How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents

May 11, 2009 engiesuh

The story consists of 4 different stories of the each four Garcia daughters. This story is a coming age story which describes the difficulty of adapting to a new enviornment and cultural clash is for the foreigners moving to the States. The girls who all came from the rich family in Dominican Republic, they suffer from the stage of sudden middle class living in the states. The story deals with the four Garcia sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia, the lives of their new life in the states. The first part of the story deals with how the police rejected the Garcia sister for their father not agreeing with the new government of dictatorship in the country. So they move into the States and this is how all the shocking and troubles begin. The daughters grown up as rich family in Dominican Republic, the girls have problems getting along with their boyfriends. The second daughter Sandra, when she is a college student, she meets a guy who she really loves. However, the boyfriend wants physical relationship rather than just having pure love, so Sandra gets schocked and cannot trust any guys after happening. Then while Yolanda walks alone to a library, the guys from street comes out suddenly and tries to abuse her. She fortunately gets over with the happening however, this makes her the sense of avoiding guys for her lifetime.

The author of the novel, Julia Alverz was born March 27th, 1950. She is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. She spent her first ten years of her Childhood in the Dominican Republic. Her father was involved in a political rebellion which later forced her family to flee the country. The novel is, like many of her novels, was influenced by her own personal experience as a Dominican in United States, and she cheavily on issues of assimilation and identity. Her writing style is very descriptive and straight forward. She uses the narrative perspective in a very interesting way.

As a Korean-American, it was very interesting much to read about. How other Americanized foreigners would feel and have expeirenced living in the states. While I was reading the novel, I found many similarities and made me worry about how American really is. Also, I felt that Dominican Republic and Koreans may share many similarities such as the relationship between the men and women.

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