Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American writer and poet, the author of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent,” a novel that some critics might say is autobiographical opposed by Alvarez’s opinion of it applying to any culture or background. This story narrates the growing-up ventures the Garcia Girls go through as the family abruptly moves from the Dominican Republic to the United States. Julia Alvarez experiences a similar process of a childhood in the Dominican Republic, being an immigrant in the United States, and finding her identity as an adult between two countries.
Julia Alvarez was born in the 1950’s in the city of New York, but at three months old the family moved to the Dominican Republic as her mother was growing homesick of the island. This is the first difference between Alvarez and the Garcia Girls, as they were all born in the Dominican Republic. She is the second daughter of four, the two oldest born in the U.S. and the two youngest born in the D.R. In her essay “An American childhood in the Dominican Republic,” Alvarez expresses that her mother nicknamed the oldest “americanitas,” the Spanish word for little American girls, and the youngest “criollas,” meaning native from the island, referring to the places they were born (Alvarez). The Garcia girls also encounter a similar situation as their mother calls all of them by “cuquita,” which stops being a sweet name, and becomes an undesired word between the sisters.
The Alvarez lived in a compound on a respected neighborhood surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins and the grandparents, and were a very well establish family as a result of “benefitting from their support of the people in power” during the revolution against the Haitians (“Julia Alvarez”). In her novel, ...
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...immigrants that come to the United States looking for a new start to a new life.
Works Cited.
Alvarez, Julia. "An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic." American Scholar 56.1 (1987): 71. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
Alvarez, Julia. How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. North Carolina: Algonquin, 1991. Print.
Alvarez, Julia, and Juanita Heredia. “Citizen of the World: An Interview with Julia Alvarez.” Latina Self-Portraits: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers. Contemporary Literary Criticism 274 (2009). Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
“Alvarez, Julia.” Literature Online Biography (2004): n. pag. Web. 2 April 2014.
“Episode 4: The New Latinos.” The Latino Americans. Prod. Jeff Beiber & Dalton Delan PBS, 2013. Web. 8 April 2014.
“Julia Alvarez.” Hispanic Heritage. Gale Cengage Learning. 2 Aug. 2017. Web. 11 April 2014.
Oftentimes, societal problems span across space and time. This is certainly evident in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents a novel in which women are treated peripherally in two starkly different societies. Contextually, both the Dominican Republic and the United States are very dissimilar countries in terms of culture, economic development, and governmental structure. These factors contribute to the manner in which each society treats women. The García girls’ movement between countries helps display these societal distinctions. Ultimately, women are marginalized in both Dominican and American societies. In the Dominican Republic, women are treated as inferior and have limited freedoms whereas in the United States, immigrant
There are seven billion humans living on planet earth, with hundreds of different cultures and ethnicities. As the leading species on earth, humans have further felt the need to also have a dominant gender. This title is given to the males of society. In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, the main characters experience a firsthand look to how male dominance prevails in not only the Dominican Republic but also in America. The Garcia family is a prestigious family line in the Dominican Republic, as a result the children of the family have a traditional and very controlled upbringing. The Garcia family moves from the Dominican Republic to the United States which causes the children of the family: Sofia, Yolanda,
This text exhibits the events of the 1937 Parsley Massacre. Similar to Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, this text refers back to Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Trujillo organized a genocide of Haitians who were in D.R. Danticat allows readers to experience this traumatic event through the perspective of Amabelle Desir, the main character.
Bestseller journalist, Sonia Nazario, in her literacy non-fiction, Enrique’s Journey, describes a young man’s journey trying to reconcile with his mother in the United States, but has to go through many obstacles to reach her. Nazario’s purpose is to inform readers about how immigration affects children and their mothers in Central America. She adopts an optimistic/determined tone in order to reveal to her readers the difficulty and bravery the children have to face to get to the United States. Nazario begins her credibility with ethos to retrace an abandon teenager’s journey through Central America, pathos to follow the mother son relationship, and logos by giving facts and statistics for illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The experiences she had when she was still living in the Dominican Republic combined with the separation from the country she immigrated to and the symbols of the fantasy of American life demonstrate her internal conflict further. The poem makes one wonder how they would have felt in the shoes of the subjects. Having to deal with a new style of living while leaving almost everything from the old one behind is something that many people are lucky to never have to go through. Many people, likely including Julia Alvarez, think they take that for granted. Her purpose for writing the poem was most likely to capture the readers minds and be thankful that these are things that they do not and will not likely have to deal
Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire a History of Latinos in America. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc, 2000.
Rafael Trujillo’s rule over the Dominican Republic is considered one of the bloodiest era’s in history. Responsible for the deaths of over 30,000 people, Trujillo became infamous for his tyrannical reign. The four Mirabal sisters, Patria, Dedé, Minerva, and Maria Teresa, along with friends and family, were activists in the revolution to overthrow Trujillo. Affected by his harsh dictatorship, changes in Maria Teresa’s character are evident in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies. Although Maria Teresa’s cautiousness and sensitivity remain constant during the revolution of the Trujillo Era, her consideration for others weakens.
The role of strong female roles in literature is both frightening to some and enlightening to others. Although times have changed, Sandra Cisneros’ stories about Mexican-American women provide a cultural division within itself that reflects in a recent time. The cultural themes in Cisneros’s stories highlight the struggle of women who identify with Mexican-American heritage and the struggle in terms of living up to Mexican culture – as a separate ethnic body. The women in Sandra Cisneros’ stories are struggling with living up to identities assigned to them, while trying to create their own as women without an ethnic landscape. In Sandra Cisneros’ stories “Woman Hollering Creek: and “Never Marry a Mexican” the role of female identities that are conflicted are highlighted, in that they have to straddle two worlds at once as Mexican-American women.
In the story, she and her brothers had to wait outside the Mexican church that her "awful grandmother" attended. They weren't allowed in the church, but also weren't allowed to go explore the plaza. At one point, a woman and a man asked if they could take a picture with her brother, and gave him gum. They were surprised to learn that he spoke English. Even though the children weren't originally from the United States, they reffered to themselves as
The Statue of Liberty is an American icon because it symbolizes freedom, success, and the power of this nation. This image is what the U.S stands for to the outside world. Foreigners strive to move to America because of its wealth and acceptance towards all races and ethnicity. “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” recounts the story of how Carlos Garcia, Laura Garcia, and their four girls move from the Dominican Republic to the United States to escape a dictatorship, and establish a new life in flourishing New York City. Many unexpected culture shocks await them in their new country. Although the girls find it difficult to adapt at first, they soon begin to assimilate and Americanize. On the other hand, “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl” by Elizabeth Wong illustrates the life of an Asian American having to embrace two entirely different cultural identities. Both the Garcia family and Elizabeth Wong's family have to deal with two opposing cultures without losing too much of their heritage. The book and the essay are similar in that characters in each story lose much of their original tradition. However, they are different in that the families move to the states for distinctive reasons, and the cultural preference of “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl” is more evident than that of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”.
Many Hispanic children are growing up in the United States interacting with other people from different ethnic backgrounds feeling as if one does not belong. One feels embarrassed of one’s culture, one’s family, and one’s language. Many Hispanic children are no longer speaking Spanish because they are ashamed of it. There are stories like Los Vadidos by Luis Valdez, Whites Without Money by Lloyd Van Brunt, and The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant that show great examples of characters that are ashamed of their culture and roots of where they come from. In Los Vendidos by Luis Valdez, a character that stood out to one was Miss Jimenez. She is like many Hispanics in today’s society that are ashamed of their Hispanic roots. In Whites Without Money
Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth chapter, namely the domestic abuse scene, functions as a pivotal point in the Mother Tongue as it helps her to define herself.
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Many reviews have been written on Julia Alvarez since she is a Dominican Diaspora, a Jew who lived outside of Israel, who wrote in a Latina perspective in the country of Uni...