In How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez, there are four sisters that adjust to living in America when their dad moves out of their original home, the Dominican Republic.
Honestly, I did not like this book. When I first read the preview for it, I instantly thought "Oh, it's in reverse chronological order and the narrator might switch off between the sisters so I can get different views." Not really. Most of the book was narrated either by Yolanda or Sofia, but with other characters narrating sometimes too. This is just one of the few weaknesses that I will mention.
For this book, I have notices a few weaknesses. That including how confused I got with the reverse chronological order of the story, and how there were so many different views amongst the characters. What I meant by that is that with the many characters that were mentioned in the book, most of them had different perspectives and it got sort of confusing.
What I have noticed also is that Julia Alvarez fails to mention some background information that would have been quite useful. For example, there is one quote that me and my group questioned quite often, between Yolanda and her parents:
“‘We love you.’ Her mother said it loud enough for two people’s worth. ‘Don’t we, Papi?’
‘Don’t what, Mami?’ Yo’s father turned.
‘Love her,’ his wife snapped.”(81-82)
In the book, for most of the time that Papi is in the room with Yolanda, he has his back turned towards the window most of the time. Which me and my group discovered, could have meant a bad relationship between the two, just like the bad relationship between Sofia and her dad. What that meant for me was that at the end of the book, when I finished was an empty part of my brain that was dying for more information. I wanted to reread the book just to see if I missed any vital information that could be useful, but I opted not to.
Speaking of strained relationships, the relationship between Sofia and her father was widely shown throughout the book, even in the 2nd and 3rd part where Alvarez leads to a thought of Sofia being sort of a rebel and not interested in what her family thinks of her. What I first thought of her when I read the whole Otto story was that she was brave and was not afraid to stand up to her father.
When I read the part of how the father discovered the letters from Otto to Sofia, I instantly thought that he was one of those dads, the one that love their daughters and will do anything to protect them, I had that thought up until the end of the first part, where I saw some tension going on between him and Yolanda.
“‘Are you a whore?’ the father interrogated his daughter.(30)
That line right there must have torn Sofia’s heart in some altering way. That’s one of those lines that kids never want to hear their parents say, including anything that has to do with the reproductive system. What also stood out to me with this quote is that Sofia didn’t do much to contradict his statement, she just said something else that no parent ever needs their kids to say to them:
“‘It’s none of your fucking business!’ [...] ‘You have no right,no right at all, to go through my stuff or read my mail!’”(30)
Like I have mentioned before, these are words and sentences that parents do not want to hear. This brings up another question to me as well..... do our parents have the right to look through our stuff and show them off to the world? Yes, they are our parents, but sooner or later, we will have to have a part of our lives that just cannot include them. For example, most parents would be on their child’s cases about how much effort they should put into school, and honestly, I just wish my parents would do the same thing. The others out there are complaining about how annoying it is to see their parents looking at their HW and Schoolloop all the time... at least they care. My parents don’t even know schoolloop exists no matter how many times I show them. They just tell me, “Get a 3.0,” and when I don’t they get mad at me. They always say I don’t do anything and I stay up really late. They don’t do tests every week and don’t have blog posts or essays to do. I would honestly do better if they cared, which they don’t. Right now, my parents are mad and my mom locked me out of my room because I’m working on this and they think I’m on facebook the entire time. Oh yeah, they don’t have to watch over their grandma(I love my grandma) on an oxygen tank 5 days a week. And they have no idea what extra-curricular activities are. Anyways, back to the real point of this, parents do have the right to get involved with our lives, they’re our parents, but there are lines. In which both Sofia and the dad crossed. Sofia should not have hid the letters and Otto from them, and the dad did not have to snoop around like Sherlock Holmes, elementary my dear friend.
All-in-all, I did not enjoy this book that much. It was okay at some parts, but I just did not enjoy it. The only good parts that I liked reading and would be more than happy to start reading again would be Part One.
Honestly, I did not like this book. When I first read the preview for it, I instantly thought "Oh, it's in reverse chronological order and the narrator might switch off between the sisters so I can get different views." Not really. Most of the book was narrated either by Yolanda or Sofia, but with other characters narrating sometimes too. This is just one of the few weaknesses that I will mention.
For this book, I have notices a few weaknesses. That including how confused I got with the reverse chronological order of the story, and how there were so many different views amongst the characters. What I meant by that is that with the many characters that were mentioned in the book, most of them had different perspectives and it got sort of confusing.
What I have noticed also is that Julia Alvarez fails to mention some background information that would have been quite useful. For example, there is one quote that me and my group questioned quite often, between Yolanda and her parents:
“‘We love you.’ Her mother said it loud enough for two people’s worth. ‘Don’t we, Papi?’
‘Don’t what, Mami?’ Yo’s father turned.
‘Love her,’ his wife snapped.”(81-82)
In the book, for most of the time that Papi is in the room with Yolanda, he has his back turned towards the window most of the time. Which me and my group discovered, could have meant a bad relationship between the two, just like the bad relationship between Sofia and her dad. What that meant for me was that at the end of the book, when I finished was an empty part of my brain that was dying for more information. I wanted to reread the book just to see if I missed any vital information that could be useful, but I opted not to.
Speaking of strained relationships, the relationship between Sofia and her father was widely shown throughout the book, even in the 2nd and 3rd part where Alvarez leads to a thought of Sofia being sort of a rebel and not interested in what her family thinks of her. What I first thought of her when I read the whole Otto story was that she was brave and was not afraid to stand up to her father.
When I read the part of how the father discovered the letters from Otto to Sofia, I instantly thought that he was one of those dads, the one that love their daughters and will do anything to protect them, I had that thought up until the end of the first part, where I saw some tension going on between him and Yolanda.
“‘Are you a whore?’ the father interrogated his daughter.(30)
That line right there must have torn Sofia’s heart in some altering way. That’s one of those lines that kids never want to hear their parents say, including anything that has to do with the reproductive system. What also stood out to me with this quote is that Sofia didn’t do much to contradict his statement, she just said something else that no parent ever needs their kids to say to them:
“‘It’s none of your fucking business!’ [...] ‘You have no right,no right at all, to go through my stuff or read my mail!’”(30)
Like I have mentioned before, these are words and sentences that parents do not want to hear. This brings up another question to me as well..... do our parents have the right to look through our stuff and show them off to the world? Yes, they are our parents, but sooner or later, we will have to have a part of our lives that just cannot include them. For example, most parents would be on their child’s cases about how much effort they should put into school, and honestly, I just wish my parents would do the same thing. The others out there are complaining about how annoying it is to see their parents looking at their HW and Schoolloop all the time... at least they care. My parents don’t even know schoolloop exists no matter how many times I show them. They just tell me, “Get a 3.0,” and when I don’t they get mad at me. They always say I don’t do anything and I stay up really late. They don’t do tests every week and don’t have blog posts or essays to do. I would honestly do better if they cared, which they don’t. Right now, my parents are mad and my mom locked me out of my room because I’m working on this and they think I’m on facebook the entire time. Oh yeah, they don’t have to watch over their grandma(I love my grandma) on an oxygen tank 5 days a week. And they have no idea what extra-curricular activities are. Anyways, back to the real point of this, parents do have the right to get involved with our lives, they’re our parents, but there are lines. In which both Sofia and the dad crossed. Sofia should not have hid the letters and Otto from them, and the dad did not have to snoop around like Sherlock Holmes, elementary my dear friend.
All-in-all, I did not enjoy this book that much. It was okay at some parts, but I just did not enjoy it. The only good parts that I liked reading and would be more than happy to start reading again would be Part One.
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