Summary Of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez

In a world where a single event can shape the perception of individuals or specific groups, the Garcia family attempts to overcome various challenges. They start to lose aspects of what make them unique, such as their accents and cultural heritage, illustrating the reality many face worldwide due to the lack of celebration in diversity. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez is a historical fiction novel that unravels the difficult transition for the four Garcia girls- Sandi, Sophia, Yolanda, and Carla alongside their parents from the Dominican Republic to the United States. It begins with the naive childhood of toddlers living amongst the uncertainty of a tyrannical director that their father attempted to overthrow in the
Based on these stereotypes, it can cause the reader to truly reflect on inequity, which can often be applied to not just immigrants, but also certain groups of people within society. By showing the negative tolls that are taken on the Garcia family with the ongoing pressure to fit in, causing the loss of culture and traditions, the reader is encouraged to view past the often one-sided perspective on immigrants, promoting positive change by showing their upsetting realities. To further explain, one example that conveys the difficulties experienced by many immigrants is when Laura dreams of creating a successful invention. She aspires that her potential success could make it worth the difficulties she faced, only to be outcompeted by Americans with their own inventions. She begins to fully lose hope in trying to publicize her voice and ideology, as Americans seem to always have superior power over immigrants. Alvarez clearly shows the discouragement enforced on Laura through her voice when she states, “What use was it trying to compete with the Americans? They would always have the head start. It was their country, after all. Best stick close to home” (Alvarez 140). Laura