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

In the Time of the Butterflies- Critical Analysis The novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez was published in 1994 and was written as a tribute to the Mirabal sisters, better knowns as “Las Mariposas” (the butterflies). These sisters were women who stood up against the transgressions in their country—a country that was under a governance of a cruel dictator known as Raphael Leonidas Trujillo. It just so happened to be that this circumstance is the reason as to why the Alvarez family had to move back to New York City. Her father joined the underground assembly in an endeavor of plotting to overthrow Trujillo.

In the book “Farewell to Manzanar,” the author Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, discovers her identity admits challenging circumstances. After Manzanar, Jeanne faced many difficulties. Such as feeling out of place at school. For instance, it states “and my feeling at eleven, went something like this: you are going to invisible anyways, so why not completely disappear (Farewell to Manzanar page 114).” This quote shows how Jeanne felt about herself, struggling and feeling left out.

Oftentimes, societal problems span across space and time. This is certainly evident in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents a novel in which women are treated peripherally in two starkly different societies. Contextually, the Dominican Republic and the United States are very dissimilar countries in terms of culture, economic development, and governmental structure which all contribute to the manner in which each society treats women. The García girls’ movement between countries helps display these distinctions. Ultimately, women are marginalized in both Dominican and American societies where they are treated as inferior and discriminated against as a result of factors including gender, race, culture, and social class.

“How the Garcia girls lost their accents” is a narrative written by Julia Alvarez describing her childhood and adult life while transitioning from one culture and country to another unwillingly. The book bounces from year to year and from childhood and adult hood by the chapter and can be confusing to follow in the beginning. Some chapters could have been moved around and placed in a different order with little effect to the story as a whole but there is one chapter that is critical based on where it is placed, “ The Drum”. This chapter is placed last because it contains extreme imagery about the entirety of what we just read. It may just seem like a random story about a drum set and some cats but if we delve deeper into the significance of

She spent most of her childhood in the Dominican Republic until the age of ten. At ten Julia Alvarez and her family returned to the United States. Her father who was a doctor that worked in a nearby hospital got involved in the underground. Her father got involved in an underground organization that was planning on taking down the dictator. Julia’s father received his education in the United States.

Names/Nombres In the article "Names/Nombres, Julia Alvarez discusses about her life from the Dominican Republic to the US. She changes her personality throughout her school life as for changing her own personal name too. Since every person she knew called her differently, she didn't know what to go by.

In “Wildwood”, Junot Diaz presents a troubled teenager by the name Lola to have distinct conflicting values with her mother. Her mother has controversial Dominican norms and responsibilities. These norms are not what Lola wants to be. Her mother soon gets sick and increases Lola’s feelings to take action on how she wants to live her life. When Lola and her mom continue to carry their abusive conflict, Lola decides to run away to Wildwood.

Imagine you and your family living under a gruesome dictator and having no freedom . Julia alvarez “ a genetics of justice “ is a novel about a young girl and her family living under a dictator with a totalitarian government in the dominican government. In this novel you learn about her journey and how she becomes to be the women she is today . “No flies fly into a closed mouth “is a quote used by her mother through the text. In the novel it also talks about the dictator and is unusual daily life .

Identity speaks of who we are as individuals but it also comes from two different groups: social and cultural. These groups are connected to power, values and ideology. Social identities are related to how we interact with people and how we present ourselves. Meanwhile cultural identities relate to society in whole such as religion, values, etc. In this paper I will talk about the dominant and subordinate identities.

In Mexican American society , women are deemed inferior to men, evident in traditional family roles, the male is the head of the family who provides for the family , while the woman stays at home to look after the children she is expected to provide for her husband . In the third vignette of ‘The House on Mango Street’ titled ‘Boys and Girls’ the reader is informed of the division between men and women when Esperanza refers to herself and her sister Nenny , and her brothers, “They’ve got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can’t be seen talking to girls”. The male dominance begins at a very young age.

Throughout history, women have made a name for themselves. By rising up and fighting for something that they believed in, the Mirabal sisters made a name for themselves in the Dominican Republic and in Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of the Butterflies. By applying a theory to a novel, readers can relate the book to the world they are living in today (Davidson). Feminism can be defined as a dynamic philosophy and social movement that advocates for human rights and gender equality (“Feminism”). Feminist Theory involves looking at how women in novels are portrayed, how female characters are reinforcing stereotypes or undermining them, and the challenges that female characters face (Davidson).

She became more worried about fitting in and having friends then of being proud of who she was and where she came from. This proves the harshness of moving to a new country during the 60s and possibly even now. There is a constant need to change and adapt yourself in order to be accepted. However, by finally accepting herself nearing the end, Julia was able to laugh at all the names she was given while still having a connection with herself and her

Márquez ridicules traditional gender norms and the sociocultural pressures against men and women through repeatedly criticizing gender expectations held by both men and women in the novel. Márquez juxtaposes the role of men with that of women in Colombian society, writing that “brothers were brought up to be men” and “the girls had been reared to get married” (p.30). Contemporary readers may expect the sentence to read ‘the girls had been brought up to be women’ but Márquez wryly mocks Colombian values by challenging the perceptions of gender held by readers. Juxtaposition is utilised by the author to highlight the power imbalance between men and women in Colombian society, effectively satirizing gender roles. Additionally, Márquez shapes meaning in the sentence with diction through the utilisation of the word ‘brought up’ for men, and ‘reared’ for women, a word which is typically reserved for raising animals.

Introduction The concept of identity has been a notion of significant interest not just to sociologists and psychologists, but also to individuals found in a social context of perpetually trying to define themselves. Often times, identities are given to individuals based on their social status within a certain community, after the assessment of predominant characteristics that said individual has. However, within the context of an ethnicity, the concept identity is most probably applied to all members of the ethnical group, and not just one individual. When there is one identity designated for the entire group, often times the factor of “individuality” loses its significance, especially when referring to the relationship between the ethnic

Language and Identity Language and Identity have a way of representing each other. It can be difficult to have one without the other, for example in Naylor and Gates articles both show examples of how Language and Identity go hand and hand. When they are both involved in situations of discrimination, language against Gate’s father and Naylor was not representing who they were. When identity is challenged by language it is important for someone to know who they are so they don’t start to think of themselves in the negative ways people that don’t know them think. Each individual is special.