Dec 23, 2009

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents | Critical Overview

Since its publication in 1991, most critics have responded positively to Julia Alvarez's novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. This first novel received the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was named by both the American Library Association and the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 1991. Many have praised Alvarez's insightful and sympathetic portrait of family life amidst the pressures of adapting to a new culture. Dan Stavans considers the novel "a brilliant debut," and claims in his Commonweal review that "Alvarez has an acute eye for...