How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents [Hardcover]

Julia Alvarez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 1991

Julia Alvarez's brilliant first book of fiction sets the Garcia girls free to tell their irrepressibly intimate stories about how they came to be at home -- and not at home -- in America.

"A warm, honest rendering of family life." --Elle Magazine

"She has beautifully captured the threshold experience of the new immigrant." --New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The chronicle of a family in exile that is forced to find a new identity in a new land, these 15 short tales, grouped into three sections, form a rich, novel-like mosaic. Alvarez, whose first fiction this is, has an ear for the dialogue of non-natives, and the strong flavors of Dominican syntax and cultural values permeate these pages. Many parallels may be drawn between these stories and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Central to both are young, first generation American females in rebellion against their immigrant elders, and in both books the stories pile up with layers of multiple points of view and overlapping experiences, building to a sense of family myths in the making. The four Garcia daughters, whom we meet as adults but then re-encounter as children as the narrative flows backward in time, are accustomed to a prestigious perch in Spanish Caribbean society. But political upheavals force Papi and Mami to seek refuge in a more modest way of life in the Bronx, and their little girls become transplants who thrive and desire a far bigger embrace of this new world than the elder Garcias can contemplate or accept. This is an account of parallel odysseys, as each of the four daughters adapts in her own way, and a large part of Alvarez's Gar cia's accomplishment is the complexity with which these vivid characters are rendered.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

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
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 4, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945575572
• ISBN-13: 978-0945575573
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (170 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,150,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Julia Alvarez has bridged the Americas many times. Born in New York and raised in the Dominican Republic, she is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist, author of world-renowned books in each of the genres, including How the García Girls Lost their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Something to Declare. She lives on a farmstead outside Middlebury, Vermont, with her husband Bill Eichner. Visit Julia's Web site here to find out more about her writing.

Julia and Bill own an organic coffee farm called Alta Gracia in her native country of the Dominican Republic. Their specialty coffee is grown high in the mountains on what was once depleted pastureland. Not only do they grow coffee at Alta Gracia, but they also work to bring social, environmental, spiritual, and political change for the families who work on their farm. They use the traditional methods of shad-grown coffee farming in order to protect the environment, they pay their farmers a fair and living wage, and they have a school on their farm where children and adults learn to read and write. For more information about Alta Gracia, visit their website.

Belkis Ramírez, who created the woodcuts for A Cafecito Story, is one of the most celebrated artists in the Dominican Republic.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining series of vignettes, ala "feminist Latina", November 10, 1999

By 

Veronica Samanas (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Plume Contemporary Fiction) (Paperback)

Characteristic of the immigrant novel looking back upon one's beginnings, Julia Alvarez' novel begins in a reverse chronological order. The story introduces 39 year old Yolanda returning to her home in the Dominican Republic after an absence of five years. She is greeted by her extended family of aunts and cousins who still live a well to do lifestyle in a junta regime. It was the same Trujillo regime that caused Yolanda's parents and three sisters to flee their homeland in the early 1960's to the U.S. The story returns through a series of vignettes to the girls experiences and customs in a more genteel era. Where maids and chauffeurs were the order of the day, it lays the foundation for the sense of disillusionment and deprivation the girls feel in the United States where confrontations with schoolmates and unsavory exhibitionists only fuel their resilience. In addition to the normal difficulties associated with growing up, the girls contend with the confusion of having to forsake their native land with its Latin culture, tropical environment, extended family life, for a struggle with a strange language and even stranger culture. While in the Dominican Republic their mother, Laura, feeds the need in the "four girls" to seek their individuality by dressing them in identical outfits which differ only in color for each girl. The traditions and customs of the old both identify and isolate the girls in their new environment. The stories weave a tapestry of familial love, honor, confusion and tension. The girls are forever caught between who they were and where they came from, but never lose sight of who they have become. The author has presented a colorful tale in a semi-autobiographical work. Julia Alvarez had experienced being a minority living in the United States as a small child of 10 when she left the Dominican Republic. She touches the themes of minorities living in American society, the conflict of tradition versus change, and the role of the artist within society. It is an engaging and entertaining read, never boring, just like the Garcia girls.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I have read Esmeralda, Isabel & Cristina. Julia is my voice., November 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Plume Contemporary Fiction) (Paperback)

There is a point on the first chapter when Yolanda's husband ask her what language did she love in. This was the point I knew this book was going to be a very personal experience. Coming from a Hispanic country to worked in the United States, it never ocurred to me that to live and love was also going to be part of the experience. Reading this book was like talking to the friend that went on the same trip as you, only the week before.

Amazing how looking into somebody's soul can help you understand your own...

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A truly enjoyable book - fun!, August 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Hardcover)

I was first drawn to this book because the author is a female Latin-American writer. I have read some male authors (Marquez for one) and was completely swept away. But still I wished for a female perspective.

It would be unfair to compare "How the Garcia Girls.." with "A Thousand Years of Solitude" head to head because Ms. Alvarez is not attempting to write a saga or a great(long) novel here. Her stories are to be eaten like M&M's, singly or in a hnadful.

Ms. Alvarez's style is emminently readable. And the stories are quite engaging. I think it is a mistake to ask this to be a "novel" in the traditional sense. Many of the chapters first appeared as short stories and stand on their own. As a collection, they are like thumbing backwards through a photo album where we stop and relive/experience the story behind a moment.

If I have any criticism of this book is that I didn't feel I got to know each sister equally well, or rather, as well as I would have liked. But all in all I felt for the sisters, especially as they grew younger and relished the details of place and custom and family. It seems so personal I felt it must be somewhat autobiographical.

I recommend this highly.