Summary Of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez

Losing yourself is easy when you're not sure in the first place. That's what Julia Alvarez illustrates in the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Where four girls immigrate from their affluent Dominican home to a moderately impoverished one in the U.S., seeking temporary asylum. There, they go through the pains of growing up, social peer pressure, and are exposed to other experiences showcasing the stark realities life has to offer. Throughout the book, the Garcias try to find their true identity while going through the twists and turns of life. This novel reveals that culture and language has a lot to do with forming one's identity. The type of culture and language a person has been surrounded with affects their sense of identity,

When Manuel shows his true possessive, oppressive, sexist colors, it makes them think about the mindsets of women in the Domincan, “- the special consideration that was reserved to the men in the family. In a society ruled by men who, like Fifi's boyfriend during her temporal confinement on the Island, forbade women to leave the house without permission, drive cars or wear pants in public” (Alvarez 120). Having adjusted to American life, when they return to the dominican, the sisters progressively grow unsettled, having become more socially aware of how sexist the Dominican Republic society really is because of the amount of freedom America has provided, moulding their comprehension on the idea of gender equality. Returning to their homeland with ‘open eyes’, they see this misogynist culture that all the Dominican women embrace because of how they value their ‘roles’ in this community. And once the Garcias experienced both the Dominican and American culture, it makes them realize how culture play a big role in their mentalities and standpoints of certain issues that might not even be considered a problem in certain areas. At the end of story, Alvarez ends with a somewhat confusing paragraph, “Then we moved to the United States. The cat disappeared altogether. I saw snow. I solved the riddle of an outdoors made mostly of concrete in New York. My grandmother grew so old she could not remember who she was. I went away to school. I read books. You understand I am collapsing all time now so that it fits in what's left in the hollow of my story? I began to write, the story of Pila, the story of my grandmother. I never saw Schwarz again. The man with the goatee and Kashtanka vanished from the face of creation. I grew up, a curious woman, a woman of story ghosts and story devils, a woman prone to bad dreams and bad