How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez - Essay Example

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Introduction How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents is a challenging novel. The novel narrates thirty years in the lives of four sisters who emigrated with their family from the Dominican Republic to the United States. The family was forced to leave the Dominican Republic because of their father’s opposition to the oppressive dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. It is told in reverse chronological order by multiple narrators. The novel begins with the adult sisters living in the United States and ends with their childhood in the Dominican Republic. An image introduced in the title is the sisters accents. Born in the Spanish speaking Dominican Republic their first language is Spanish. Moving to the predominantly English-speaking United States the sisters must learn English and then over time their accents become less and less evident. Since the novel is told in reverse chronological order their accents, and the role of Spanish in their lives, grows over the course of the novel. The accent symbolizes their place of birth and its loss speaks to their increasing integration into American society and the struggles that accompany this integration. In this sense it is a novel of cultural crossings, the phrase used by Mitchell. (1999). The following discussion will focus on this cultural crossing, the contrasts between life in the Dominican Republic and the United States, and the process of transition. The issue of cultural crossing will be examined in three broad categories. First, the impact of immigration and integration into American society will be considered in terms of class. Then the changes and challenges in family life will be examined. The third section will focus of the impact of immigration and integration in terms of tradition will be examined. The concluding section will return to the symbols and metaphors of accents and language. Class The move to the United States immediately subjects the family to the cultural shock of a significant change in status. By the standards of the Dominican Republic the family were wealthy members of the elite. Father Carlos was involved in opposition to the military dictatorship, the event that forced them to leave the Dominican Republic, but this very fact, and his ability to secure the support of a CIA operative to get to the United States speak to his membership in the politically active and influential elite. His wife, Lauras family is also wealthy and members of the Dominican elite. When the family arrives in New York City all of this abruptly changes. They are no longer surrounded by wealth and wealthy family members. They no longer have maids and household staff. They are just faceless immigrant members of the lower middle class and their former status as members of the Dominican elite is unknown, unnoticed and of little help as Carlos seeks work and Laura struggles to adopt to her new status. On the upside, this sudden decline in social status, motivates Laura to become strongly supportive of her daughters and their dreams of achieving the American Dream. Rudy Brodermann Elmenhurst, III captures this changing social status in his persona and his romance with Yolanda. His name epitomizes the American elite. It is a name that would fit right in at an Ivy League school. His status is the status that Yolandas family once had in the Dominican Republic. However, Rudy sees her not as a fellow member of the elite but as an available sexual partner. With Yolanda he considers the word fuck as courtship. This demonstrates his treatment of her as less than, as not a member of the elite as he is and as Yolanda was in the Dominican Republic. Immigration to the United States frees the family from possible political persecution for Carlos opposition to the military dictatorship. It also offers the possibility of a better life: The possibility of attaining the American Dream of wealth, freedom and happiness. However, in the most immediate sense it means a significant decline in social status, social class and socio-economic status. They are no longer influential members of the elite, they are simply faceless Dominican immigrants. Family The immigration of the Garcia girls and their immediate family amounts to a physical rift in the family. In terms of the extended family some are now located geographically in the United States and others remain in the Dominican Republic. The geographic proximity of the family, living together in a large compound comprised of individual houses, is disrupted. Moreover, it is disrupted significantly, part of he family does not relocate to another part of the Dominican Republic, they actually leave the island. On a deeper level the nuclear family that immigrates begins to change its family dynamic. It is symbolic of this that Carla leaves the family home as a manifestation of her rebellion. Her sister Sophia uses her sexuality and sexual liberation as a tool to humiliate her father and demonstrate her independence of the constraints of family life and traditional family roles. It is also significant that Yolandas breakdown occurs in the family home. In the United States the family and the family home no longer offer the safety and security that they did in the Dominican Republic. Tradition The tension between tradition and assimilation is captured in Yolandas first relationship in the United States. She realizes that she may not ever be understood by an American man because her history is uniquely bi-cultural. To Yolanda being a Roman Catholic and an agnostic is the product of her heritage: Confusing and contradictory admittedly but still an integral part of her being. She laments that this may never be understandable to an American man: “"I would never find someone who would understand my particular mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles." (Alvarez, 99) On another level this captures also a dilemma within Yolanda. Her life and perceptions are a combination of traditions. Her Americanism will always be layered over her acquired American attitudes and behaviors. In this sense she is adrift between cultures. She has a “fragmented self”, she is neither Spanish/Dominican nor is she Anglo/American. (Barak, 1998, 169) She will always be a hybrid combining the cultural traditions she absorbed in childhood and the American culture that she acquired as a young woman. For Yolanda tradition is always present but never the secure bedrock that tradition is for women born in the Dominican Republic who spend their lives in the Dominican Republic, or women born in America who spend their entire lives in America. The conflict with tradition is also revealed in one of the first scenes in the novel when Yolanda visits the Dominican Republic. Her trip is inspired by the hope of re-connecting with her Dominican heritage. However, she undertakes a trip alone as a woman, in contrast with Dominican tradition regarding single women traveling alone and finds herself explaining herself and her situation by resorting to speaking English and being taken for an American: “Then, as if the admission itself loosens her tongue, she begins to speak, English, a few words, of apology at first, then a great flood of explanation...” This turn of events relieves her “pounding heart”. In the Dominican Republic she has to resort to being an American to provide a meaningful explanation for her behavior. However, that does not mean that she is accepted in America where she has to deal with racial slurs because she is taken to be a Spanish foreigner, a spic: “the Irish kids whose grandparents had been micks were calling them spics" and her sister Carla has schoolmates yell at her, “"Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!" (Alvarez, 2010, 135, 153) The sisters are foreigners and outsiders in both cultures: They have one foot in both and two feet in neither. According to William Luis, for Yolanda, this incident symbolizes that, “the past ceases to exist as an island reality and is interpreted in the perspective of the mainland culture.” (Luis, 839) Conclusions The issue of accents in the broadest context of language is omnipresent throughout the novel. When Yolanda suffers a breakdown it is presented as an inability to use language in a meaningful way. Like a parrot rather than a human she can only babble meaningless rhymes, "Doc, rock, smock, luck." Competency is symbolized as proper use of language and mental incompetency is defined as the inability to use language properly. Even the exhibitionist who confronts Carla disturbs her by talking dirty as much as his behavior upsets her. In this sense an accent symbolizes the conflict between two cultures. Assimilation is losing ones accent a metaphor for becoming American, while having an accent is evidence of layering American language over Spanish and Dominican heritage. Losing ones accent refers not just to language. It also refers to losing the accent of Dominican culture and tradition. In this sense How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is about the four sisters losing their accents but it is also about much more. It is a novel that documents the changes in social status that come with immigration. It is a novel about the changes in family roles, responsibilities and organization that follow immigration. It is a novel of the conflict between the Dominican cultural traditions of the sisters birth and the culture and society that they are building their adult lives in. All of these changes and conflicts are encapsulated in the language issues that are omnipresent in the novel. References Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill, 2010. Print. Barak, Julie. ""Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre": A Second Coming into Language in Julia Alvarezs How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", MELUS, Spring 1998, 23 (1): 159–176. Hoffman, Joan M. , "She Wants to be Called Yolanda Now: Identity, Language, and the Third Sister in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", Bilingual Review, (January-April 1998) 23 (1): 21–28. Luis, William, "A Search for Identity in Julia Alvarezs How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", Callaloo, (Summer 2000) 23 (3): 839–849 Mitchell, David D. “The Accent of Loss: Cultural Crossings as Context in Julia Alvarezs How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” in Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cultural Identity in a Multicultural Context. Editor Timothy B. Powell. NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999, 165-184. Read More