Book Review: How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

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Recommended: Role of women in general literature

There are seven billion humans living on planet earth, with hundreds of different cultures and ethnicities. As the leading species on earth, humans have further felt the need to also have a dominant gender. This title is given to the males of society. In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, the main characters experience a firsthand look to how male dominance prevails in not only the Dominican Republic but also in America. The Garcia family is a prestigious family line in the Dominican Republic, as a result the children of the family have a traditional and very controlled upbringing. The Garcia family moves from the Dominican Republic to the United States which causes the children of the family: Sofia, Yolanda, …show more content…

After her relationship with Rudy ends on a sour note, Yolanda mentions how “[She] became more and more of a recluse, avoiding our old haunts for fear of running into him” (Alvarez 99). Although the relationship ended, Rudy still holds some control over Yolanda even though he is not physically there. Not only did Rudy change her life, but he influenced her decisions and tried to manipulate her cultural values in order to get what he wanted, which was sex. As Rudy failed at changing Yolanda’s views, he left her and moved onto another college girl that would conform to his requests. Not only did this leave Yolanda in shambles because of her past male partner, but she had to find a way to control her -life again without the influence of Rudy. Northampton Review is a class at Smith College studying literary works by Latinas. One student Jen Calabrese mentioned how “Yolanda, finds her romantic relationships complicated by her linguistic and cultural background” (Calabrese paragraph 2). Through the timeline of the novel, Yolanda struggles to connect with the men she finds in America because of the different values she has as a woman from Dominican culture. Her cultural differences led to her Rudy wanting to change Yolanda in order to get the satisfaction he wanted from her. Not only that, but as a result of Rudy’s pushiness towards the idea of having sexual intercourse leads Yolanda

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