"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.