How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez Summary
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How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a well written coming of age novel written by Julia Alvarez that had a very unique and unexpected spin on it. Unlike other novels, the events in this novel do not go forward in time but rather backwards. It starts off during the main characters adulthood and finishes with their childhoods. I, personally, find this to be a nice concept that should make for an interesting read and make the book infinitely more fascinating. However, it fails to do so.
Although the idea of finishing the book in the past and watching it align with the present is rather interesting and seems exciting, this book brings few other fascinating points. The book is beautifully written and is well adorned with details to help…show more content… Yolanda is the main focus of this story in the sense that her character and personality are revealed more than any other character’s but by having the story move backwards through time, and pairing that with the switching perspectives, we can uncover more knowledge about the other sisters as well as the rest of the family. By reading the first part (part 1/3) we can get a sense of who the characters are and understand certain scenarios in their life but after reading the final part we can understand why they are who they are, how they are where they are, and we can fully understand the closeness of the sisters and the family. Not only do we learn more about the family by having read the first chapter of their lives last, we can learn more about their experience as immigrants. During the first part, there is a scene in which Yolanda says “I would never find someone who would understand my particular mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles.” Upon originally reading this, the word “never” seemed rather exaggerative but as I read further, I realized that it was completely appropriate due to the fact that even over the course of so many years she had never found anyone who understood