movement. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, a Cuban critic of Latin American literature, provides a bias insight with regards to the novel.
Julia de Burgos faced somewhat more difficult circumstances than did Sor Juana to reach her status as an acclaimed female writer. Referring to Julia de Burgos, Carmen Delgado commented: “a woman of great sensibility, rebellious spirit, and exceptional intelligence, Julia de Burgos no doubt felt imprisoned by circumstances” (“Julia de Burgos” 1). Burgos, the first of thirteen children of Francisco Burgos Hans and Paula Garcia de Burgos, was born in 1914 in the town of Carolina, Puerto Rico (“Julia de Burgos” 1). Unlike Sor Juana, Julia de Burgos’ family did not have the means to allow
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