Garcia Girls Essay

Culture, stereotypes, and relationships are a part of our every day lives, but these every day things tend to change and be influenced by the course of our lives. Past events from a period time such as childhood can affect a person's views on relationships. If a person moves countries that can affect their views on culture and your gender and race can affect the stereotypes which you face. In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez culture, stereotypes, and relationships are shown and reflected by the lives of the four sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia.

Culture plays an important role in the novel. The story takes place in the United States and the Dominican Republic, where the views on certain subjects differ a lot. For example, in the vignette "Antojos", Yolanda returns back to Dominican Republic and as she is greeted by her family she is looked at in a weird way. Her family, especially the eldest ones pay attention specifically to how she acts and how her Spanish has changed. Lucinda asks Yolanda about her sisters and how they are. She begins to respond,

"In halting Spanish, Yolanda reports on her sisters. When she reverts to English, she is scolded, 'En espanol!' The more she practices, the sooner she'll be back into her native tongue, the aunts insist. Yes, and when she returns to the States, she'll find herself suddenly going blank over some word in English or, like her mother, mixing up some common phrase. This time however Yolanda is not so sure she'll be going back. But that is a secret." (7).

Yolanda has some trouble with her Spanish and that is what leads her relatives to believe that her time in the United States has not done her good. They are considering to keep her in the Dominican Republic in order to tye her back with her Latin roots. In most Latin cultures it is a custom for every family member to be able to speak fluent Spanish and know how things happen in their home country. The eldest family members tend to be the ones that get extremely uptight by staying close to their roots because they have lived their entire lives in their country and they expect to see the younger generations to respect that and keep that tradition going. For the elders, to see the younger generations forgot about their cultures is like a slap to the face fore the elders. It is as if everything they worked and fought for is gone. They lose respect for the younger ones. This what sort of happened between Sofia and her father.

In the vignette "The kiss" the relationship between Sofia and her father is introduced when Sofia decides to have her father's birthday party at her house. It was not planned to be at her house but Sofia insisted, "And yet, she,of all the daughters, did not want to be the absent one because for the first time since she'd run off with her husband six years ago, she and her father were on speaking terms. In fact, the old man had been out to see her - or really to see his grandson - twice." (26). Sofia and her father have not had the best of relationships, but recently they have been speaking to each other. He may be speaking to her because the fact she has a boy or maybe because he has finally let their differences aside. Her father has chosen not to speak to her because as a child she ran way from home with her husband, but I believe that there was more to this story, but the book did not reveal the true source of their dis functional relationship. I think that the overall relationship between men and women has to do with the reason behind this relationship.

In the novel, the overall relationship between men and women is that men tend to be on the top and have the final word in everything while women are to just shut up and listen. This is exemplified when Sofia is forced to stay a year in the Dominican Republic for getting caught with a bag of weed. While in the Dominican Republic, she gets into an abusive relationship with her cousin Manuel. One day he sees her reading a book and he responds by taking it away, "'This,' Manuel Gustavo says, holding the book up like a dirty diaper, 'is junk in your head. You have better things to do.' He tosses the book on the coffee table." (120). This is a clear example of how men in the Dominican Republic tend to abuse their women by not allowing them to read and have an education. Not only does he strip her of her education, but he also strips her clothes off and forces her to have sex with him. Like in the Dominican Republic, many Latin countries tend to have their men on the top and the women on the bottom. It is a sad reality, but men do hold the upper hand and I believe that many women just live their lives with this sad fact, not attempting to change or fight back. Sofia attempted to to fight back against this, but at the end of the day I believe that this relationship in particular is what shapes Sofia into the adult that she is.

In conclusion, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents  tells the compelling story of culture, stereotypes, and relationships through the lives of these four sisters. Culture is reflected by Yolanda's visit back to the Dominican Republic. Relationships are reflected by the relationship between Sofia and her father. Finally, stereotypes are shown by the fact that men are seen as the top dog and are superior to women. Overall, this was a very good and intriguing book.