Friday, June 15, 2012
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent
The Garcia girls travel to America with their family, fleeing the Trujillo regime. Despite the fact that their flight is as a family, their journeys create significantly different effects in each sister. Choose one sister whose changes most strike you and explain why her changes are most striking.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I chose Yolanda; she is the most interesting of the sisters. She has a very unique personality that stands out from her sisters. They are all more obedient and more proper then she. She goes through phases as a child. First she is the girl in pink because her mother color-coded their clothes as children. She is very stubborn, her mother tried to convince her to switch colors with her little sister but she refused. They are constantly saying, "She is no fool that one". She then changes from the girl in pink to a bit of a tomboy who wants to wear her cowgirl outfit. She likes to drive her mother crazy at times, especially when she got a drum for Christmas. She is very interesting to me because I didn’t really take interest in the other sisters; I only remember one or two things about each of them because they are not mentioned as much as yoyo, and the stories their mother tells about them aren’t as interesting. I also like her because she gets very onto that story about the sultan, she seems more artistic and adventurous then her sisters. At the end of the book I got confused because it seemed like she went crazy being haunted by nightmares and a lot of weird cats, she would express things in her art all her bad experiences. I also found this book in general confusing to read. It jumped around from the girls being adults to kids a lot, and their stories were being told simultaneously but they were constantly being interrupted by each other from chapter to chapter.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Yolanda acts as the more rebellious sister in the sense that she doesn't share many things in common with her sisters. She is very unique as she moves from a girl who likes to wear pink dresses to a girl, as you said, who likes to wear cowgirl outfits.
DeleteWhile all four girls went through changes of their own, the one with the most, to me, is Yolanda as well. In terms of changing, I think of shifting through the most stages of personalities. I agree with Elizabeth in her having the most unique personality, starting as a tomboy as a little girl. Once in America, she over dramatized love, putting her through mental issues that caused her to lose her talents in English which, as a poet, are vital. After this, Yolanda went back to the Dominican Republic, but found that her Spanish wasn't what it used to be as well, and found herself in a rut of depression. She now searches in the past for the answers to current issues in her family, even though most of them lie in her. Yolanda's changes are all striking to me because her changes, out of all four girls, were excessively dramatic. It seemed as though the author over dramatized Yolanda's changes to show the less sunny side of moving to a different country.
ReplyDeleteI completelty agree Tylar, Yolanda was most certainly the most interesting sister. There was so much focus on her that I hardly noticed the other girls. I had never thought about her drama and her depression as a way of showing the dificulty of moving to a new country. That is a very good point.
DeleteThe sister whose changes strike me the most is Sofia. As the youngest of three children, one of whom is eight years older than I am, I can relate to her. Sofia is a rather contradicting character who really seems to rebel from the rest of her family in a significantly more extreme manner than the other girls. In the Dominican Republic, a woman who has many sexual partners is looked down upon greatly - which is an apparent problem for Sofia. I believe that her promiscuity is a result of being the youngest of the girls, seeing her sisters grow up and feeling pressured to grow up faster than what would normally be expected of a girl her age. The color that Sofia was "assigned" as a girl is white, symbolic of innocence, purity and virginity - none of which are words I would use to describe her. Sofia is a character whose desire to become similar to her sisters made her arguably the most unique and rebellious of the four. Stated simply, an attempt to become one thing led to her becoming the polar opposite of what she was aiming for - a striking, unexpected and contradictory change if there was one.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about her being the girl in white as symbolisim for innocence. I think you are right that maybe because she was cast as the perfect innocent young sister, that caused her to rebel. I agree she did aspire to be more like her sisters, and since Yolanda was getting so much atention she had to act out in an effort for antention and a more unique personality.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the sister that has changed the most is Yolanda. She seems to have the most distinctive personality, like Tylar and Elizabeth said, mainly because she learned English and when she went back to the Dominican Republic, her Spanish seemed "rusty" to her. I feel that when she was in America, she tried many different things, such as finding a love interest, but maybe over exaggerating what it was. To me the most dramatic change in Yolanda's journey throughout the story was when she came back to the Dominican Republic and seemed more americanized.
ReplyDeleteI agree that her loss of ability to speak her native language makes for an interesting and striking change. Language is one of the most important things in defining nationality, which is one of the most important things in defining self. The fact that she forgets her Spanish makes her estranged from her native country and her family.
DeleteI disagree in saying that Yolanda was the sister that changed the most, I think her some of her experiences as a child (with her cousin and the cat) follow her in to adulthood, causing problems in her relationships.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is easy to answer that Yolanda was affected the most by the journey to America, but I don’t necessarily think that is true. In reading this book, the stories about Yolanda stood out to me because of her unique personality and her wild and crazy nature. However, Yolanda has had a wild nature since the very beginning. Even as a child, her behavior was not much tamer than how she acted as she became a woman. I agree with Pat in that Sofia was affected the most by the family’s journeys. Because there are very few stories about Sofia as a young child in the novel, it is fair to assume that her childhood was not as outrageous as those of her sisters. However, as they grow up, Sofia evolves more and more into the most rebellious of the four girls. Her rebellion begins when she is caught with marijuana and is sent to live on the island. Her dating experiences with their illegitimate cousin further increase her reputation as the wildest of the four. Then, she commits the ultimate act of rebellion and runs off to marry a Russian man. Reasons for rebellion often start with a lack of attention during a difficult time. As Sofia’s sisters grew up and had many mishaps of their own, the attention was often on them. This led her to rebel and be more affected by the family’s several experiences than the other three sisters were.
ReplyDeleteI some what agree with Chloe on the subject of Sofia. Sofia had the wild childhood and finally settled down with her husband to a mildly calm life. I feel that she changed the most in her seek for her father's approval. She went from being the girl who didn't care what anyone, let alone her family, think of her, to the girl who is desperate for her father's attention and love. Much like her daughter, Sofia became very uncomfortable when her father was only giving her son attention. I feel that Sofia's daughter not only showed the father's biased behavior, but also represented Sofia's own desperate craving of love from her father and jealousness that her son was getting more affection than she.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the book refers to Sofia at one point as "the other great power of the house," which means she is the strongest of the sisters. she goes from being the strongest to being the weakest in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion Sofia as the youngest, not only looks up to her sisters but is also jealous of them. This instigates the changes in her. She uses her sexuality as a way to prove that she too is grown up. She seems to need the attention from others (especially her father) to prove her importance. Though she changes throughout the story, like the rest of her sister the changes do not follow a pattern, meaning rather then being linear, they seem to go and forth, especially in terms of her maturity.
ReplyDelete