How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

I recently read the book "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez. This book involved a family whose father, Papi, was part of the rebellion against the dictator of the Dominican Republic during the 1950's. When the father's actions put the rest of the family in more and more danger, it becomes necessary for them to move away from their beloved home to the scandalous United States of America.
The Garcia family has always been very conservative and traditional. When they move to the United States the mother, Mami, struggles to keep the four girls under control. She will find this to be an even larger challenge than expected when the young girls' peers are all more educated in sex and the body than she could ever have dreamed. As the story unwinds, we find these four girls, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia trying to break from their parents' old-fashioned ways.
The narrator rotates from Mami, Papi, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia as each tells us about a focal point in their adolescence and first experiences as Americans. Slowly, we learn more about each character as the stories are told, starting from their adulthood and as each page turns, moving back to their childhood in the Dominican.
"How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" was a very confusing book that I did not enjoy. The switching of narrators with no warning or way of knowing who was talking until the chapter was half over left me flipping pages back and forth and re-reading things as I attempted to understand what was going on. For example the book begins with the narration of an author who is not actually experiencing the events she describes: "The old aunts lounge in the white wicker armchairs, flipping open their fans, snapping them shut" (Alvarez 3). The author continues to narrate as if looking in on her characters, until the fifth chapter where we suddenly switch randomly to Yolanda: "For a brief few giddy years, I was the one with the reputation among my sisters of being the wild one" (Alvarez 86).
Even more obnoxious than the random narration flops, was the fact that the stories in the book were unrelated. At one moment I would read about a character having a bad break up with her boyfriend, and just a few pages later I would read about troubles a character was having with her mental health. The only constant throughout the book were the characters, and it seemed as if the book should have been a collection of intriguing short stories, rather than a flowing novel. In conclusion, I would not recommend this book to anyone, and if looking for a window into a new culture I would suggest a story that has a clearer plot.

5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

Great Book - Perfect for any Reader!

I have just recently finished reading this book, and I believe that it is titled perfectly to describe events and cultural things that have changed for the Garcia girls throughout their childhood. The girls don't literally lose their accents, but throughout the novel they start losing things from their lives in the Dominican Republic. I think Julia Alvarez titled the book this way to describe how the Garcia girls became more Americanized and started forgetting about their heritage and culture.
The largest influential change in the girls' lives that would allow them to "lose their accents" would be when the de la Torre family moved to America. They moved to escape the dangers of home and hoped to create a new life in America. Their parents are the only people in America that continue to try to live life as if they were still in the Dominican Republic. Their mother is a stickler about how young ladies should act and conduct themselves. Their father believes that American children are influencing the behaviors of his daughters. The girls are also learning English in school each day. They are learning quickly. Their mother already knows English, but their father is not entirely fluent. The family has to help him out.
The Garcia girls have become very comfortable in America. They no longer dream of the day when they can go back to the Dominican Republic. They still visit every summer, but they enjoy their time in America. Each Garcia girl is different from the others and they each lead promising lives in America as they continue to go to school, write, or raise families.
I would recommend this book to anyone! And I will definitely read another book by Julia Alvarez. I really enjoyed her style of writing!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Check it out!

I believe that Julia Alvarez intended this book to be read by teenagers just moving to another country. I think she wanted to show these people that when they move to another country, it takes time for them to fit in and get along with everyone else. She does this by telling stories that happened to them as they moved to America and tried to fit into the American lifestyle. By telling different stories for each girl she showed that each person goes through something different when they move to a new country. She also wanted to show them that they should not fully lose their culture that they were taught in their home country. One way she did this was showing how Yolanda went back to the Dominican Republic after spending many years in America and getting use to life there. Another way she shows this is by going backwards in time because it shows how much they have changed, but also how they have remained the same throughout the years away from their home country. Also she wants to show these people that they should not do certain things that they do not want to because of how they are raised. This happens when Yolanda meets Rudy and did not want to have sexual relations with him because she did not believe in it. I think that she wrote it to this group of people because there are a lot of people who have to go through this everyday and she wanted to show them that it takes time to fit into the culture of a new culture.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Kritters Ramblings

I took a moment before I wrote this review because I wanted to pull all my thoughts together. I read this book for a book club and I just wasn't sure how I really felt about this one.

I flip flopped back and forth as to whether I liked the fact that the book started in the present and went back in time with each set of stories. I love flashbacks, but I am not sure if I like going backwards in time - makes for hard reading. I had to take mental note as to the ages of the girls, where they were located and what was going on, it was hard.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was very interesting to read a book that was out of my culture and out of my normal realm of reading. I know that this story could be close to a true story because I have a great friend from my Enterprise Rent a Car days who was Panama (not the city, the country) and she had stories of her "Tias" and all of her cousins.

I would recommend this book to all of my friends who love to read stories involving sisters and families. This is a great read about how a family becomes what it has and how the smallest events affect each one in the family.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Book Review

The title of the book I read is, "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents", and is written by Julia Alvarez. The theme is culture clash. It has to do with the changes the four girls (Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, Fifi) go through when they move to America. Their conservative Latin ways of life clashes with the fast paced, non-conservative American style of living. This theme is incorporated a lot throughout the book because when Yolanda was in college, she didn't know much about American slang, her morals were different than Americans, and she acted differently than Americans. She acted differently because of her culture and where she grew up (Dominican Republic). The main character is Yolanda (yoyo for short). I think she is the main character because out of the whole family, she is talked about most throughout the whole book. Julia wrote mostly about Yolanda, with in-depth descriptions of her relationship struggles, her thought process about her move to America, and what she thought of people. She doesn't play a very important part, I don't think any of the girls do, but I think without her in the story, and it wouldn't be as interesting. Her life was always filled with the most drama, at one point she gets checked into a mental hospital because of her problems. This book is about a family with four girls that comes to New York from the Dominican Republic, and the hard times that they go through. It takes place in the 60's, so you can imagine an immigrated Spanish family would get a lot of racial issues (which are mentioned in the story). Throughout the book, each of the four girls had different struggles, which include relationship issues, drug abuse, and mental un-healthiness. It's basically, in my opinion, the life stories of four sisters (and occasionally mentioning their parent's lives). I think the title is more of a figurative statement, about how the girls are kind of becoming real Americans, and changing from their old ways and their old lifestyle, to what is popular in America at that time. I did not like this book very much. I found the whole storyline a bit confusing. If I'm correct, the book started out when they were adults, and worked its way back to when the girls were kids. In the first 100 pages, it focused on when they were grownups, and even when Yolanda was in college. In the last 50 or s, it was all about their childhood and memories associated with it. Like every book, "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" had its good drama-filled chapters in it; but all in all, I did not like it a whole lot. I wouldn't recommend this book. I found it a little bit interesting and entertaining, but I found it was mostly dull. I didn't enjoy it all that much, as said before it was quite confusing because of its structure.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Pretty good

This novel is about a family that flees from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. In the foreign nation, the family tries to cope with racism and assimilate into American culture. I think the author, Julia Alvarez did a great job describing through interesting anecdotes, the difficulties that the immigrants faced, and how they gradually became Americans. I think she was able to talk about incidents she put in her book so realistically because she immigragted to America in the 1960s from the Dominican Republic just like the characters in the book. Each chapter consists of one anecdote and some of them are very serious while others are humorous. This quality makes the book truly an enjoyable one to read. In a chapter entitled 'Snow' Alvarez talks about how a Dominican girl who just immigrated thought that white particles (snow) were from the explosion of a nuclear bomb. What happened seems very realistic because in the 1960s, there was still a threat of a nuclear bomb being dropped in the U.S. so students were being taught at school how to protect themselves. It shows how the Dominican girl was not completely an American yet even though she spoke English. I really liked this chapter because I had a similar experience. There were also serious parts in this book which I gained a lot from. In the chapter 'The Blood of the Conquistadores,' I learned about the political unrest in the Dominican Republic in the mid-1950s, which I previously had no knowledge about. It also helped me to understand why so many Dominicans immigrated to the U.S. during that time. The organization of the book was effective. It is written in reverse chronological order unlike most novels, which makes it unique. There was not much of a suspense because I already knew what happened when I read about the main characters anticipating an event. However, it was quite interesting to read what the characters wanted and expected after learning what actually happened. Reading about the event and then what happened before the event sometimes answered my questions as to why an event happened in such a manner. I also liked that the author wrote in different points of view. Since she wrote in the voices of the four girls, I felt much closer to the characters because it was as if the girls were talking to me. The different voices that Alvarez used for each of the four girls also added to their personalities. However, this novel has a couple weak points. It has so many characters that it is very hard to keep track of them all unless you pay really close attention. The author provides the readers with a lot of information on the characters, so for me it was hard to remember which of the Garcia girls did what. Also, the author calls Mr. Garcia several names including 'Papi' and 'Carlos' so it is easy to get confused and think they are different people. Furthermore, before reading this book, I had no knowledge of Spanish, so I was very bewildered by the numerous Spanish phrases and titles (for people) that were used. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a book to read lightly because it doesn't contain difficult vocabulary and is fun to read. I think it would be more interesting for people who have had experiences in another culture as a foreigner because they would be able to relate at least a little bit to the main characters. I wouldn't suggest reading this book to find out how immigrants' lives were in general in th 1960s when they moved to America because it only provides the experiences of a single wealthy family that came from the Dominican Republic.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Recommended

Ms Alvarez's presentation is unusual, but once you realize she is going back in time, not too bad. As a person who emigrated to the United States at the age of 5, I can identify with the difficulties the girls experienced. It is a rite of passage that is bittersweet. Ms Alvarez captures the feelings well: No soy ni de aqui ni de aya.

Slow reading

Interesting to read of the chaos caused at the end of Trujillo's reign of terror in the country but not enough info about what was going on. I found that it was difficult to remain motivated although I did read the whole thing. I'm not sure if I'll read the other book by this author that I have in my "to reads" in the very near future.

My last name is Garcia by bllod and i cine from cuba and spain.

Am i special?

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Cougar H

I learned that there four daughter carla,sandra,yolanda and sofia belong to this spanish asociaty from the conquistadores.There family visits this palacio dictators daughter.So when Dr Garcia Apart to its attemp to discover something.They went to new york city in 1960 to there life so far from there exsistence the dominican replublic.
the girls are having troubles speaking spanish and there strategies. but there are trying to live it up and tryin to tell there father that they want america boyfriends. and they still want those traditinal things. they go to schools they all go together they all went to there class but sandra got caught by having a bag of weed she got introuble they send her to colombia and she stayed there everybody was worried mad and cryin sad asking questions however it had to be that way.
she went to a new world in columbia and a old world new york she has
to decide wich one and not to be bad at alll
Dr Garcia teaches her to be a good girl and what does weed do to your body and brain she thought it was bad so she stoped and that momment her american boyfriend came she took her home and lost her accent to her family and never heard of them again.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Outstanding novel, a must read

This novel was a really good one. The way it was written, it really made it seem realistic. Families have had to go through things like what the Garcia family went through. I can read this novel over and over again.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Disappointing, for its intended purpose

My son was assigned this book for "required" reading at school. I had hoped there would be more reading of the classics in freshman year, but I presume this was a book geared toward learning about diversity.

My son reported that most of his peers were not impressed with the book and its strange and brutal ending. I find it odd that educational institutions continue to push books with brutal or haunting imagery to kids (e.g. Steinbeck's The Pearl, another required read in middle school) under the umbrella of educational learning. My son really doesn't like these kinds of novels. He finds them disturbing, but perhaps he's not desensitized to violence as many teens are these days.

Since I have not read the book, I can only say that my son did not like it. Sorry - an educational opportunity lost because it was just too edgy.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

I read the book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. I enjoyed reading this book and found it interesting to learn about people from different cultures. This book is about four Hispanic sisters from The Dominican Republic. Sofia, Carla, Yolanda, and Sandra Garcia all moved from their beloved home in The Dominican to the United States. For each of the sisters, the move was very hard because their whole family lived in The Dominican Republic and it was where they all grew up. In the United States the girls were forced to transition into the modern American teenager. For some of the sisters this was easy, but for others, living in another culture was quite difficult. They were all faced with cahllenges such as being made fun of, or being pressured into something that their parents would not aprove of. In the book you will read about how the girls adapted into Americans. They met men from America and went to college. They got married and had children of their own. I found that this book was a little confusing in the beginning because I wasn't exactly sure who the characters were since they weren't really introduced, but towards the end it makes more sence. In this book I enjoyed that each of the sisters were very different. For example Sofia was the more adventurous girl, while Yolanda liked to stay true to her culture. In the book there is many different stories told by each of the 4 girls and also by there mami and papi. I found the stories interesting and fun to read because it showed exactly how difficult is was for them to adapt to living in the United States. I wouldn't recomend this book to everyone because it is confusing to understand at times. I would recomend this to anyone who enjoys reading about cultures and learning about different types of people. The book isn't very long and its pretty easy to read and understand. Overall I liked this book but it wasn't my favorite.

Nice Story

I thought this was a great story about four girls, working backwards from adulthood in the United States to childhood in the Dominican Republic, before exile. Alvarez spends equal time on each character, so the reader can relate easily to each one. One aspect of the story that I have to criticize is that at first it seemed like beach reading, but once I got into the story, it was very enjoyable and intellectually stimulating.

A nice read

How the García Girls lost their Accents was surprisingly good. The first chapter or so is confusing with meeting all the characters, but once you get the main characters straight it is enjoyable. The book is about a family from the Dominican Republic who have to leave the Dominican because their father is in trouble with the government. You hear all about the girls becoming Americanized, and how they grow up through out the book. The book is in reverse chronological order, with the beginning of the novel 1989-1972, and the last part of the book 1960-1956. We follow the girls as they grow up in the United States, and go to college, and start families. It was very interesting to see how boys were favored to have in the Dominican. ¿How obnoxious for him to go on and on like that while beside him stood his little granddaughter, wide-eyed and sad at all the things her baby brother, no bigger than one of her dolls, was going to be able to do just because he was a boy.¿ It was also interesting to see the government type in the Dominican during the 1960¿s. ¿But Papi is not playing a game now because soon after he runs by in hide-and-seek, the doorbell rings, and Chucha lets in those two creepy-looking men. What catches Yoyo¿s eye are their holster belts and the shiny black bulge of their guns poking through.¿ Overall, this was a really great book, and I recommend it to anyone.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

"How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez is a story about a wealthy family of San Domingo forced to flee to the Bronx of New York City due to the father's involvment in a plot against the dictator. The story's chapters each have their own speaker which alternates between the Garcia family members and focuses on each member of the family's, mostly the daughters', traumas starting at adulthood and backtracking down to the childhood before their escape. The book expresses the importance of independence as to not crumble under small issues. <BR/>I did not enjoy this book i found it disappointing and overdramatic. It uneccesarily brought up the topic of sex too often. I found the chapters to be ultimately whiney and complaining when the family could have had things far more worse and were severely lucky for what they did have and gratitude was not once expressed, only feeling sorry for themselves. I did learn about a period in Hispanic history that i did not know about prior to reading the book which i did find interesting. I would reccomend this book to people who enjoy listening to other peoples' problems or those involved in a similar state but for others i do not reccomend this story.

How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

The novel "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez, is mainly about the four Garcia sisters Carla, Yolanda, Sandra, and Sofia. The girls were all born within a six-year span and thet are know as the four Gracia girls. They were living in the Dominican Republic the girls and their mother and father. They were living the great life in the Dominican Republic. They were rich, happy as could be, and surrounded by their loving family. They then moved to North America, and here they worked as hard as ever. Each of them had come for different purposes. To find love, go to school, finally have a change of scenery. Their lives, although they may have traveled different paths, they always remained sisters. Family was key, and they never lost sight of that. They went through many rough patches through their time there. Everything they went through varied from college, new loves, heartbreaks, divorces, new life, and everything in between. The girls always remained in each others hearts, and if the times got rough, they always had each other to fall back on. And if one of them got into trouble with their parents, they would stick up for each other, and try to even out the blame the other sisters. <BR/>I kinda like this book beacuse of all the different stories the sisters had to tell and share. Also becuase of all the different turn outs to their lives in North America.<BR/>I would recomned this book to anyone who likes thoose books that have alot going on. In this book there is a lot of detail and if you don't pay attention you get lost through out the whole book.

Review

Text Review: How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents Historical context: US Race Relations/Chicano Movement/1956-1987 Reviewer: Molly Mackinlay May 29, 2008 In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, the author, Julia Alvarez examines the experiences of Latin American immigrants. The four daughters and their parents move to America after a failed attempt to overthrow the dictator of their home country: The Dominican Republic. The novel is mostly about the girl¿s attempts to assimilate in American society and their parents¿ reactions. My book was surprisingly historically accurate. While reading it, I felt like I was learning barely any history at all, but reading through the text book I found a lot of reference to different themes in history. On page 882 of the textbook, white flight is discussed and the effect this had on racial biases. This same theme was addressed in my book when the Dominican family moved out of their apartment into a small, uniform, suburban neighborhood. Other major events referenced by my novel are: the cold war ¿ the presence of the CIA in the Dominican Republic, the advent of TVs and similar technology ¿ the fact they had them, the hippie movement ¿ the sisters experimentation with marijuana, affirmative action ¿ the women all got into top schools, and the feminist movement ¿ the oldest daughter, Carla, became a feminist. The information about the struggle with the dictator in the Dominican Republic is interesting, but they don¿t go into enough detail. The text is accurate, but many of the historical references are vague and uninformative. The text is written from the point of view of a Latin American immigrant, and the author is of Latin ancestry. The author is more supportive of the Spanish culture than a white writer probably would have been. While she portrays the father as slightly unjust for holding on to the ¿old ways¿ so tightly, she helps the reader feel sympathy for his struggle to reconcile the cultures. The white people in this book seem unreal and unsupportive of the girls. Their faults are prominently shown and their interactions usually bring only strife into the family. (ex: the white doctor¿s wife and her drinking problem) I don¿t believe this text would have much impact on a reader¿s historical knowledge. First of all, it would have to be assigned for the reader to actually bother to finish the book. Secondly, the historical tidbits are so few and far between that it barely counts as more than a relatively accurate fiction based in the past. The book jumped from one character to another, leaving an incomplete picture of their lives and experiences. If it had chosen one character and told their story from beginning to end, it would have been able to include much more historical accuracy and knowledge. While I didn¿t die of boredom reading it, it wasn¿t interesting nor do I feel that I learned very much. I believe reading a book of straight facts would have been more interesting, if not as easy to read. The plus of not having to take notes would have made it feel less like a textbook reading and more like pleasure without sacrificing knowledge as a result. I wouldn¿t, couldn¿t recommend this book. Not to a friend, at least. It isn¿t horrible, and if you really enjoy reading fiction about Chicano race struggles, you might find it interesting, but other wise don¿t bother. The book is strangely organized to go backwards in time, a practice I found confusing and unhelpful. It was a book you force yourself to finish, and then feel no success because it doesn¿t seem to teach you anything. If given the choice, I would definitely have chosen to read through my textbook instead. Approximately a 2-.

How the garcia girls lost their accents.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents was a magnificent book. I loved it. It was splendid. I used it as a novel in my senior english class. I think it was a very interesting book and i think that everyone should read it.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

The Penguin Group published the book ¿How the García Girls Lost Their Accents¿ by Julia Alvarez, and it was one of the best books I have ever read. The book is about four sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofía, and how their lives in the Dominican Republic were turned upside down when they were forced to move to the United States of America. The sisters lived a normal life in the Dominican Republic, they played with their cousins and spent a lot of time with their families, because they were all neighbors. But their dad gets involved with a sketchy group of people and their family had to flee to the U.S. to save their lives. The family had to fit into small houses and apartments and the young girls got hand me down cloths. The four girls talk about how they had to change everything they originally believed in to fit their new world. Each sister tells her story of what she has been through and how she, personally, has changed. They each got into their fare share of trouble when they were trying to fit in, but their mom wanted them to continue the Dominican beliefs. I liked this book because when I first picked it up I felt as if I couldn¿t put it back down. The stories that the García family tells are sometimes heartbreaking, but they make you feel as if you are really there with them. The book ¿How the García Girls Lost Their Accents¿ was one of the best books I have ever read in a very long time. I felt each sister¿s pain and happiness with each chapter. The things they have been through are almost unbelievable. I learned about the different life styles in the Dominican Republic and what it was like to live under the rule of a dictator. Before this book I never really knew about the different life styles, for example some areas you see small shacks for houses and then travel to a different street and you could see houses that are glamorous and much more expensive. When Yolanda travels back to the Dominican Republic in the first chapter she says,¿ Its hard to believe the poverty the radio commentators keep talking about.¿ I would recommend this book to any adult that enjoys reading stories from different perspectives. The book does have some mature adult content. If anyone under the age of sixteen wants to read this book I would recommend that your parents look at it first. Other than those few details this book is a book that could be enjoyable to anyone.