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U Section of the San Bernardino SUN March 11, 2007 
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez Plume, 2005, c1991 
San Bernardino ReadsSisters Lose Their Accents in a New Land Four sisters brought up in the Dominican Republic in old world luxury, find themselves at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder when their family emigrates to the U.S. "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez follows these sisters into adulthood with random scenes from their Americanization. Sadly, the tyranny of political correctness has impoverished our speech and limited our understanding of much in life by striking out of our lexicon words like Americanization. But in 1960 when the Garcia family emigrated to the U.S., losing one's accent was a metaphor for becoming thoroughly American. "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" is, presumably, a thinly veiled fictionalized account of the author's own Americanization. Like the father of the four Garcia girls, Julia Alvarez's father was a doctor in the Dominican Republic who took part in a plot against dictator Trujillo and had to flee the country in a rush. The Garcia de la Torre girls live in cosseted luxury on an enormous family compound belonging to their maternal grandparents - Papito and Mamita, direct descendants of the conquistadores. There, thanks to Papito's largesse, each of the five de la Torre siblings and their families has a house and servants while sharing in cloying proximity everything else - gossip, meals, the gardens and the swimming pool. In spite of the American education of the de la Torre men in Ivy League schools and frequent travels to the U.S., the family remains provincial and patriarchal. Moms stay home to tend to numerous children and run the households, girls are chaperoned and trained to make advantageous marriages and everyone is protected from coming in contact with whatever it is that lies outside the family compound. The entire Garcia family flees the Dominican Republic just as the dictator's henchmen are closing in on those conspiring to overthrow him. Unwillingly, the Garcia girls and their parents find themselves in America, somewhere near New York City. American society of 1960 was predominantly WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and it would be another ten years at least before the idea of diversity would enter American mentality. "We didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer," writes Alvarez. "We had only second-hand stuff, rental houses in one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another, clothes at Round Robin, a black and white TV afflicted with wavy lines." Derogatory ethnic slurs are hurled at the girls at school; neighbors look upon the family with suspicion and derision. Alienation and a sense of displacement make the girls long to return home. But as one of them finds out twenty-nine years later when she visits the island as an American, you really can't go home again. As in the case of educated and hard working immigrants, the girls' father begins to earn enough money. To guard them from the effects of the disintegrating American morality, he packs his daughters off to all-girls boarding schools. What Papi and Mami Garcia didn't bargain for was the radical transformation of American society that took place in the 1960s. Alvarez does not write about the Civil Rights and feminists movements or about the drug and sex experimentation in American universities of the 1960s but their profound effects on the Garcia girls are evident in the way their lives turn out. The 1960s changes are in the novel's subtext. The Garcia girls had to acclimate not only to the WASP society lingering on from the 1950s but to also fit in the new America of the 1960s. Although Alvarez came from a privileged and wealthy family, she was not spared the usual sense of displacement and alienation all immigrants encounter. She pined for the familiarity of her homeland. She discovered the healing power of the written word accidentally. "Coming to this county," Alvarez says in an interview with Library Journal, "I discovered books. I found in books a place to go to." In an effort to bring reading to a place of preeminence in the life of the community, the San Bernardino Public Library is inviting everyone to participate in readings and discussions of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" - a book that will resonate with many immigrants. Copies of the book are available for checkout or purchase at $11.00 at all city libraries. There will be a book discussion open to the general public on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 6:00 pm at Feldheym Central Library. Please join us on Thursday, March 29 at 6:00 pm for a literary evening with author Julia Alvarez. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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