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

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In Julia Alvarez’s bildungsroman novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the concept of American assimilation is vigorously examined. The story highlights the experiences of an immigrant family, who move to the United States. Sofia, the youngest of four daughters finds it extremely challenging to balance out “fitting in” in an american setting, and meeting the expectations of her strict dominican parents. Sofia consistently finds herself struggling to not stick out of a crowd, while still upholding the virtues her parents have instilled her. The difficulties encountered by Sofia are due to her parents putting tremendous amounts of pressure onto her shoulders. Sofia is having a hard time assimilating to American culture because of her
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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

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She wishes to be called correctly but also to blend into American culture, but

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At the end of the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Yolanda shares a story that is rather disconnected from all of the other stories. She shares a story of her finding a litter of cats in a barrel, and how she takes one of them only to throw them out of the window when she becomes annoyed with his meowing. Because of this, Yolanda becomes haunted with the kitten’s mother at night. The black cat that haunted Yolanda for so many years is a symbol to her past life, and the violence she created and endured. Yolanda first started seeing the mother cat after the incident when she threw the kitten out of the window.

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Richard Rodriguez and Gloria Anzaldúa are two authors who both immigrated to America in the 1950s and received first hand experience of the assimilation process into American society. During this time, Rodriguez and Anzaldúa had struggled adjusting to the school system. Since understanding English was difficult, it made adjusting to the American school system increasingly difficult for Rodriguez. Whereas Anzaldúa, on the other hand, had trouble adjusting to America’s school system due to the fact that she didn’t wish to stop speaking Spanish even though she could speak English. Both Rodriguez and Anzaldúa had points in their growing educational lives where they had to remain silent since the people around them weren’t interested in hearing them speaking any other language than English.

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One’s growth and attitude is affected by the environment one grows up in. This is relevant in both books Kindred and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. In both books, the main characters, Dana and Yolanda, struggle to assimilate into their new environments. For Dana it is adapting the role of a slave in the antebellum South and for Yolanda and her sisters it is learning how to blend into American society. Though these characters assimilate into different societies in different ways, they both assimilate to gain a sense of security and self-understanding which can be seen through their understanding of the power of language and search for a home.

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The immigrants entering the United States throughout its history have always had a profound effect on American culture. However, the identity of immigrant groups has been fundamentally challenged and shaped as they attempt to integrate into U.S. society. The influx of Mexicans into the United States has become a controversial political issue that necessitates a comprehensive understanding of their cultural themes and sense of identity. The film Mi Familia (or My Family) covers the journey and experiences of one Mexican-American (or “Chicano”) family from Mexico as they start a new life in the United States. Throughout the course of the film, the same essential conflicts and themes that epitomize Chicano identity in other works of literature

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Even though she chooses to embrace the American side of her, she hits some bumps along the way, that alter her feelings about herself. One should realize that personality, or in this case, identity, cannot be replaced, no matter how strong the desire to be like others is. For example, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, will still be as sly and deceiving as it always was because the new front does nothing but change how it looks on the outside. This relates to Yolanda because she tries to fit in with the American ways, but fails because she does not realize that her roots are there to stay. Overall, trying to shape oneself into something else, can be a hard process that can and will lessen

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The best ways for immigrants to adjust to living in the united states are to be yourself and try to fit in sometimes. This is interesting to be because in the story “my favorite chaperone” is about how Maya faced alot of challenges in her life even though she was only in junior high. My thesis is that to be an american you have to be different but also show people your culture and that makes you different . But in the story “late homecomer” it doesnt show the same thing it tells us about a girl that doesn’t fit in and doesnt’ have any friends but she doesnt have to come home to cook.

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Anzaldua employs her text to express her emotions in regards to various predicaments faced by immigrants during their lives in the United States. She approaches personal insights in regards to language such as expectations from the Anglo population when it comes to being an immigrant and speaking proper English, and the expectations from her Hispanic parents and their desire for their children’s success. Anzaldua’s work has several thought-provoking ideas within it, but this paper will be focused on the analysis of the following quote: “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue-

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Many people from all over the world migrate to the United States for a variety of reasons, such as education, work, and freedom, or for crimes like selling drugs, violence, terrorism , etc. Yet, after typically coming to the United States at a young age, they call it home. It becomes the only place they know, since they never return to their native country. For instance, Julia Alvarez in her novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, refers to the immigration experience, because after their initial struggle, immigrants feel more at home in the United States than in their own countries.

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Adjusting to an unfamiliar environment can be quite scary and alarming. Especially when home is out of the country. But, no matter the distance or location, home and culture is within. It should be embraced in any setting. In “Accents” by Denise Frohman and “Naturalization” by Jenny Xie, the narrators talk about how their families adjusted to the American culture, coming from a foreign country.

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In the United States there are many cultural backgrounds that have been stereotyped for what their culture is supposed to look like. Tanya M. Barrientos wrote an essay; “Se Habla Esppañol”, which she expresses her experience being a Latina, who is not fluent in speaking Spanish. Therefore, most cultures that move into the United States with a foreign language and children; the children tend to act or be more like an American, than their own culture, which later become confident in their native language. Growing up in the United States as a young Latina, Tanya Barrientos was found to only speak one language; English. She was raised to only speak English because at that time, her parents wanted their children to fit into society.

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The audience is to Americans who are trying to understand the hardships of immigrants who came to america and learn english after they get here. The goal of the text is to evoke emotions of empathy and sympathy to make it easier for native American speakers to understand their struggle. The more logical audience would have been children of immigrants, because they need to hear this the most. The content consists of a memoir of Amy Tan and her Mother. It talks about how she has been a voice of reason over her mother at times because of her english, and how her mom's accent has held her back in life and made her the subject of prejudice.

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The essay “Only Daughter”, written by Sandra Cisneros is centered on the main idea that being an only daughter of seven sons “explains everything” of her life. Cisneros’ essay is structured to emphasize the emotional impact of surpassing socially excepted gender roles in a conservative Mexican family. Her fathers view on college is for Cisneros to successfully acquire a husband but her own view is to become an independent writer. Feeling discriminated because of her feminine qualities and unappreciated by her male family members she finds herself always wanting to impress her father with her writings. Feminism becomes a huge theme throughout this essay and conveys an only daughter of a Mexican-American family of nine exposed to the unequal

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Amy Tan’s use of multiple viewpoints and enjoyable storytelling demonstrates the challenges of assimilation into America which I believe allows readers from any immigrant group to identify with the book. Assimilation into America is something that my family has experienced. My parents are immigrants from Vietnam. They came here to escape the rising communist regime that was spreading throughout Asia. This regime was suffocating to those who lived in Vietnam.

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