How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents
In her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, Julie Alvarezpresents the reader with a series of 15 interlocking stories that narratethe difficulties of growing up bicultural in the United States. The Garcia girls are Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia, though Alvarezspeaks most through Yolanda's narrative. They Garcia girls were born inthe Dominican Republic and move to the United States as children. The bookopens in 1989, with the Garcia girls are American adults. The narrativethen flows backward, tracing the transition the girls had to make as theystrive to create an identity that is both Latina and American. As implied in the title, language plays a vital role in thetransculturalization of the Garcia girls, into their assimilation intoAmerican popular culture. The acquisition of English language skills aswell as American argot was a vital step in the Garcia girls' forging oftheir dual identity. Their struggle with the language is symbolic of eachsister's struggle to create a cohesive cultural identity that blends their For the Garcia girls, the manner of speech, how they sound as theytalk, matter as much as their grasp of the English l
In the period ofsilence, the reader sees how much the traditional familial that are soimportant to Dominican families are frayed. The resulting "silence" between father and daughter issymbolic of the dangers of transculturalization - that the acquisition ofone culture often results in the sublimation of another. For Yolanda, however, the transition into American culture isultimately incomplete. Prior to the incident, Carla faced a group of boys whoimitated her accent, taunting "Please, eh-stop!" She then encounters anexhibitionist and potential sexual predator, who further assaults Carlawith a clipped "Whereyagoing'" The final humiliation comes at the hands ofan otherwise kind police officer, who does not understand how Carla's "tinyEnglish vocabulary" prevented her from adequately recounting the traumaticexperience (153-162). Along the way, her Americanfriends and acquaintances come up with Joe and Joey and even Jolinda. Instead, as seen in her acceptance of the name "Yo," Yolanda Garciais her own person, a Latina woman who is still trying to map the chartersof her American-ness and her Latinidad. In the end, the Garcia patriarch succeeds too well in his quest toraise Americanized daughters. Their accents brand the Garcia girls as strangers in astrange land. In Carla's case, the lack of language rendered herincapable of defining the trauma brought on by the sexual predator. The trauma of this experience provides Carla with a searing reminderof her linguistic inadequacy, of how she is forced to learn "English in aCatholic classroom, where no nun had ever mentioned the words she wasneeding" (163). Yolanda watches two figures, knowing full well that she has little incommon with the poor black woman who signified her Dominican heritage. In the closing scene, Alvarez hints that thiscompromise of transculturalization is the common immigrant experience. Thus,despite his traditionalist upbringing, the father pays for privateeducation, "to smooth the accent out of their English in expensive schools"(36). Even her name becomes acontested area of language, culture and identity, one that morphs from the"pure, mouth-filling, full-blooded" Yolanda (81) to Jolanda, the name thatproperly communicates her Dominican heritage.
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Acceptance Essays
