How the García girls lost their accents

Title:

Author:

Alvarez, Julia.

Personal Author:

Alvarez, Julia.

ISBN:

9781565129757

Edition:

1st Algonquin paperback.

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010.

Physical Description:

311 pages : genealogy table ; 21 cm

General Note:

Sequel: Yo!

"Reader's guide and other special features inside"--P. 4 of cover.

Contents:

Antojos -- kiss -- four girls -- Joe -- Rudy Elmenhurst story -- regular revolution -- Daughter of invention -- Trespass -- Snow -- Floor show -- Blood of the conquistadores -- human body -- Still lives -- American surprise -- drum.

Abstract:

The four Garcia girls escape the Dominican Republic and a life of privilege in the 1960s to come to the United States and difficult adjustment.

Reading Level:

950 Lexile.

Subject Term:

Dominican Americans -- Fiction.

Young women -- Fiction.

Sisters -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Bronx (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Bildungsromans.

Summary:

The four Garcia girls escape the Dominican Republic and a life of privilege in the 1960s to come to the United States and difficult adjustment.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
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Summary

Named A Great American Novel by The Atlantic !

From the international bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and Afterlife , How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is "poignant...powerful... Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory." ( The New York Times Book Review )

Don't miss Alvarez's new novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, available now!

Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The García sisters--Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía--and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father's role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home--and not at home--in America.

"Alvarez helped blaze the trail for Latina authors to break into the literary mainstream, with novels like In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents winning praise from critics and gracing best-seller lists across the Americas."--Francisco Cantú, The New York Times Book Review

"A clear-eyed look at the insecurity and yearning for a sense of belonging that are a part of the immigrant experience . . . Movingly told." -- The Washington Post Book World

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Told through the points of view of the four Garcia sisters--Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia--this perceptive first novel by poet Alvarez tells of a wealthy family exiled from the Dominican Republic after a failed coup, and how the daughters come of age, weathering the cultural and class transitions from privileged Dominicans to New York Hispanic immigrants. The move to the States provides the girls, brought up under strick social mores, a welcome escape from the pampered, overbearingly protective society in which they were raised, although subjecting them to other types of discrimination. Each rises to the challenge in her own way, as do their parents, Mami (Laura) and Papi (Carlos). The novel unfolds back through time, a complete picture accruing gradually as a series of stories recounts various incidents, beginning with ""Antojos"" (roughly translated ""cravings""), about Yolanda's return to the island after an absence of five years. Against the advice of her relatives, who fear for the safety of a young woman traveling the countryside alone, Yolanda heads out in a borrowed car in pursuit of some guavas and returns with a renewed understanding of stringent class differences. ""The Kiss,"" one of Sofia's stories, tells how she, married against her father's wishes, tries to keep family ties open by visiting yearly on her father's birthday with her young son. And in ""Trespass,"" Carla finds herself the victim of ignorance and prejudice a year after the Garcias have arrived in America, culminating with a pervert trying to lure her into his car. In perhaps one of the most deft and magical stories, ""Still Lives,"" young Sandi has an extraordinary first art lesson and becomes the inspiration for a statue of the Virgin: ""Dona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us like Jesus into the heathen."" v The tradition and safety of the Old World are just part of the trade-off that comes with the freedom and choice in the New. Alvarez manages to bring to attention many of the issues--serious and light--that immigrant families face, portraying them with sensitivity and, at times, an enjoyable, mischievious sense. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.