How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Encyclopedia
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a 1991 novel written by Dominican-American
poet, novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez
. Told in reverse chronological order and narrated from shifting perspectives, the text possesses distinct qualities of a bildungsroman
novel. Spanning more than thirty years in the lives of four sisters, the story begins with their adult lives in the United States and ends with their childhood in the Dominican Republic
, from which their family was forced to flee due to the father’s opposition to Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
's dictatorship.
The novel's major themes include acculturation
and coming of age
. It deals with the myriad hardships of immigration, painting a vivid picture of the struggle to assimilate, the sense of displacement, and the confusion of identity suffered by the García family, as they are uprooted from familiarity and forced to begin a new life in New York City
. The text consists of fifteen interconnected short stories, each of which focuses on one of the four daughters, and in a few instances, the García family as a whole. Although it is told from alternating perspectives there is particular focus throughout the text on the character of Yolanda, who is said to be the both the protagonist and the author's alter ego.
ship of Rafael Trujillo came to an end with his assassination in 1961, only to be followed by military rule, revolution, intervention by the United States, and further dictatorship. Central control over the military, the economy, and the people meant that only a select few were allowed to leave the island. Critic William Luis describes the situation of immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States during the revolution: "The displacement of Caribbean people from their islands to the United States, for political or economical reasons, has produced a tension between the culture of the country of origin and that of the adopted homeland, one representing the past and the other future of the immigrant".
The García family is an example of this phenomenon. In How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez succeeds in altering the events of her own life to create fiction. The family is displaced to the United States after living an established, upper-class life in the Dominican Republic, and is forced to face the challenges which come along with being an immigrant family in a foreign land. Julia Alvarez herself was not born in the Dominican Republic, but in the United States. After her parents' failed attempt at a life in America, she returned to the Dominican Republic at the age of three months as her parents preferred the dictatorship of Trujillo to the US. Clearly in the novel, this is not the case, however throughout, the reader witnesses the Garcia family assimilate into American society. Although their Hispanic roots are reflected in their personalities, it is evident that the stories which focus on the four daughters depict many problems that normal North American girls do.
Even though How the García Girls Lost Their Accents was written in the United States, there are significant historical ties between the novel and the author’s country of origin. Alvarez wrote an essay entitled "An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic", in which she reveals some information about her own life. This is evidence that it may have served as the basis for the novel. For example, she mentions that it was Mr. Victor, of the US embassy and a member of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), who persuaded Carlos García to join the resistance against Trujillo, and later helped him in leaving the country, and obtaining a job with an international cardiovascular team. This is a parallel to the novel in which Carlos Garcia obtains work as a doctor in New York. Julia Alvarez emigrated to the United States at the age of 10 with her parents and three sisters as political refugees from the Dominican Republic. The novel is a variation of her real-life experiences, which have perhaps been slightly altered. The majority of her literature is constructed from multiple viewpoints and a strongly concealed political undercurrent is present in her literature. In this case, that undercurrent is her family fleeing the Trujillo revolution, something she did as a child. The novel encompasses the impact living under a regime can have on a family, and the way it shaped the four girls' upbringing. It is also an attempt to understand memory, the past, and a time before the sisters lost their innocence and accents.
.
The Garcías are one of the Dominican Republic's prominent and wealthy families, tracing their roots back to the Conquistador
es. Carlos García, a physician and the head of the family, is the youngest of 35 children his father sired during his lifetime, both in and out of wedlock. Laura, Carlos's wife, also comes from an important family: her father is a factory owner and a diplomat with the United Nations
. Many members of the extended family
live as neighbours in large houses on an expansive compound
with numerous servants
. In the early 1950s the García girls are born. Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofía enjoy a happy, protected childhood and are brought up by their parents, aunts and uncles to preserve the family traditions. Their countless cousins serve them as playmates.
, and assimilate fairly well to their new environments, although meeting with a few set-backs along the way. Their time in the US begins with the opening chapter, "A Regular Revolution", and delivers the girls' (collective) opinion that "We didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer. We had only second-hand stuff, rental houses in one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another". While during their first few months in New York they regularly pray to God that they will soon be able to return to their homeland, they quickly start appreciating the advantages of living in a "free country" so that even being sent back to the Dominican Republic for the summer becomes a form of punishment for them.
A major turning point in the novel comes with Laura's discovery of a bag of Sofía's marijuana, and her subsequent punishment of being removed from her boarding school and forced to spend a year in the Dominican Republic with family. This event is representative of the girls' transformation into Americans and away from the Dominican culture and Laura and Carlos' conflicted relationship with the assimilation. Laura "still did lip service to the old ways", and Carlos makes a point of educating the accents out of the girls, thus showing the tension between the cultures.
Carla becomes the victim of racism
in the third chapter, "Trespass", with school boys telling her to "Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!" Later she is subjected to a child molester
who masturbates in his car while pulling up at the curb and talking lecherously to her through the open window. The second part of the novel finishes with the chapter "Floor Show", in which the García family goes to a Spanish restaurant and Sandra witnesses the host's wife amorously attempting to kiss her father on the way to the bathroom. Overall, Part II presents the unexpected aspects of living in the United States and becoming Americans, and explores the tensions that develop with the immigrant experience.
The five chapters in Part III, the concluding section, focus on the García family's early years in the Dominican Republic, and are the most political of the novel. The first chapter, "The Blood of the Conquistadores", opens with an account of two of Trujillo's agents coming to the family home looking for Carlos. His revolutionary politics and work against the Chapitas made the family a target, and this chapter explicitly details the danger of their situation. The issues in past chapters appear superficial in comparison to the life-or-death nature of the conflicts that the Garcías face earlier in their lives. The family escapes persecution, but is forced to emigrate immediately, establishing their motive for relocating to New York.
As Part III progresses, the narrative switches to describing their upper-class life on the island, and filling details of the lifestyle the family was born into. The story of the voodoo practicing Haiti
an family maid is elucidated: she escaped Trujillo's massacre of Haitians and came to work for Laura, although much of her family was not so lucky.
In the last three chapters Carla, Yolanda and Sandra narrate stories from their childhood surrounded by the extended family, and the girls' relationship with the United States begins. "An American Surprise" tells of their early ideas of New York City, "where it was winter and the snow fell from heaven to earth like the Bible's little pieces of manna
bread." The reader realizes that the innocence of childhood and idealized vision of their soon-to-be adopted country, given the reverse-chronological narration of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, are left behind with the García's home in the Dominican Republic.
during a rebellious vacation with her current boyfriend. After her marriage to him, her relationship with her father deteriorates significantly until her son is born. The family reunites to celebrate her father's birthday and son’s christening, although Sofia still feels the same antagonism she felt towards him beforehand.
and a writer. Her nicknames, which reflect and represent the different aspects of her personality, consist of "Joe", "Yosita", "Yoyo" and simply "Yo", which is also the title of the sequel to How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. Each of these nicknames are the product of one of Yolanda's multiple personalities. There is important significance in her character as "Yo", Spanish first person pronoun, the "I" of the narrator. The nickname "Yoyo" is reminiscent of the toy
that goes up and down, back and forth, similar to Yolanda’s bouncing from culture to culture, from one extreme to the other. The last, "Joe" represents the American version of Yolanda. Her ultimate return to the Island "represents her desire to displace herself from the North American Joe to the Yolanda of her family and youth." These nicknames "act to properly define and name the many diverse facets of her complex personality". Her character is that whose voice and words are most frequently heard throughout the novel; she is the most developed character and her identity is the most explored of the four girls.
notion of a well-knit plot, as the story is told in reverse chronological order through a series of fifteen chapters, with no linear, unifying storyline. In Julia Alvarez: A critical companion, Scholar Silvio Sirias argues that "a well-constructed plot has an underlying structure that promises the reader that the author is in control, and that any event she is telling will eventually make sense". Sirias then goes on to explain how Alvarez's initial exposure of the girls to the reader in their somewhat adjusted, adult states enables her to first evoke certain assumptions in the reader and subsequently shatter these assumptions with the disclosure of the García family's troubled past. Scholar Julie Barak argues that the reverse chronological order Alvarez employs is actually a unique stylistic technique which adds "to the reader's uncertainty and instability, [allowing for the recreation] of the Garcia girls' own ambiguities".
Scholar William Luis observes a strong resemblance between the structure of Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and Alejo Carpentier
's Viaje a la Semilla as both employ the tactic of backwards narration and consequently lay claim to two beginnings and two endings. Alvarez has also been said to follow the stylistic traditions established by novels such as Pedro Juan Labarthe's The Son of Two Nations: The Private Life of a Columbia Student (1931), Marcio Veloz Maggiolo's El prófugo (1962), Humberto Cintrón's Frankie Cristo (1972), and Richard Ruiz
's The Hungry American (1978). Despite the overtly North American stylistic qualities the book appears to boast at first glance, each of the aforementioned authors are of Hispanic descent.
Julie Barak emphasizes the significance of "one other stylistic idiosyncrasy of the work that adds to the sophistication of [Alvarez's] artistry" as there is a marked transition from third to first person
narration for each girl in the last section of the novel. Luis describes this shift as a pivotal moment after which the events assume a chronological order and time accelerates, illuminating life in such a manner that it suddenly makes sense. The manner in which Alvarez alters the narrative voice is a stylistic expression of the extent to which each one of the girls "wants to be in control of her own version of her history... These first person narratives in the last section become, in effect, a defense offered by each girl in her own words, an explanation of who they have become in the present, of why they 'turned out' the way they have." The transition of narrative voice "changes the dynamic of the reader-character-author triad" and allows for the reader, who has been kept at a distance by the third person narrator, to relive "the memory with the character, closely connected to her, developing a strong empathy with a unified character".
Jacqueline Stefanko rationalizes Alvarez’s decision to alternate amongst the varying voices of all four García girls, wither her assertion that "the amnesia produced by the diasporic cultures of Latinas gets negotiated within the text through polyphony". After significant observation, Stefanko has concluded that "as hybrid selves who cross and recross borders of language and culture, these Latina writers create hybrid texts in order to 'survive in diaspora,' to use Donna Haraway's term, seeking to heal the fractures and ruptures resulting from exile and dispersal". Through her creation of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Alvarez has intentionally fictionalized her own life story in a polyphonous
manner which extends beyond the boundaries of traditional style and genre, thus setting herself apart from the average author both stylistically and structurally.
The Flamenco dance in the "Floor Show" chapter evokes similar feelings of desolation in Sandra, as Mrs. Fanning's drunken interruption of the distinctly Hispanic dance performance makes "a parody of it, a second-rate combination of cultures that Sandi cannot find fulfilling. She is searching for a unified self, something noble, true, beautiful. Just as she gets close to it, however, it is ruined, dissolving into a gauche pastiche too similar to her own divided life in the States".
Latin American literature scholar, Jacqueline Stefanko, along with several of her peers, has made pointed mention of the significant implications Yolanda’s multiple nicknames hold for her fragile and fragmented sense of self. Stefanko observes that "as Yolanda's names proliferate on the page, we begin to see the multiplicity of her identity [and] realize the struggle Yolanda must engage in to not be fragmented in a society that marginalizes her". Scholar William Luis reinforces the notion that Yolanda’s shattered identity stems largely from the "multiple names used [to refer to her]. She is Yolanda, Yoyo, Yosita, Yo and, last but not least the English Joe. And above all, she is 'Yo,' the Spanish first person pronoun, the 'I' of the narrator."
Julie Barak finds the wording of Yolanda’s note to her husband, John, explaining why she must leave him, quite significant with reference to her divided self concept. Yolanda began "I'm going home to my folks till my head-slash-heart clears. She revised the note. I'm needing some space, some time, until my head-slash-heart-slash-soul- No, no, no she didn't want to divide herself any-more, three persons in one Yo."
Luis uses the term "onomastic displacement" with reference to the multiple nicknames that fragment Yolanda's concept of a whole and unified self. This continuous onomastic displacement incites in Yolanda the desire to question her divided identity, to seek unity, clarity and a coherent understanding of her circumstances. Yolanda achieves this clarity through the act of writing and even as a young girl she revels in the completion of her speech for the Teacher's Day address because "she finally sound[s] like herself in English!" Unlike her sister Sandi, "whose artistic predilections were crushed as a child, Yolanda faces and works through her identity problems in her writing". Barak views Yolanda's writing as a process that can be used to reunite the fragments of her identity; as an aid in the acceptance of "her own 'hybrid' nature... bringing both her worlds and all her selves into balance". It is thus only through writing, the expression of Yolanda's most intricately personal thoughts and revelations, that our protagonist can retain the hope of restoring her unified personal identity.
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents confirms the suspicion widely expressed in circles of Latin American literature that North Americans choose not to differentiate between political and economic exile. Alvarez pointedly demonstrates the North American tendency to undervalue cultural diversity
by highlighting instances of American ignorance toward distinctions between different Hispanic-Caribbean groups. The García girls are quite conflicted upon their arrival in the United States as they find that distinct cultural groups are lumped together under one broad "immigrant" category and newcomers are encouraged to assimilate silently to the American norm. Yolanda’s conflict with her father regarding the potentially controversial speech she has prepared for the Teacher’s Day Address provides a classic example of the manner in which the García girls are pressured to conform to the norm. Yolanda feels as though she has sacrificed her principles and sold out to the hyper-sensitive authorities when her father forces her to discard her empowering, rebellious achievement of artistic self expression for "two brief pages of stale compliments and the polite commonplaces on teachers. A speech wrought by necessity and without much invention". Julie Barak affirms that "although this incident is in many ways a defeat for both Yolanda and her mother, it does teach them the lesson of conformity
that is so important to living peacefully in America. Yolanda learns to fit in, to do the expected". The girls go on to attend the best schools, lose their Spanish accents and acquire the same psychological disorders as their upper-class American counterparts. Sandra battles anorexia
, Carla and Yolanda both have failed marriages, Yolanda and Sandra are both institutionalized for psychiatric issues at one time or another, and Sofía is impregnated out of wedlock.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
also becomes a significant source of fear for the girls. In a very brief chapter entitled "Snow", Alvarez reveals the impact of this widespread cultural paranoia through the character of Yolanda, who mistakes her first experience of snowfall for "the beginning of a much anticipated nuclear attack", causing a panicked outbreak of general hysteria in her classroom.
As they continue to grow and mature, the girls have many disappointing encounters which leave them fearful of the loneliness that must awaits them in this foreign country where they struggle hopelessly to fit in and be understood. Even as a grown woman, returning to her Dominican roots, Yolanda finds she can never truly escape the fear that has hovered over her for as long as she can remember. This is evident in the very first chapter, "Antojos", as Alvarez reveals the panic evoked in the adult Yolanda at the sudden realization that she is stranded in a guava field in the Dominican Republic, where women do not go about unchaperoned at night. Alvarez evokes Yolanda's fear as she reports that "the rustling leaves of the guava trees echo the warnings of her old aunts: you will get lost, you will get kidnapped, you will get raped, you will get killed".
As scholar Julie Barak has put it, "the vocabulary of fear that accompanies them is not only a part of their Spanish, but also of their English vocabulary" and the García family can therefore never hold legitimate hopes of escaping the fear.
review of the novel. Although it was her first novel, Alvarez gained significant attention for the book, including a part in the New York Public Library
's 1991 exhibit "The Hand of the Poet from John Donne to Julia Alvarez". The Women's Review of Books also lauds the author, stating that "With this first novel, Julia Alvarez joins the rank of other Latina writers such as Nicholasa Mohr
and Helena María Viramontes
".
The novel was generally critically acclaimed, with Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés of The Women's Review of Books writing that "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a noteworthy book, demanding our attention." The Publishers Weekly article notes that "the novel provided a keen look at the island social structure they [the García family] wistfully remember and the political turmoil they escaped".
Since 1991, the book has become widely read and referenced; a well-known part of the canon of Latino literature. Julia Alvarez was awarded the status of Doctor Honoris Causa, Humanidades, by Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra
, Santiago, Dominican Republic on January 24, 2006 for How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.
In 1999, Library Journal
reported that a "select cadre of librarians representing New York City's three public library systems have released their hand-picked list of '21 new classics for the 21st century'" and the novel was significantly included on the influential list.
A number of scholarly articles and papers have been written on Alvarez's book since its publication, including "A Search for Identity in Julia Alvarez's How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by William Luis and Joan Hoffman's "She Wants to be Called Yolanda Now: Identity, Language, and the Third Sister in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", which was featured in the Bilingual Review.
Dominican American
A Dominican American is any American who has origins in the Dominican Republic.Immigration records of Dominicans in the United States date from the late 19th century, and New York City has had a Dominican community since the 1930s...
poet, novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez
Julia Álvarez
Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.Alvarez rose to...
. Told in reverse chronological order and narrated from shifting perspectives, the text possesses distinct qualities of a bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
novel. Spanning more than thirty years in the lives of four sisters, the story begins with their adult lives in the United States and ends with their childhood in the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, from which their family was forced to flee due to the father’s opposition to Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina , nicknamed El Jefe , ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. He officially served as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, otherwise ruling as an unelected military strongman...
's dictatorship.
The novel's major themes include acculturation
Acculturation
Acculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and...
and coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
. It deals with the myriad hardships of immigration, painting a vivid picture of the struggle to assimilate, the sense of displacement, and the confusion of identity suffered by the García family, as they are uprooted from familiarity and forced to begin a new life in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The text consists of fifteen interconnected short stories, each of which focuses on one of the four daughters, and in a few instances, the García family as a whole. Although it is told from alternating perspectives there is particular focus throughout the text on the character of Yolanda, who is said to be the both the protagonist and the author's alter ego.
Background and historical context
The years between 1956 and 1970 were a period of oppression and instability in the Dominican Republic as the dictatorDictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
ship of Rafael Trujillo came to an end with his assassination in 1961, only to be followed by military rule, revolution, intervention by the United States, and further dictatorship. Central control over the military, the economy, and the people meant that only a select few were allowed to leave the island. Critic William Luis describes the situation of immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States during the revolution: "The displacement of Caribbean people from their islands to the United States, for political or economical reasons, has produced a tension between the culture of the country of origin and that of the adopted homeland, one representing the past and the other future of the immigrant".
The García family is an example of this phenomenon. In How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez succeeds in altering the events of her own life to create fiction. The family is displaced to the United States after living an established, upper-class life in the Dominican Republic, and is forced to face the challenges which come along with being an immigrant family in a foreign land. Julia Alvarez herself was not born in the Dominican Republic, but in the United States. After her parents' failed attempt at a life in America, she returned to the Dominican Republic at the age of three months as her parents preferred the dictatorship of Trujillo to the US. Clearly in the novel, this is not the case, however throughout, the reader witnesses the Garcia family assimilate into American society. Although their Hispanic roots are reflected in their personalities, it is evident that the stories which focus on the four daughters depict many problems that normal North American girls do.
Even though How the García Girls Lost Their Accents was written in the United States, there are significant historical ties between the novel and the author’s country of origin. Alvarez wrote an essay entitled "An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic", in which she reveals some information about her own life. This is evidence that it may have served as the basis for the novel. For example, she mentions that it was Mr. Victor, of the US embassy and a member of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA), who persuaded Carlos García to join the resistance against Trujillo, and later helped him in leaving the country, and obtaining a job with an international cardiovascular team. This is a parallel to the novel in which Carlos Garcia obtains work as a doctor in New York. Julia Alvarez emigrated to the United States at the age of 10 with her parents and three sisters as political refugees from the Dominican Republic. The novel is a variation of her real-life experiences, which have perhaps been slightly altered. The majority of her literature is constructed from multiple viewpoints and a strongly concealed political undercurrent is present in her literature. In this case, that undercurrent is her family fleeing the Trujillo revolution, something she did as a child. The novel encompasses the impact living under a regime can have on a family, and the way it shaped the four girls' upbringing. It is also an attempt to understand memory, the past, and a time before the sisters lost their innocence and accents.
Plot summary
The novel is written episodically and in reverse-chronological order. It consists of fifteen chapters divided in three parts: Part I (1989–1972), Part II (1970–1960), and Part III (1960–1956). Part I is centered around the adult lives of the García sisters; Part II describes their immigration to the United States and their adolescence, and Part III recollects their early childhood on the island, in the Dominican RepublicDominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
.
The Garcías are one of the Dominican Republic's prominent and wealthy families, tracing their roots back to the Conquistador
Conquistador
Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
es. Carlos García, a physician and the head of the family, is the youngest of 35 children his father sired during his lifetime, both in and out of wedlock. Laura, Carlos's wife, also comes from an important family: her father is a factory owner and a diplomat with the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. Many members of the extended family
Extended family
The term extended family has several distinct meanings. In modern Western cultures dominated by nuclear family constructs, it has come to be used generically to refer to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, whether they live together within the same household or not. However, it may also refer...
live as neighbours in large houses on an expansive compound
Compound (fortification)
In military science, a compound is a type of fortification made up of walls or fences surrounding several buildings in the center of a large piece of land...
with numerous servants
Domestic worker
A domestic worker is a man, woman or child who works within the employer's household. Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual or a family, from providing care for children and elderly dependents to cleaning and household maintenance, known as housekeeping...
. In the early 1950s the García girls are born. Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofía enjoy a happy, protected childhood and are brought up by their parents, aunts and uncles to preserve the family traditions. Their countless cousins serve them as playmates.
Part I
The first part of the novel establishes Yolanda at the centre of the story as she narrates the opening and closing chapter: "Antojos" and "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story", respectively. In third person, Yolanda's return to Dominican Republic as an adult is described in the context of a family birthday party and a road trip. Their unity as sisters as "The Four Girls" is introduced in the third chapter, which is a communally narrated. They celebrate Carlos, the patriarch's, birthday, and Sofía introduces her baby son to his grandfather, helping to repair the father and daughter's relationship somewhat. During Sofía's chapter, "The Kiss", it is revealed that Carlos discovered a packet of love letters addressed to his daughter, enraging him and leading to a conflict which ends in Sofía running away to her German lover. A major focus in this section is the romantic relationships between the four sisters and their partners. Sofía is married to a "world-class chemist"; Carla and Sandra are in long-term relationships; and Yolanda is in love with her psychiatrist and has previously broken up with a man named John. Part I closes with "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story", narrated by Yolanda. This describes Yolanda's first real relationship, and the tension between her upbringing and American relationships: "I would never find someone who would understand my particular mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles."Part II
Part II details the family's collective experience of living in the United States as immigrants. The girls first attend a Catholic school in New York and later boarding schoolBoarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
, and assimilate fairly well to their new environments, although meeting with a few set-backs along the way. Their time in the US begins with the opening chapter, "A Regular Revolution", and delivers the girls' (collective) opinion that "We didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer. We had only second-hand stuff, rental houses in one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another". While during their first few months in New York they regularly pray to God that they will soon be able to return to their homeland, they quickly start appreciating the advantages of living in a "free country" so that even being sent back to the Dominican Republic for the summer becomes a form of punishment for them.
A major turning point in the novel comes with Laura's discovery of a bag of Sofía's marijuana, and her subsequent punishment of being removed from her boarding school and forced to spend a year in the Dominican Republic with family. This event is representative of the girls' transformation into Americans and away from the Dominican culture and Laura and Carlos' conflicted relationship with the assimilation. Laura "still did lip service to the old ways", and Carlos makes a point of educating the accents out of the girls, thus showing the tension between the cultures.
Carla becomes the victim of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
in the third chapter, "Trespass", with school boys telling her to "Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!" Later she is subjected to a child molester
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...
who masturbates in his car while pulling up at the curb and talking lecherously to her through the open window. The second part of the novel finishes with the chapter "Floor Show", in which the García family goes to a Spanish restaurant and Sandra witnesses the host's wife amorously attempting to kiss her father on the way to the bathroom. Overall, Part II presents the unexpected aspects of living in the United States and becoming Americans, and explores the tensions that develop with the immigrant experience.
Part III
As Part III progresses, the narrative switches to describing their upper-class life on the island, and filling details of the lifestyle the family was born into. The story of the voodoo practicing Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
an family maid is elucidated: she escaped Trujillo's massacre of Haitians and came to work for Laura, although much of her family was not so lucky.
In the last three chapters Carla, Yolanda and Sandra narrate stories from their childhood surrounded by the extended family, and the girls' relationship with the United States begins. "An American Surprise" tells of their early ideas of New York City, "where it was winter and the snow fell from heaven to earth like the Bible's little pieces of manna
Manna
Manna or Manna wa Salwa , sometimes or archaically spelled mana, is the name of an edible substance that God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert according to the Bible.It was said to be sweet to the taste, like honey....
bread." The reader realizes that the innocence of childhood and idealized vision of their soon-to-be adopted country, given the reverse-chronological narration of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, are left behind with the García's home in the Dominican Republic.
Sofia
Sofia is the youngest of the four girls, and is the maverick out of her sisters. She gains the attention of the reader multiple times throughout the book, as her stories are different in nature from those of the other García girls. In the book Alvarez quotes "Sofia was the one without the degrees. She had always gone her own way". Out of her sisters, she was the plain one but had consistent boyfriends and was always being asked advice about men from the other three girls. In the first chapter, "The Kiss", readers are told the story of her rebellious marriage to a "jolly and good natured" German man in ColombiaColombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
during a rebellious vacation with her current boyfriend. After her marriage to him, her relationship with her father deteriorates significantly until her son is born. The family reunites to celebrate her father's birthday and son’s christening, although Sofia still feels the same antagonism she felt towards him beforehand.
Sandra
Sandi is the second daughter in the novel, the pretty one who could "pass as an American, with soft blue eyes and fair skin". We see the loving and caring part of her personality emerge in "Floor Show" where at a very young age she decides that if her family got into a really bad financial situation, she would attempt to get adopted by a rich family, get an allowance "like other American girls got" which she would then pass onto her family. The spot-light falls on her again when she goes away to a graduate program and her parents receive a letter from the dean saying Sandra has been hospitalized after an extreme diet, revealing that she is anorexic.Yolanda
Yolanda is the third oldest and most imaginative of the four girls. She plays the most important role in the novel as Alvarez's alter ego. She is a schoolteacher, a poetPoet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and a writer. Her nicknames, which reflect and represent the different aspects of her personality, consist of "Joe", "Yosita", "Yoyo" and simply "Yo", which is also the title of the sequel to How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. Each of these nicknames are the product of one of Yolanda's multiple personalities. There is important significance in her character as "Yo", Spanish first person pronoun, the "I" of the narrator. The nickname "Yoyo" is reminiscent of the toy
Yo-yo
The yo-yo in its simplest form is an object consisting of an axle connected to two disks, and a length of twine looped around the axle, similar to a slender spool...
that goes up and down, back and forth, similar to Yolanda’s bouncing from culture to culture, from one extreme to the other. The last, "Joe" represents the American version of Yolanda. Her ultimate return to the Island "represents her desire to displace herself from the North American Joe to the Yolanda of her family and youth." These nicknames "act to properly define and name the many diverse facets of her complex personality". Her character is that whose voice and words are most frequently heard throughout the novel; she is the most developed character and her identity is the most explored of the four girls.
Carla
Carla is the eldest of the four daughters. As is common for the oldest sibling, she is somewhat seen as the mediator between the four sisters in the novel. "As the therapist in the family Carla likes to be the one who understands everything" and "has a tendency to lace all her compliments with calls to self-improvement". However to her sisters, this creates a somewhat dominating character at times reminiscent of their mother. Her criticism goes farther when she writes an autobiographical paper calling her mother mildly anal-retentive. In Carla’s first and perhaps most prominent story in the novel, "Trespass", as she is walking home from school in New York, a man exposes himself to her and attempts to lure her into his car. Alvarez uses Carla's character to display the language difficulties faced with only having "classroom English", and how communication barriers affect immigrants.Style and structure
Alvarez defies the AristotelianAristotelianism
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...
notion of a well-knit plot, as the story is told in reverse chronological order through a series of fifteen chapters, with no linear, unifying storyline. In Julia Alvarez: A critical companion, Scholar Silvio Sirias argues that "a well-constructed plot has an underlying structure that promises the reader that the author is in control, and that any event she is telling will eventually make sense". Sirias then goes on to explain how Alvarez's initial exposure of the girls to the reader in their somewhat adjusted, adult states enables her to first evoke certain assumptions in the reader and subsequently shatter these assumptions with the disclosure of the García family's troubled past. Scholar Julie Barak argues that the reverse chronological order Alvarez employs is actually a unique stylistic technique which adds "to the reader's uncertainty and instability, [allowing for the recreation] of the Garcia girls' own ambiguities".
Scholar William Luis observes a strong resemblance between the structure of Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified...
's Viaje a la Semilla as both employ the tactic of backwards narration and consequently lay claim to two beginnings and two endings. Alvarez has also been said to follow the stylistic traditions established by novels such as Pedro Juan Labarthe's The Son of Two Nations: The Private Life of a Columbia Student (1931), Marcio Veloz Maggiolo's El prófugo (1962), Humberto Cintrón's Frankie Cristo (1972), and Richard Ruiz
Richard Ruíz
Richard Ruíz is a Mexican footballer.-Club Tijuana:In 2009, Ruíz started playing for the Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles De Caliente. In 2010 he helped Tijuana obtain the Apertura 2010 champions. Then on May 21, 2011, his team advanced to the Primera División.-Titles:-References:...
's The Hungry American (1978). Despite the overtly North American stylistic qualities the book appears to boast at first glance, each of the aforementioned authors are of Hispanic descent.
Julie Barak emphasizes the significance of "one other stylistic idiosyncrasy of the work that adds to the sophistication of [Alvarez's] artistry" as there is a marked transition from third to first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
narration for each girl in the last section of the novel. Luis describes this shift as a pivotal moment after which the events assume a chronological order and time accelerates, illuminating life in such a manner that it suddenly makes sense. The manner in which Alvarez alters the narrative voice is a stylistic expression of the extent to which each one of the girls "wants to be in control of her own version of her history... These first person narratives in the last section become, in effect, a defense offered by each girl in her own words, an explanation of who they have become in the present, of why they 'turned out' the way they have." The transition of narrative voice "changes the dynamic of the reader-character-author triad" and allows for the reader, who has been kept at a distance by the third person narrator, to relive "the memory with the character, closely connected to her, developing a strong empathy with a unified character".
Jacqueline Stefanko rationalizes Alvarez’s decision to alternate amongst the varying voices of all four García girls, wither her assertion that "the amnesia produced by the diasporic cultures of Latinas gets negotiated within the text through polyphony". After significant observation, Stefanko has concluded that "as hybrid selves who cross and recross borders of language and culture, these Latina writers create hybrid texts in order to 'survive in diaspora,' to use Donna Haraway's term, seeking to heal the fractures and ruptures resulting from exile and dispersal". Through her creation of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Alvarez has intentionally fictionalized her own life story in a polyphonous
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
manner which extends beyond the boundaries of traditional style and genre, thus setting herself apart from the average author both stylistically and structurally.
Fragmentation of self
Perhaps one of the most prominent themes in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is that of the fragmented concept of the self. The fragmentation of one's personal identity is a serious issue suffered by all four García girls throughout the course of the novel. Their immigration has left them as multiple beings, torn between their Dominican and American identities. As a young high school student, Yolanda encounters a boy named Rudy Elmenhurst, who is relentless in his attempts to pressure her into bed with him. When he can bear frustration no longer, Rudy lashes out and ends their relationship, leaving Yolanda devastated and hoping for his return. The inner turmoil evoked in Yolanda by this traumatic episode is evident through her realization of "what a cold lonely life awaited [her] in this country. [Yolanda] would never find someone who would understand [her] peculiar mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles". Julie Barak, of Mesa State College, has described this passage as a poignant and elegant reprisal of the recurrent sense of being divided selves and speaking divided languages found throughout the majority of the text.The Flamenco dance in the "Floor Show" chapter evokes similar feelings of desolation in Sandra, as Mrs. Fanning's drunken interruption of the distinctly Hispanic dance performance makes "a parody of it, a second-rate combination of cultures that Sandi cannot find fulfilling. She is searching for a unified self, something noble, true, beautiful. Just as she gets close to it, however, it is ruined, dissolving into a gauche pastiche too similar to her own divided life in the States".
Latin American literature scholar, Jacqueline Stefanko, along with several of her peers, has made pointed mention of the significant implications Yolanda’s multiple nicknames hold for her fragile and fragmented sense of self. Stefanko observes that "as Yolanda's names proliferate on the page, we begin to see the multiplicity of her identity [and] realize the struggle Yolanda must engage in to not be fragmented in a society that marginalizes her". Scholar William Luis reinforces the notion that Yolanda’s shattered identity stems largely from the "multiple names used [to refer to her]. She is Yolanda, Yoyo, Yosita, Yo and, last but not least the English Joe. And above all, she is 'Yo,' the Spanish first person pronoun, the 'I' of the narrator."
Julie Barak finds the wording of Yolanda’s note to her husband, John, explaining why she must leave him, quite significant with reference to her divided self concept. Yolanda began "I'm going home to my folks till my head-slash-heart clears. She revised the note. I'm needing some space, some time, until my head-slash-heart-slash-soul- No, no, no she didn't want to divide herself any-more, three persons in one Yo."
Quest for clarification of identity
The search for a clear and distinct personal identity is thematically quite closely related to that of the fragmented self. The quest undertaken by the García sisters for the clarification of their confused identities, however, is an attempt to achieve a solution to the problem posed by the fragmented self, and thus warrants separate categorization. Scholar William Luis reminds readers of Alvarez that "Yolanda's search for her Dominican identity must be understood within the context of the 1960s in the United States". As they begin to grow, the girls resent their parents who appear oblivious to their need to "fit in America among Americans; they needed help figuring out who they were, why the Irish kids whose grandparents had been micks were calling them spics".Luis uses the term "onomastic displacement" with reference to the multiple nicknames that fragment Yolanda's concept of a whole and unified self. This continuous onomastic displacement incites in Yolanda the desire to question her divided identity, to seek unity, clarity and a coherent understanding of her circumstances. Yolanda achieves this clarity through the act of writing and even as a young girl she revels in the completion of her speech for the Teacher's Day address because "she finally sound[s] like herself in English!" Unlike her sister Sandi, "whose artistic predilections were crushed as a child, Yolanda faces and works through her identity problems in her writing". Barak views Yolanda's writing as a process that can be used to reunite the fragments of her identity; as an aid in the acceptance of "her own 'hybrid' nature... bringing both her worlds and all her selves into balance". It is thus only through writing, the expression of Yolanda's most intricately personal thoughts and revelations, that our protagonist can retain the hope of restoring her unified personal identity.
Assimilation
Assimilation is a particularly difficult process for Hispanic Americans because they have "old countries that are neither old nor remote. Even those born in North America travel to their parents' homeland, and constantly face a flow of friends and relatives from 'home' who keep the culture current. This constant cross-fertilization makes assimilation a more complicated process for them than for other minority groups". Julie Barak confirms Gonzalez Echevarria’s assertions regarding Latin American immigration and continues on to demonstrate how the privileged, wealthy existence led by the García girls in the Dominican Republic serves to further complicate their process of assimilation. The girls are vastly unaware of their good fortune until they are faced with the economic hardships of immigration in the United States.How the García Girls Lost Their Accents confirms the suspicion widely expressed in circles of Latin American literature that North Americans choose not to differentiate between political and economic exile. Alvarez pointedly demonstrates the North American tendency to undervalue cultural diversity
Cultural diversity
Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...
by highlighting instances of American ignorance toward distinctions between different Hispanic-Caribbean groups. The García girls are quite conflicted upon their arrival in the United States as they find that distinct cultural groups are lumped together under one broad "immigrant" category and newcomers are encouraged to assimilate silently to the American norm. Yolanda’s conflict with her father regarding the potentially controversial speech she has prepared for the Teacher’s Day Address provides a classic example of the manner in which the García girls are pressured to conform to the norm. Yolanda feels as though she has sacrificed her principles and sold out to the hyper-sensitive authorities when her father forces her to discard her empowering, rebellious achievement of artistic self expression for "two brief pages of stale compliments and the polite commonplaces on teachers. A speech wrought by necessity and without much invention". Julie Barak affirms that "although this incident is in many ways a defeat for both Yolanda and her mother, it does teach them the lesson of conformity
Conformity
Conformity is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people.Conformity may also refer to:*Conformity: A Tale, a novel by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna...
that is so important to living peacefully in America. Yolanda learns to fit in, to do the expected". The girls go on to attend the best schools, lose their Spanish accents and acquire the same psychological disorders as their upper-class American counterparts. Sandra battles anorexia
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
, Carla and Yolanda both have failed marriages, Yolanda and Sandra are both institutionalized for psychiatric issues at one time or another, and Sofía is impregnated out of wedlock.
Fear
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is rife with the constant presence of fear which manifests itself in a seemingly endless variety of outlets. Alvarez depicts quite vividly the fear evoked in the girls' mother, Laura, near the chronological beginning of the book, as she "sees the black V.W. [the trademark of Dominican dictator Trujillo’s henchmen], and her heart plummets right down to her toes". Even after the García family has spent several years in the United States, safe from the threat of Trujillo's retribution, a relentless paranoia continues to plague Carlos, their father, "who still lives in fear of the SIM and who is afraid to speak of 'revolt' out loud". This initial fear of Carlos' punishment for his role in the attempted assassination of Trujillo is what originally prompted the García family’s flight from the island and spawned the myriad other fears that would later plague their lives. The conflicted life the daughters would come to lead in the sexually liberated United States would be haunted by the fear of pregnancy and eternal damnation should they allow themselves to be seduced.The Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
also becomes a significant source of fear for the girls. In a very brief chapter entitled "Snow", Alvarez reveals the impact of this widespread cultural paranoia through the character of Yolanda, who mistakes her first experience of snowfall for "the beginning of a much anticipated nuclear attack", causing a panicked outbreak of general hysteria in her classroom.
As they continue to grow and mature, the girls have many disappointing encounters which leave them fearful of the loneliness that must awaits them in this foreign country where they struggle hopelessly to fit in and be understood. Even as a grown woman, returning to her Dominican roots, Yolanda finds she can never truly escape the fear that has hovered over her for as long as she can remember. This is evident in the very first chapter, "Antojos", as Alvarez reveals the panic evoked in the adult Yolanda at the sudden realization that she is stranded in a guava field in the Dominican Republic, where women do not go about unchaperoned at night. Alvarez evokes Yolanda's fear as she reports that "the rustling leaves of the guava trees echo the warnings of her old aunts: you will get lost, you will get kidnapped, you will get raped, you will get killed".
As scholar Julie Barak has put it, "the vocabulary of fear that accompanies them is not only a part of their Spanish, but also of their English vocabulary" and the García family can therefore never hold legitimate hopes of escaping the fear.
Memory
William Luis argues that How the García Girls Lost Their Accents "is an attempt to understand memory, the past and a time before the sisters lost their innocence and accents". Memory plays a significant role in the text, as a means by which the girls can return to the past of their childhood in the attempt to make sense of their present day realities. The youngest child, Sofía carries with her only a single memory of her brief childhood on the island, in which the García's Haitian maid, Chucha, says a voodoo goodbye to the girls before they leave for the United States. Sofía feels segregated and deprived "because she has only this one memory to help her reconstruct her bicultural, bilingual self. Though this lack of memory makes her the least divided of her sisters in many ways... the most disturbed, the most rebellious against her circumstances." Ironically enough, Chucha’s voodoo prediction itself is largely concerned with the concept of memory, as she insists that after leaving the island the girls "will be haunted by what they do and don't remember. But they have spirit in them. They will invent what they need to survive". Julie Barak confirms this notion of memory as both a positive and negative force in the García girls’ constant struggle to unearth their true identities.Literary significance and reception
When How the García Girls Lost Their Accents was published in 1991, the book "made a resounding splash on the literary scene" according to Jonathan Bing in the 1996 Publishers WeeklyPublishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
review of the novel. Although it was her first novel, Alvarez gained significant attention for the book, including a part in the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
's 1991 exhibit "The Hand of the Poet from John Donne to Julia Alvarez". The Women's Review of Books also lauds the author, stating that "With this first novel, Julia Alvarez joins the rank of other Latina writers such as Nicholasa Mohr
Nicholasa Mohr
Nicholasa Mohr is one of the best known Nuyorican writers. Her works tell of growing up in the Puerto Rican communities of the Bronx and El Barrio and of the difficulties Puerto Rican women face in the United States.- Life and career :...
and Helena María Viramontes
Helena Maria Viramontes
Helena Maria Viramontes is an American fiction writer and professor of English.-Childhood and education:Viramontes was born into a Mexican-American family....
".
The novel was generally critically acclaimed, with Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés of The Women's Review of Books writing that "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a noteworthy book, demanding our attention." The Publishers Weekly article notes that "the novel provided a keen look at the island social structure they [the García family] wistfully remember and the political turmoil they escaped".
Since 1991, the book has become widely read and referenced; a well-known part of the canon of Latino literature. Julia Alvarez was awarded the status of Doctor Honoris Causa, Humanidades, by Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra
Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra
The Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra —or Mother and Teacher Pontifical Catholic University is the first private, Roman Catholic, coeducational, university located in the Dominican Republic. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and professional degrees through...
, Santiago, Dominican Republic on January 24, 2006 for How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.
In 1999, Library Journal
Library Journal
Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
reported that a "select cadre of librarians representing New York City's three public library systems have released their hand-picked list of '21 new classics for the 21st century'" and the novel was significantly included on the influential list.
A number of scholarly articles and papers have been written on Alvarez's book since its publication, including "A Search for Identity in Julia Alvarez's How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by William Luis and Joan Hoffman's "She Wants to be Called Yolanda Now: Identity, Language, and the Third Sister in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", which was featured in the Bilingual Review.