Essay!

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a novel written by Julia Alvarez. The book allows us into the lives of the Garcia Family as they assimilate into American culture and abandon the old-fashioned, Dominican, culture that their elders desperately try to conserve while in the states.
The Garcia Girls tells a fictional story that has become a reality of many American citizens today.   The Garcia family is thrown into American culture during a time when American culture was radical, feminist, artistic and progressing into new thoughts and ideas. The sisters: Yolanda, Sofia, Carla, and Sandra have come from the Dominican Republic where Latin culture and catholic values are the societal norm. Latin culture is very much patriarchal and this mindset has been instilled in the Garcia girls even from a young age.  When they arrive in the United States they are intrigued and sucked in by the American culture. The girls participated in activities that extremely taboo in the Dominican-Catholic culture.
Alvarez’s purpose was to show the vast differences in the two cultures and psychological “tug-a-war“ game that leaves many young immigrants conflicted. She shows these in situations where the sisters struggle to find a balance between their Dominican culture and their new American culture. The girls were smoking, experimenting with their sexuality and dressing in American fashions.  The girls’ actions deeply concerned their traditional parents in ways as such:
"I don't want loose women in my family," he had cautioned all his daughters. Warnings were delivered communally, for even though there was usually the offending daughter of the moment, every woman's character could use extra scolding. The daughters had had to put up with this kind of attitude in an unsympathetic era. They grew up in the late sixties. Those were the days when wearing jeans and hoop earrings, smoking a little dope, and sleeping with their classmates were considered political acts against the military-industrial complex. But standing up to their father was a different matter altogether. Even as grown women, they lowered their voices in their father’s earshot when alluding to their bodies' pleasure (pg. 28).”

Many of the numerous stories told from points of view of all four of the Garcia sisters reflect the excerpt quoted above. The girls attempt to balance both cultures in order to please their family. Although they have all become very American in their actions, they understand that they must maintain certain amount of respect for Dominican culture for their parent’s sake.
This conflict of culture also effects the girls when they first arrive in America because they desperately wish to be a part of the culture and doing what others were doing rather than being tied down to their strict Dominican culture that they family wished to preserve so greatly. One example of this is the feelings that Yolanda experienced while in an American college and harboring feelings of separation between she and her peers:
Our next workshop, no one understood what my sublimated love sonnet was all about, but Rudy's brought down the house. Suddenly, it seemed to me, not only that the world was full of English majors, but of people with a lot more experience than I had. For the hundredth time, I cursed my immigrant origins. If only I too had been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was making on the last two digits of the year, 1969; I too would be having sex and smoking dope; I too would have suntanned parents who took me skiing in Colorado over Christmas break, and I would say things like "no shit," without feeling like I was imitating someone else (pg. 95)”
Alvarez uses this theme of conflicting cultures throughout the entire book, allowing the reader to find patterns within the vignettes that are told throughout the book.  Her story is very relatable and many young people in America because a lot of first-generation immigrants who are adolescents are forced with the option of pleasing their family and staying closely tied with their culture or to fit in with their American peers.
Often times AMERICAN WAYS ARE SEEN AS WRONG FOR NEW IMMIGRANTS TO PARTICIPATE IN ESPECIALLY IN MATTERS THAT HAVE TO DO WITH MIXING WITH PEOPLE OF OTHER CUTURES WHO THEY OFTEN DO NOT ENCOUNTERED IN THEIR HOME COUNTRY.
WE SEEN MANY EXAMPLES OF THIS IN THE GARCIA GIRLS AS THEY ATTEMPT TO DIVE INTO AMERICAN CULTURE WHILE STILL PRESERVING THEIR DOMINICAN WAYS.







* Mr. Sutherland, for some reason my caps lock button had a nervous breakdown, hence the all caps lock.