Analysis Of The Novel 'How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents'
In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the characters are caught between their native homelands the Dominican Republic culture and their new found country the United States culture which is not the only factors in this novel. Yolanda, a character in the story the third child, encounters sexuality and freedom vs. religious beliefs raised as a Catholic no premarital sex. She also faces prejudice against their race, language barriers and in earlier years adjusting to a different economic status. It places her between the issues of understanding the English language and unwilling to commit to a sexual relationship with her boyfriend in college during the sixties social, sexual revelation. Although these conflict of Catholicism, heritage, and
Julia Alvarez and his three teenage sisters discover the “key” to assimilating into their new country. Their stereotypical understanding of what it means to be an American is defined by one’s appearance. Comparing themselves to the women featured in the Miss America contest, makes the Alvarez girls long for the “American look”. It narrows down to a caucasian, hourglass shaped figure with long seamless straight hair. “Although we wanted to look like we belonged here, the four sisters, our looks didn 't seem to fit in.”
For as long as people can remember, the stereotype that men have “more power” than women in a relationship has been a relevant argument. In the novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents the Author, Julia Alvarez, writes about four girls and part of that revolves around their relationships with men. In all of their relationships with men, he has the power in the relationship which means he makes the decisions for them. When they lived in the United States the girls and their mother had more say in the society. When they lived in the Dominican Republic men just saw them as submissive housewives who bear their children.
Everyday people are judging and being judged by others with unique criteria that we, as inhabitants of Earth deem necessary checkmarks to be met to afford and be afforded tokens of civility. In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Myth of the Latin Woman” the memoir is brimming with personal accounts of fetishiztation and discrimination the author experiences as a Latin woman that have vast influence on her life. Throughout the text Cofer conveys the significance of how deep the status “exotic” to describe Latina women is held inside the minds of people which the author alludes to on page 879, “I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early,” [1] after being given a sudden, non-consensual kiss at a dance by her date. The author expresses the cultural dissonance between
Sex. A very risque topic that comes up thousands of times in everyone’s life, even though it’s uncomfortable. Kids learn at a young age what sex is in school through health, even if it scars kids for the rest of their life, seeing they haven’t fully matured. In Julia Alvarez’s book, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent”, she teaches the reader that sex is treated differently in different cultures. This book highlights the fact that in the United States sex is viewed as an activity for pleasure, where The Dominican Republic treats sex as something more sacred, and something you wait for.
The black cat seems to me to symbolize many different things. I feel that the everytime she sees that cat it’s a warning that something bad is soon to happen. I feel that the black cat also represents reincarnation and when Sophia is not there as a ghost or in spirit she is secretly a lonely, dark cat that tries to scare everyone around her. Another piece of symbolism that I noticed while reading the book is Sophia's doll and dress. When Florence where’s the dress and carries the doll around her room she seems to symbolize Sophia when she was alive.
In Sandra Cisneros “Mericans” she creates a young character named Michelle who faces cultural differences and nonunderstanding, gender roles and culture stereotyping which can be exhibited in the real world. The author introduces Michelle as a foreigner with in her own culture, with this being said throughout the story Michelle seemed to be uninterested in her Grandmothers ideals and the principles of the Mexican heritage. The evidence behind this statement is; throughout the passage Michelle refers to her grandmother as being “awful” (Cisneros 93). I think a big reason for this is the fact that the grandmother has the children wait outside the church doors as she goes and say her daily prayers.
Throughout generations cultural traditions have been passed down, alongside these traditions came language. The language of ancestors, which soon began to be molded by the tongue of newer generations, was inherited. Though language is an everlasting changing part of the world, it is a representation of one’s identity, not only in a cultural way but from an environmental standpoint as well. One’s identity is revealed through language from an environmental point of view because the world that one is surrounded with can cause them to have their own definitions of words, an accent, etc. With newer generations, comes newer forms of languages.
Yolanda was a 14 year-old who had grown up catholic and conservative. She left home and moved in with her boyfriend after problems with her parents (Doan, Williams). When she moved in, Yolanda and her boyfriend, Mario, began to engage in sexual intercourse. After a couple months of living together and having sex with sporadic use of birth control pills and incorrect use of condoms, Yolanda became pregnant (Doan, Williams). For Yolanda, “her parents had never talked to her about sex.
“How has the author implemented stereotypical gender roles to reflect the society at the time?” Love in the time of cholera is a novel written in 1985, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The novel was written to expose the society during the time. This was done through a range of different techniques. One method is the implementation of the honour system and stereotypical gender roles.
Each of the Latin America countries shared a common language with the exception of some countries such as Brazil. This language that we shared all the Latinos is called Spanish. Even though, we all have this common language, if we watch deeply, it has slight and sometimes huge differences. As a native Spanish speaker from Colombia, I can notice which Spanish dialect shows more notable distinctions regardless to pronunciation. Most of the Central American countries have this notable distinction in comparison of Colombian dialect.
In the novel The Road it mostly dealt with assimilation theme. The setting behind this book is the burned American landscape in which a father and son travel and fight through hunger and the weather to go south in search of the blue ocean and white sand. What’s in their mind constantly is the thought of dying and the thought of not making it. In their travel they came across very few people and the people they came across were “bad” as they called them. Most of what they saw were dead and charred bodies of humans and not a plant grew through the land.
My grandmother Vidalia Garcia was born on September 15th, 1945 and was later adopted by Pedro and Herlinda Garcia in 1946 when she was One years old. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting my great grandparents from what my grandmother could tell me in her interview they were pretty strict. She didn’t have much of a childhood growing up her parents were always around and anytime she wanted to go out to the movies they would always have to go with her or else she wasn’t allowed to go. Being able to have private conversations on a cell phone unlike today is not the easiest task to do. On September 11th, 1946 we had the 1st mobile long distance car to car telephone conversation.
Every literary work has its own purpose of existence and no literary is the same. There is always literary work for someone to be interested in. the authors use different techniques in order to attract the readers, such as rhythm, rhyme, characters, settings, characters, theme, and conflict and other techniques. One of the elements that literature allow the readers to use is the imagination in order to visualize what the author message is in his story or poem. Some stories, poems or drama are based from the writer’s personal experience, such as the conflict with they have with society because of their race, gender or ethnicity.
Names/Nombres written by Julia Alvarez is a short story regarding a little girl, Hooleetah, moving with her family from the Dominican Republic to New York City in the 1960s. It is extremely clear within the beginning of the story that the girl absolutely despises it when people pronounce her, or her family's’ names wrong, this is proven when she corrects the customs officer under her breath when he mispronounces her family’s last name. “At Immigration, the officer asked my father, Mister Elbures, if he had anything to declare... but I said our name to myself, opening my mouth wide for the organ blast of trilling my tongue for the drumroll of the r, All-vab- rrr-es (Alvarez 1). As the story continues each member of her family is assigned with many different American names, as people found it hard to pronounce their actual names.
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