How the García girls lost their accents

Format:

Book

Title:

How the García girls lost their accents

Author:

Alvarez, Julia.

ISBN:

9780945575573

9780452268067

9781565129757

9780452287075

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1991.

Physical Description:

290 pages : 1 illustration ; 19 cm.

General Note:

Sequel: Yo!

Contents:

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

Summary:

In the 1960s, political tension forces the García family away from Santo Domingo and towards the Bronx. The sisters all hit their strides in America, adapting and thriving despite cultural differences, language barriers, and prejudice. But Mami and Papi are more traditional, and they have far more difficulty adjusting to their new country. Making matters worse, the girls -- frequently embarrassed by their parents -- find ways to rebel against them.

Program Information:

Accelerated Reader/Renaissance Learning UG 6.2 13.

Subject(s):

Sisters -- Fiction.

Young women -- Fiction.

Dominican Americans -- Fiction.

American fiction -- 20th century.

Coming of age -- Fiction.

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

Geographic Term:

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

New York (State) -- New York -- Bronx

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Silver Falls Library	FIC ALVAREZ	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dayton Public Library	ALVAREZ	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Newberg Public Library	FICTION ALVAREZ	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"A joy to read."-- The Cleveland Plain Dealer 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.

Author Notes

Julia Alvarez was born in New York City on March 27, 1950 and was raised in the Dominican Republic. Before becoming a full-time writer, she traveled across the country with poetry-in-the-schools programs and then taught at the high school level and the college level. In 1991, she earned tenure at Middlebury College and published her first book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, which won the PEN Oakland/Jefferson Miles Award for excellence in 1991. Her other works include In the Time of the Butterflies, The Other Side of El Otro Lado, and Once upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (5)

School Library Journal Review

YA-- This sensitive story of four sisters who must adjust to life in America after having to flee from the Dominican Republic is told through a series of episodes beginning in adulthood, when their lives have been shaped by U. S. mores, and moving backwards to their wealthy childhood on the island. Adapting to American life is difficult and causes embarrassment when friends meet their parents, anger as they are bullied and called ``spics,'' and identity confusion following summer trips to the family compound in the Dominican Republic. These interconnected vignettes of family life, resilience, and love are skillfully intertwined and offer young adults a perspective on immigration and families as well as a look at America through Hispanic eyes. This unique coming-of-age tale is a feast of stories that will enchant and captivate readers.-- Pam Spencer, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Fifteen tales vividly chronicle a Dominican family's exile in the Bronx, focusing on the four Garcia daughters' rebellion against their immigrant elders. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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.

Booklist Review

Four sisters and their experiences of life and love--in both the Dominican Republic where they were born and the U.S. where they now live. The Garcia girls represent an immigrant family that honors traditional ways and changed realities in a not-always-comfortable mix of old and new. Love and sex figure prominently as areas the sisters are all too willing to explore despite their father's vigilance, and the stratagems and connivances performed in the name of romance are often truly astounding and hilarious. Visits with relatives in the mother country play up these divergences from the old order, while lingering moral confusion adds a confrontational edge to the sisters' predicament. Perhaps a bit too episodic to build to a real climax, these stories nevertheless expose the pangs and joys of being a woman and becoming an American. ~--John Brosnahan

Library Journal Review

This rollicking, highly original first novel tells the story (in reverse chronological order) of four sisters and their family, as they become Americanized after fleeing the Dominican Republic in the 1960s. A family of privilege in the police state they leave, the Garcias experience understandable readjustment problems in the United States, particularly old world patriarch Papi. The sisters fare better but grow up conscious, like all immigrants, of living in two worlds. There is no straightforward plot; rather, vignettes (often exquisite short stories in their own right) featuring one or more of the sisters--Carle, Sandi, Yolanda, and Fifi--at various stages of growing up are strung together in a smooth, readable story. Alvarez is a gifted, evocative storyteller of promise.-- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.