'How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents' By Julia Alvarez

Short Critical Response “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”

In the book, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, by Julia Alvarez shows the lives of four sisters who struggle with finding their own identities in American culture. The four girls named Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia were forced to move out of the Dominican Republic when they were young girls and now struggle to adapt to a new culture that is much different from their social norms. The elements of the text that I thought were the most significant was a quote that Alvarez states, "She has been too frightened to carry out any strategy, but now a road is opening up before her. She clasps her hands on her chest—she can feel her pounding heart—and nods. Then, as if …show more content…
This quote takes place when Yolanda decides to go back to the island and when she gets there she is surprised by a huge party her family decided to throw her. She then feels as if she needs to connect with her home cultural roots, so she goes searching for Guava. She doesn’t find it but runs into a few natives and realizes she is unable to communicate with because of her lack of fluency in Spanish. This confuses the natives. This shows how Yolanda struggles with going back to her old cultural roots and traditions. Some central themes that I noticed in the text was one of the main themes of the whole book which is the central native roots the family has from growing up in the Dominican Republic and being catholic. The father enforces strict rules on the girls throughout their childhood and even when he moves the family to the United States as they get older. Once the four daughters grew into young adults in the U.S they find it a lot harder to succeed the American Dream. They soon realize that the social constructs of their native roots and American culture collide in personal struggles for each one of them. There integration of American culture distances the family from one another and each …show more content…
The video shows the struggle of a certain culture where they try to fit into two different cultures. One culture being the culture they were born into and another culture choosing to remove their genitals. This is difficult for them because not all people from their home culture are accepting of their choice of becoming not a women or a man. My point with this scenario is that this is exactly what the girls struggled with throughout the whole book, which was the bouncing back and forth between the very two different cultures. Both of the cultures are so different from one another that they find themselves disappointed with the choices they have made by experimenting with marijuana and sex in American Culture and it is shamed upon in the Dominican Republic. The girls are afraid of losing the connection to their culture and have failed the values they grew up in. They all struggle with even finding themselves by trying to feel like they belong in both cultures. This shows the difference between American feminism and Chicana Feminism. They are both types of feminism’s but they both share very different values so it can be hard trying to be both types of feminists. This also relates to an article we have read in class “Chappels and Gym Shorts” by