Analysis Of My First Free Summer, Exile, And All-American Girl By Julia Alvarez

Change is a very difficult aspect of life. Every day thousands of people all over the world face a change in life. In all four stories and poems, “ My First Free Summer”, “Exile”, “Antojos”, and “ All-American Girl”, written by Julia Alvarez, the main character faces the drastic transits that come with immigration. Through Alvarez’s own personal experience, her writing takes a unique turn as she incorporates different techniques such as Spanish, sensory images, and figurative language to showcase the difficult transit immigrants face when coming to a new country. Through Julia Alvarez’s persistent use of the Spanish language inserted with her writing, she expresses the cultural connection she, her characters, and other immigrants hold on

She uses unique forms of expression in her writing to express feelings her characters go through, such as desperation, by forming an image in the reader’s, mind to represent different emotions, “ We raced off wondering how to fit the contents of our Dominican lives into four small suitcases” (249). When Alvarez describes the need and want for the characters in, “My First Free Summer”, to takes as much as they could of themselves and their culture in their luggage she uses this hyperbole to describe something much greater. The desperation of wanting to be the same in a moment of change is evident. Alvarez describes the urge to fit in and belong to a new culture through her younger, more vulnerable character’s actions, and attempts to perfect American looks and expressions, and repress her own, “ I practiced foreign faces, Anglo grins,/repressing a native fluency/…”( 254 ). When Alvarez describes how desperately the main character in, “All-American Girl”, is trying to fit into the American culture one can easily visualize a young, confused Latina teenager. She portrays the insecurities that come with being different through the eyes of a young immigrant. Each method of sensory images was unique to its own but efficient in expressing emotions and