Dec 21, 2009

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents | Introduction

Julia Alvarez's first novel, the semi-autobiographical How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, gained generally favorable reviews and brought her work to the attention of a wide group of critics and readers. Most reviewers praise the novel's exploration of a Dominican-American family's struggle with assimilation and the resulting clash between Hispanic and American cultures. The novel's collection of fifteen short stories relates, in reverse chronological order, the experiences of the de la Torre-Garcia family: patriarch Carlos (Papi), mother Laura (Mami), and their four daughters— Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia. The stories begin in 1989 with Yolanda's visit to her native country, the Dominican Republic, and work backward to 1956, before the family immigrated to New York City. The years in between are filled with the difficult process of acculturation for all members of the family. Donna Rifkind, in the New York Times Book Review, writes that Alvarez has "beautifully captured the threshold experiences of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory and the future remains an anxious dream." Jason Zappe similarly notes in The American Review that "Alvarez speaks for many families and brings to light the challenges faced by many immigrants. She shows how the tensions of successes and failures don't have to tear families apart."

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Summary

Part I: 1989-1972
Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a collection of stories that recounts experiences in the lives of four Dominican-American sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia—and their parents. Alvarez divides the novel into three sections that she presents in reverse chronological order, beginning with a story from 1989 and ending with one from 1956. Collectively, the stories chronicle the difficulties each member of the family faces as he or she tries to adjust to life in America, without losing a sense of tradition and heritage.

The first story, "Antojos," focuses on the third daughter, Yolanda, who returns after five years to the Dominican Republic, where she was born, to visit her aunts and cousins. When asked what she wants to do there, she says she has a craving—an antojo—for guavas. Ignoring her aunt's warning about how dangerous it is for women traveling alone, Yolanda drives north to a small village where Jose, a young boy, takes her to find some guavas on the hillside. When she gets a flat tire, Jose goes to search for help. Two men soon approach who offer help, but appear menacing. Remembering her aunt's fears, she blurts out the name of relatives who live nearby. They become respectful after hearing the name and help her change her tire. Jose returns, upset after being hit... » Complete How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Summary