Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alvarez, Julia - Donna Rifkind (review date 6 October 1991)

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Donna Rifkind (review date 6 October 1991)

SOURCE: "Speaking American," in The New York Times Book Review, October 6, 1991, p. 14.

[Rifkind is an American critic. In the following review, she provides a mixed assessment of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, stating that in this work Alvarez "has not yet quite found a voice."]

To speak without an accent is the ultimate goal of the immigrant, yet the literature of immigration requires an accent to lend it authenticity and flair. This threshold—between accent and native speech, alienation and assimilation—is the golden door through which the Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez sails with How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, her first collection of interwoven stories. It is a threshold that, in our multicultural era, many other American writers have recently crossed, including such best-selling authors as Oscar Hijuelos, Jamaica Kincaid and Amy Tan. Yet...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Fred Muratori (review date Winter 1986)
   2. Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés (review date July 1991)
   3. Donna Rifkind (review date 6 October 1991)
   4. Jason Zappe (review date Winter 1991)
   5. Julia Alvarez with Catherine Wiley (interview date March 1992)
   6. Ilan Stavans (review date 10 April 1992)
   7. Bruce-Novoa (review date Summer 1992)
   8. Elizabeth Starcevic (review date August-September 1992)
   9. Julia Alvarez (essay date February 1993)
   10. Ilan Stavans (review date 7 November 1994)
   11. Dwight Garner (review date Winter 1994)
   12. Roberto González Echevarría (review date 18 December 1994)
   13. Janet Jones Hampton (review date Spring 1995)
   14. Rochelle Ratner (review date 15 April 1995)
   15. Publishers Weekly (review date 24 April 1995)
   16. Ruth Behar (review date May 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Julia Alvarez