How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julie Alvarez

In the novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents”, Julie Alvarez gives the reader multiple accounts that narrate the difficulties of four sisters growing up in unfamiliar lands. The Garcia girls are Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia, and Alvarez speaks the most through Yolanda 's narrative. The sisters were born in the Dominican Republic and were exiled to the United States as children with their loving mother and traditional father. Papi Garcia grew up during an era where women were not supposed to be left alone which transformed him into a protective father and moving to a new life raised his fatherly instincts to a greater height. The novel starts in 1989, with the Garcia girls as American adults. The novel starts to flow backwards

The girls’ father wanted them to have a normal and respectable American life because of what they had had to struggle through. In the novel, the Garcia sisters see Spanish as the first language, “representing their refuge” (72) and English as a difficult second language. To them America is a new and foreign place, completely dismissing the potential dangers that await them there. After arriving, they soon realize their struggle with comprehending the English language show their lack of comfortability in their new home which is socially harmful. Their accents in particular are constant reminders to the sisters and to others that they are strangers in a peculiar land. Their accents resulted in them being ridiculed such as when Carla was taunted by some boys who mimicked her accent saying “Eh-stop! ...Plees eh-stop” (153). Since the girls could not control their accents, they would have to focus on their appearance. The girls do their best to fit into society by talking and acting the correct way and developed a sense of using hand motions to describe what they were talking

Just as their father wanted, the girls kept their Dominican roots alive and never forgot where they came from. This novel, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, is a coming of age novel, where four girls learn through experience how it is like to grow up in a tough time period. In America, the girls had the freedom to attempt almost whatever they wanted because they were free from the constricting rule of the patriarchy that ruled the Dominican Republic. All four were growing up but took separate paths during life to get to where they are as adults. Through the use of multiple narrators, Alvarez creates different perspectives throughout the story. The girls have come a long way from their mother’s color coding system when they were identity less to the women they are today. Each sister fought and conquered some sort of internal or external battle, helping them to overcome obstacles given by society that marked them as different. As adults, the sisters can keep their Dominican roots alive while living in the United States through