'How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents' By Julia Alvarez

We have two very different stories being told in “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” and in “Mama Day”. Both of them take place in different time frames and places. The story about the Garcia family leaving the Dominican Republican for New York and going through the growing pains of an immigrant family in a new land, takes place across three decades in the mid to late 20th century. Whereas Mama Day’s setting is in the South during the late 19th century to early 20th century and it’s about two lovers who have different backgrounds, coming to spend time in the fictional and supernatural island of Willow Springs, which is inspired by post-modern literature. The Garcia Girls is a very realistic approach to the immigrant experience in the …show more content…
In the story of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent”, Mrs. Alvarez emphasizes on a lot on the theme of language. It is a reoccurring topic throughout the tale from it’s beginning to end. It is the driving point of the story, in which the main characters are fully aware of its power throughout the tale. This is particularly fascinating for me to read, having come from a similar background as the Garcia family. In the story and both in my personal life, the family comes from the Caribbean over to the United States and there is a culture clash, mostly centered around language. I felt that I could relate to this, because just as the Garcia girls, my older family members felt that the younger members in our family were losing our roots with our home country. Mostly language had a big part to do with this. The Garcia family elder, such as the father, did not want to adapt to the new Americans customs on the culture, including learning the English language. Whereas his daughters were tired of standing out of the crowd, for not knowing perfect English with a more American accent. My personal response to this story was that it was very realistic and accurate. That is exactly what occurs to new immigrant families from other countries, especially those who had to relocate due to political reasons and were rather wealthy. Another example how language became very frustrating, especially to Carla was when a pervert in a car followed her home. While the man was subjecting her to disgusting sexual acts, her mother called the police. While Carla did not know how to express herself in either English or Spanish in regards to what the man was doing in the car, she became very frustrated. Especially since these were things that were fairly new to her, and she nothing about it. As it usually happens when learning a new language, she was only familiar