"How The Garcia Giorls Lost Their Accents" Book Review

In English class we just finished reading the book, "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez. In this book she uses a very unique writing style to tell this story. She has chosen very unique character with the same background and history, who all grew up to be different in all kinds of ways. Alvarez has chosen to write her book in reverse chronological order, this adds a little confusion but it is very unique. The characters stories really fit the style of writing, because they are all tied together in this book, the book is good. The main characters of the story are the four Garcia girls: Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia; their parents: Carlos and Laura. Her unique characters and her unique style choice are both the foundation that make this a good book.

Alvarez has chosen a very creative way of telling the four girls stories. She first starts the book off when the girls were adults and have returned to their home in the Dominican Republic. This writing style is very creative, when the reader starts to read the book, it tells us how the girls ended up as grown women. In the second part it tells little stories of their lives of when the girls were teenagers and in their early twenties.In the second section of the book, she informs the readers of events that shaped the lives of the girls and in some ways affected how the girls grew up yo became who they were. In the last section of the book, behind the third paper clip, she tells the reader of how the girls were raised, what events occurred while they were younger. Before the reader even knows how the girls grew up, like it would be in a regular book, we read about how they end up and adults.

In the beginning of the book there is a quote that describes how old the four girls are, it also tells the reader how the mother felt about the girls. 

“The mother still calls the four girls even though the youngest is twenty-six and the oldest will be thirty-one next month” (Alvarez 40).

 This gives the reader a little understanding of how old the girls were in the first section of the book. This also lets the reader know that the mother still felt as if her daughters were little and she still feels as if they are still her little girls, just like any mother. All mothers find that if they have been calling their kids something since they were young they will continue calling them that, like some people say now, "Old habits die hard"

There was a main character in the book named Yolanda, she was the penultimate girl born into the family. Like her sisters she has experienced things both pleasant and unpleasant. In the last section of the book Yolanda, or as she was called by others Yoyo, was a little girl when she received a drum from her mamita. She played the drum all the time and she loved the drum, her mom did not like it as much and she was soon sent to go outside and play it. She ran into kittens in the back shed while playing outside one day and took the kitten that she liked the most. The mother of the kitten was not pleased with this and she heard her baby calling for her but Yolanda stuffed the kitten into her drum and beat on the top of the drum so the mother would not hear her baby calling for her. That night she went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night and

"Sitting on the foot of my bed, poking her face in so that the gauzy net was molded to her features like an awful death mask, was the black mother cat."

This happened night after night until they moved away to the States. I believe this is a symbol of how a mother protects her babies. Just like Yolanda's mother protected her and her sisters until they were old enough to protect themselves, the mother cat set fear into Yoyo because she had  harmed to one of her babies. The cat is a direct symbol of the mother protecting her babies and providing for them most of their life until they are old enough to fend for their own needs. Yolanda grows up to be a good woman.

As you find out in the beginning of the book, Yolanda grows up to be a wonderful  lady, but she has, like the title says, lost her accent along with her three sisters. They moved away to the Stated when they were little girls and while in the states they became accustomed to how the Americans lived and what they do. When she got back to the Dominican Republic she was not as fluent with her Spanish as she was when she was a little girl.  While in America Yolanda along with her sisters were exposed to things that she was never told of.  She was introduced to a lifestyle that she was not used to living in and people that she could not connect with.

"Alvarez's family was highly influenced by American attitudes and goods. Alvarez and her sisters attended an American school.Although she was thrilled to be back in America, she would soon face homesickness and the feeling of not fitting in. She missed her cousins, her family's large home, and the respect her family had in the Dominican Republic."

Any reader can see that this book was based on the life she lived in America while she was an  immigrant in America. I feel that overall this was a very good book. The reverse chronological order added a little confusion to the book but that along with the diverse and unique characters were the basis of this story. Without that style and these characters with their marvelous stories, this book would
  not have been as creative as it is.

Garcia Girls Part 3

In the last section of this great book, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents I found it quite interesting. On some parts of this book I could not really get into the book like I wanted to but it was nice. In the last section of the book it is talking about their child hood and then it goes back around to the beginning. While in class we discussed this part of how at the end of the book it went right back to the beginning. We made jokes of how we would have to keep rereading it over and over for the rest of the semester because this book was a circle. I thought about this for a while and I finally understood that the purpose of this story was the story was a circle.

The way the women were raised by their parents was shown different when they grew up into grown women.  For instance when Yoyo was a little girl she was paired up with her boy cousin. They were the only co-ed pair and they were always together. All the adult women always told her that she should stop hanging out with him and start hanging out with the girls. So she could practice being a girl instead of staying in that phase of being a tomboy. One day for a present she received, from her mamita, a drum with a set of drum sticks to go with it. She loved that drum set and she beat the drum like there was no tomorrow. She annoyed her mother with it so she was told to go outside with it.

She broke one of her sticks and her aunt sat on the other stick when it was on the couch. She says it was not the same when she used other objects to play her drum, but she used them anyway. She found Kittens in the shed in the backyard one day and she really liked one of them so she decided to take it. She was scared because of the mother cat. So she stuffed it in the drum and beat on the drum so the mother cat would not hear the meowing of her baby. The mother cat came into her bed room every night after that day until they moved away to the States.

When she got older she was much more of a lady and she was always with the ladies. She grew out of the tom boy stage and became a woman of the states. She grew out of her accent along with her other sisters, only to return to the Dominican Republic again one day.

Response to Alex Tang's Issue Of Violence

I came upon this quote while reading through Alex Tang's Post,

I am tired of hearing about the on going violence that has destroyed the city of Oakland. People need to grow up and learn how to deal with their problems in a peaceful and formal way. Violence can not be the response to everything because that will only make the cycle of violence continue.

I agree with Alex when he says he is tired of hearing this. I can really understand where he is coming from with this. With all of the violence going on in Oakland little kids are getting killed because of stupid mistakes that people make by trying to kill people. People have in wars and kill an innocent bystander by accident and take away a life. With this cycle of violence Alex is right, it will never end. Lets say I did not like a person because of something they did a long time ago so I killed that person thinking it would solve the problem. That person might have a friend who would kill for them so they come and kill me, then I have a friend who kills that friend. That is how it always is with this violence. It will never end until  someone becomes the bigger person and stops killing.

He is right, this ongoing violence is killing Oakland along with its reputation. People who are not from Oakland feel as if they will get killed coming to Oakland or fear that their kids lives are in danger if they come here. Little do they know that there are actually safe parts of Oakland. Oakland has really changed since my parents times of living here. They used to be able to walk down the streets at night and be perfectly safe, now a parent is scared for their kids lives when they stand in front of the house. My big brother is scared for me and my little siblings to walk around West Oakland because he fears that we might get hurt because of all the crazy youth that just kill people for the fun of it or because of the accidental deaths that occur among the youth today.

With this cycle of violence people will keep killing people. Someone will have to stop it soon or else things will get uglier then they already are. And as of now things are pretty ugly. So imagine if they got uglier.

I Made It! continued

I had to pick a card and I got seven of hearts and I was very nervous because it was my first time doing this. I watched all the girls who went before and after me tryout as I peeked through the door. When it was finally my turn to go I ran out onto the floor and stood in "Game Stance" which is with my hands on my hips. I waited for my instructions of what I had to do. He finally told me that He wanted me to do jumps,heel stretch (hold your foot in the air with one of your hands), Scorpion which is hard to explain, cart wheel, round off, front roll and a back roll, and the motion drill. I did my first jump which was the toe touch and all of the judges had an impressed look on their faces. I got through with all of this, I did not even do my dance yet and all the judges were wowed already. I finally finished that with a smile on my face the whole time and full of spirit, ready to move onto the dance and the cheer .

The coach counted me into the dance, I did the dance very well and I was on beat the whole time. When I was done with the dance the music was cut off and it was time for me to do the cheer. I did the cheer and I did great the whole way through up until the very last part where I clapped at the wrong time. Other than that little mistake I did great in my tryout. When I was done a couple of people went after me and when they were done everyone was called into the room to do the dance all together. After we did that we were able to go home. They said they would call us that night. I did not receive my call until the next day and I was very anxious to hear how I did even though all of my friends and even my mother and father said I made it, I wanted to hear it from the coach. He finally called me the next day while I was cooking breakfast. I was so busy getting popped in the eye, arm, and neck to notice that my phone was ringing.

I was sitting at the breakfast table eating when I pulled my phone out and saw that I missed his call. I was very upset, I was waiting for that call all night and when he finally called I MISSED IT! I called back and did not get an answer so I left a voicemail. I called back a couple of hours later when I was at the Stone Ridge mall and he answered I was very excited. I told him who I was and why I was calling even though he knew all of that. He found my name on the list and told me how the grading went. HE said that to make the traveling team someone had to at LEAST score a sixty, then he told me that the maximum score for the traveling team was a 120, I was very anxious because he was taking a long time to tell me how I did. HE finally told me that I scored a 115 out of a 120 and he said welcome to the Bay Area Dynamics. I was jumping around and smiling so much, people were looking at me like I was crazy and I said thank you and got off the phone. My mother was in another part of the mall so I called her and told her, I texted all of my friends and told them that I made it. It was only a couple of minutes before a few of my cheerleaders that i coach, and my aunts and cousins started to call me a text me congratlating me on making the All star team.

My mom had called them all and told all o them in less then five minutes, all I could think was wow i made the team and boy does news travel fast. But I am very excited that i made the team. I can't wait until practice starts and I finally get to see the uniforms. YAY!

I Made It!

It was about two weeks ago when I had to go to my first cheerleading practice so I could learn the Tryout dance. I was supposed to go with my friend Katrina Dizon but she was to nervous to go with me and she didn't have a ride to the practice area. On the first I got there on time and I was excited but I was also nervous because I knew i would not know anyone there. I was getting over my cold so I was not feeling the best. We had to go inside and I had to stretch. I did not know what I was in for because I half stretched not knowing I would regret it the next day, and went straight into practicing my jumps. When I was done with my jumps it was time to start learning the dance.

There were only a few other girls present besides me, so we learned the first part of the dance  in about fifteen minutes. When we all knew the first part of the dance we moved onto the next part of the dance. We learned that in about fifteen minutes minimum. When we got the whole tryout dance done it was time to go home, so we left for the night to go and practice the dance. When I got home I showed my parents and sibling what I just learned. I would stop a few times trying to remember the next step. I got to school and I would practice in PE class. I practiced all the time even though I was very sore because I should have correctly stretched. I would go to coach my cheerleaders who were getting ready for their cheerleading competition in a couple of days.

The next couple of practices were about the same with the same people. On the last practice a couple of days before the actual tryouts there were more people at that practice than any other practice before. This time my friend Katrina came and learned the rest of the dance that I did not have enough time to teach her. At this practice we went over the dance slowly then we sped it up a little bit each time. When the coaches felt like we had the dance down we went on to jumps and because I have high jumps I went up in front of all the girls with a few other girls up there with me. After we did our jumps we went up into stunts. I was a flyer for a while then I moved into being the back spotter. That was really fun to me, I like the stunt I was put into. I asked some of the girls if they had practiced the dance on their free time, they said no they did not because they knew it .

When the tryout day came, I was very upset because there was a bunch of traffic going into Alameda and I was late. But when I got there I was happy because they did not start yet but i was going in the next group. I have never tried out for a cheerleading squad before so i did not know what to expect. I had to tryout alone in front of five judges.  When I got there, the girls that I had asked if they practiced on their free time were the ones who were the most nervous and did not have the dance down tight. Me in the other hand, I was very prepared because I always practiced when I was not doing anything.

Continued on to the next blog.

Oscar Grant

Hi Rahni!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Garcia Girls Part 2

In the second part of the book of how "The Garcia girls Lost Their Accents" it is a bit more confusing to me than the first part. I feel as if the first part was much more clear than the second part. In this second part of the book multiple things happen that show the girls foundation and their living styles before they got older. In one of the short vignettes titled Trespass Carla who as the oldest girl experienced things that she was never exposed to in the Dominican Republic before they moved to New York. When she first started at her school she did not know what to expect and the first couple of months her mother caught the bus with her before and after school. When her mother stopped catching the bus with her, she would get to school and,

"...a gang of boys chased after her, calling her names... out of the sight of the nuns, the boys pelted Carla with stones, aiming them at her feet so there would be no bruises. " (pg 153) 

In this someone can see that she was treated with great disrespect and with no compassion of welcoming a new student into their school. She had been tortured so bad by these boys that she would have nightmares about them, she would wake up at night and see them at the foot of her bed laughing at her, the only way she could get rid of them is by closing her eyes and escaping with the dark of her eyelids closed. Not only did she get harassed by the boys but she also got followed by a pervert one day after school which resulted in an interview with the police after her mother called them.

Like I said before I find that the second part was more confusing then the first part, to me When they were older and grown women the author made more clear of the events that occurred. As they get younger it seems more confusing. It is still very interesting to read about how they turned out before actually reading about their foundation. It stays getting interesting as I read on. I find it very interesting how drastically their lives change as they move from the Dominican Republic to New York. It seems as if they become very different people who do not come from a background of strict rules.

Overall I find that as the book progresses on it gets more confusing but at the same time it gets more interesting because I always want to know what happened before what I just read.

Book Post: The garcia Girls

In the book "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" there is a veinet that is called The Rudy Elmenhurst Story. In this specific story there were multiple scenes in which Rudy tries to get one of the sisters, Yolanda, to try and sleep with him. He uses different names for having sex that really turn her off. The main thing I wanted to talk about was the scene where they are in the bed and he tries to get her to have sex with him. This is their brake up scene and he is mad because she will sleep with him in his bed but she will not have sex with him. He tells her that guys need to have sex but she is not convinced that he is the one. He is finally tired of waiting for her so he dumps her and calls her names that make her storm out of the room.
In this quote you will see that he is tired of her holding out on him. He wants to have sex but she is not ready.

"I thought you'd be hot-blooded, being Spanish and all, and that under all the Catholic bullshit, you'd be really free, instead of all hung up like these cotillion chicks from prep schools.But Jesus you're worse than a fucking Puritan."... "I got up and threw on my nightgown, packed up my clothes, and left the room,..."

When a person first starts to read this book they will be very confused. In this book the story is told in reverse chronological order, which means we are reading from when they are grown women back until they were little girls. This is not the kind of book that I would have picked to read if I was picking something to read on my spare time. So far it has been an interesting but a person will start to get confused when the author switches stories fast and when the topic of the story or the focus of the story is changed. It was  hard to comprehend at first but once you start to read it, it becomes interesting and you get pulled in it. Working through the difficulty is a challenge but it is fun to know how a character ended up without even knowing their foundation that was set for them. I wonder what will come up in the second and third parts.