How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Book

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent is Julia Alvarez fictionalized account of her childhood when she moved with her family from the Dominican Republic to New York following the 1960 Trujillo revolution. Her story is told in alternating chapters through the eyes of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, and Sofia (Fifi) and follows them in reverse chronological order from adulthood to early childhood. Alvarez displays the Garcia de la Torre clan's love for the island on their path to becoming Americans. I read this as a reread for a comfort read for myself as Alvarez is one of my favorite authors, and I rate the Garcia's story 4.5 stars.

I fell in love with Julia Alvarez' writing when I was in high school and college studying Latin American culture. Alvarez along with Allende and Cristina Garcia helped forge my love for Latin America that has shaped my entire life. Her writing is a mix of true stories, humor, and the angst the immigrant experience that has me reaching for her books every few years. The Garcia Girls is a fictionalized autobiography with Yolanda, the third daughter, being Alvarez' persona. Like Alvarez, Yolanda is a writer who begged for her own typewriter, studied literature in boarding school and college, and eventually became a literature professor at a myriad of colleges. Yet, like her true counterpart, Yolanda still yearns for the island. A first generation immigrant, she straddles two countries. This is the life that the sisters faced in New York while also dealing with parents who still clung to old world ideals. Alvarez paints a picture of a coming of age that was stressful for the girls as they had the added element of parents not used to the new culture which they were living in. This leads to memorable dialogues among the characters, especially the two parents.

One of my favorite sections of the narrative is when an adult Yolanda returns to the Dominican Republic and asks her aunts where she can find guavas. Her aunts and cousins take guavas and other tropical fruits for granted living on an island. Yet, it is these little things that the Garcias miss the most having grown up in New York. Guavas, native flora and fauna, a compound of extended family. Yolanda eventually goes on an adventure to procure guavas, showing her independent American spirit. All the girls attend boarding school to learn to be Americans, and wow their cousins with the new found culture that they obtain. Yet this dual culture comes at a price- when the girls come to visit the Dominican Republic, they always are excited to return to the States.

Other than poetry anthologies, this was Alvarez first full length novel. It is evident as her writing is not as polished as with some of her later writing. I have read her later works as well and her voice is better established in her later writings. Once she gained tenure in college her books take on a more relaxed tone and in two of her later nonfiction accounts I found myself laughing throughout the text. Yet, the Garcia Girls is what put Alvarez on the Latin American writing stage. It is a poignant work that addresses the Latin American immigrant experience, that I highly recommend to all.