How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent is Julia Alvarez fictionalized account of her childhood when she moved with her family from the Dominican Republic to New York following the 1960 Trujillo revolution. Her story is told in alternating chapters through the eyes of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, and Sofia (Fifi) and follows them in reverse chronological order from adulthood to early childhood. Alvarez displays the Garcia de la Torre clan's love for the island on their path to [...]

Onvan : How the GarcÌ_a Girls Lost Their Accents - Nevisande : Julia Alvarez - ISBN : 452287073 - ISBN13 : 9780452287075 - Dar 304 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 1991

I was so intrigued by the title that I kept it on my to-read list for years, but when I finally settled down to read it, I didn't fall immediately in love. I felt the "voices" of the various sisters were too similar, and all of them seemed quite shallow. However, it is not without its merits. The book moves backwards in time, and the younger the girls got, the more interested I became in their characters. I especially liked reading about their lives before they moved to the States. My favorite p [...]

Julia Alvarez wrote one of my favorite essays in "Why I'm Still Married" so I was really excited when I found a copy of this book for $0.50 at tha library book sale. I read it on my way to Tucson last week, so I already latin food and culture on my mind!I really liked the way this book moved backwards in time, working its way from Yolanda's trip back to the Dominican Republic in the 1990's to her childhood on the island in the 1960's. For the most part, I enjoyed the book, but I thought it lacke [...]

I enjoyed this quite a lot, but I really think it should have been marketed as a book of short stories. Instead it's a book of short stories that is called a novel, yet has none of the cohesion or overarching plot required of a novel, though the stories are all about the same four women. It's also very obvious that many of these stories were originally published separately, as there's a lot of repeated background info, introducing characters as if we've never met them before when it's the fifth [...]

I had high hopes for How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. These hopes continued to grow after reading the two short stories “The Kiss” and “The Rudy Elmenhurst Story.” These were both two very well written, expressive, and generally entertaining stories that did well in holding the reader’s attention and delivered strong, powerful endings. However, as I read on I could not get myself to distinguish between the four Garcia girls: Carla, Sophia, Sandra, and Yolanda. [...]

divagaciones-de-una-poulain.blCómo las chicas García perdieron sus acentos, traducción literal del título de la novela, empieza con el regreso de Yolanda a su isla natal, Republica Dominicada, a los treinta y nueve, después de cinco años de no pisarla. Sus tías la obligan a hablar en español, aunque parece que se le han ido olvidando las palabras y lo único que quiere es ir al campo a comer guayabas, ella sola, en un carro y sin chaperón, lo que resulta un escándalo entre su familia. [...]

Maybe 3.5 stars. It was told in reverse chronological order, by a few different viewpoints, which got a bit confusing. Interesting novel about four sisters who grew up in the Dominican Republic and New York, and how their lives change because of that.

As the title suggests, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, is about four Dominican girls who moves to America and adjusting to the American culture, in terms of language, academics, and living standards. Back in the Dominican Republic, the four girls, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia all lives extravagant lives with their father. All four girls can be described as extremely rebellious again their family and traditional values, where there are sex, drugs, and criminal actions were involoves, [...]

I think this is a great read if you want to learn about the immigrant experience. If you'd like to see how subtly machismo and anti-blackness enters the daily lives of latinx families but how powerful they are, this would also be a good read.

Many books make their way into high school classrooms. Some of these books are met with great praise, while others are thrown into garbage cans never to be looked at again. However, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez is definitely a novel that does not deserve to be left within the grime of your trash. The novel follows the lives of four sisters named Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía who immigrate to the United States with their mother and father from the Dominican Repub [...]

Personally, I believe “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez is a pretty weak book. Her inspiration from the book came from real life experiences as she lived in the Dominican Republic the first ten years of her life until she had to flee due to her Father’s participation in a political rebellion. Although this book depicts her real life quite well, I don’t feel Julia does such a great job of getting her true emotions across by jumping from one story to another. Also [...]

Any amazing portrayal about a family from the Dominican Republic moving to New York. One great part about this book is that it isn't from only one person's perspective. It details the POV of daughters and parents, because they each had a different experience. Some wanted to quickly become as American as possible, some wanted to hold strongly to their Dominican roots. I love the way it is told via vignettes (great for my short attention span!). But my favorite aspect is how the story is told back [...]

First off, the reverse chronological thing just threw me. I had a hard time understanding who was crazy when and when they were crazy, if it was really crazy or just stream of consciousness writing. And as with a lot of minority authors, I don’t see why they have to focus on only negative experiences. I’m sure the Garcia girls had a lot of good experiences which shaped them, but Alvarez chose only to focus on the negative. There was so much sexual content in this book, I’d almost feel unco [...]

I absolutely loved this book. It's set up like a series of short stories about the family told in reverse chronological order. Here's why I loved it:1. Even as a second-generation Latino immigrant the stories resonated strongly with me. She perfectly captures that feeling of being between cultures.2. It was refreshing to see a loving father in the Latin-American genre. I feel like the few books that I've read always have either an absent or deadbeat dad figure. 3 It had a wonderful cast of four [...]

This is a beautifully written book. But it's one of those works of fiction that isn't really about anything in particular. Readers spend time with alternating Garcia girls in random order throughout a portion of their lives. There is no plot to speak of. The chapters are connected by the fact that one or more Garcia girl is featured in each of them, but you could read them in any order you wanted without impacting the reading experience. The chapters/scenes hold your attention in standalone fash [...]

This is unlike any book I've read before. Structurally, it's a collection of inter-connected short stories (which isn't the "unlike any book before" part), and instead of moving forward chronologically, the collection moves back in time. Each story takes place some time before the previous story. This is sort of like the Memento of novels! (Except without the murder and tattooes and amnesia.) This collection mimics the way you get to know someone: when you first meet them, you learn about the no [...]

Snapshot:The four Garcia daughters come of age and into wisdom while negotiating the transition from being Dominican nobles to being America immigrants visiting the island. Each section looks at an age in the life of the protagonists, beginning with their young adult lives revisiting family on the island. Successive chapters go back in time 5-10 years each time, eventually detailing how each of the Garcia girls became deeply complex Garcia women.Hook: This is a collection of first person narrati [...]

Wow I was under-impressed. This is the story of sisters who were born into the lap of luxury in South America and then were forced to migrate to North America for political reasons. But this is not the story of a family who had to struggle in America, it is the story of four girls, who even uprooted were never in a state of poverty and yet at some point in the novel each of the four girls gets looney and has to spend time either with a shrink or in a facility. While the family was forced to flee [...]

The Women's National Book Association sent this book to the White House today (March 20) in honor of Women's History Month: wnba-centennial/book-From the Women's National Book Association's press release:When political upheavals force the Garcia family to flee to the U.S. from their home in the Dominican Republic, they exchange their privileged former life for a modest existence in the Bronx. Alvarez tells the story of their adjustment to a new culture in a backwards chronology, focusing on the [...]

I chose to read this book for an independent reading project for English class; we had a list of authors to choose from and I'd been meaning to read something by Alvarez for a while, plus I own a copy. So I brought it on a long road trip and read the entire thing in the car (luckily I don't get carsick when I read in the car anymore, heh heh).I thought it was a beautiful book––amazing writing, a believable and emotional story, great characters. It really sucked me in and gripped me the whole [...]

This felt more like a collection of short stories than a novel, although the short stories were about the same 4 sisters. It read like they should be separate and we didn't have to read one to know what was going on in the others, and kept being "reintroduced" to people we already knew. I almost didn't finish it, but wanted to see whether it would redeem itself. Disappointing.

boo

This is the story of a family, focusing on four sisters, that moved from the Dominican Republic (to escape Trujillo) to New York. Alvarez tells the story backward, starting with the family when they are adults living in American and going back through their childhood in the Dominican Republic and their move to America. There's a lot to delve into here: the experience of moving to a new country, family dynamics within and outside of that experience, acculturating, etc. The problem for me was that [...]

I enjoyed this book the first time I read it but I enjoyed it even more when I reread it. Since I read this for the first time we have had an explosion of discussions in this country about immigration. With that perspective I realized that I had glossed over the effects of immigration on this family and they immigrated legally with some language skills and employment. However, fleeing Trujillo obviously added a traumatic element.I also enjoyed the backwards time line more the second time. I enjo [...]

Liked it a lotwanted to love it. The organization was intriguinga look back from the adult 'Garcia Girls,' through their teen years, and their childhood in NYC, back, finally to their early years as pampered princesses in the Dominican Republic, and the terrors that forced the family to abandon their home.Maybe it was because I read with my ears, and never 'heard' a distinct difference in the sisters' voices, but I never connected with them, even though Alvarez obviously worked hard to give each [...]

I did not fall in love with this book. I'm not sure if some of it was that I was reading it on an airplane, but it was having a hard time keeping my attention and I had to kind of force my way through it. It was more like a series of vignettes in no particular order; often, when a story is told out of order, there is some reason for it, but I couldn't figure this one out. Also, as many others have noted, I had a hard time distinguishing between the four daughters. There were names and numbers by [...]

Hmmmm.

Rarely do high school students enjoy the books they are assigned to read by their English teachers. However Julia Alvarez’s novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, proves that among the tiresome texts, there are also some texts that are refreshing. How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, describes the hard transition immigrants must make in order to feel at home in a new country. Garcia sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia move to the United States after their father gets into t [...]

Es una historia interesante de cuatro hermanas, que consta de 3 partes y se desarrolla de la situación actual (un poco antes de la publicación del libro) a la época en cuando estas eran niñas y ni tenían idea de que vivirían fuera de su país. Pienso que esto lo hace interesante ya que la mayoría de los libros que he leído van en orden cronológico ascendente y en la vida real conocemos a las personas primero antes que su historia, es decir; en sentido inverso.Para mi tiene sus altas y b [...]