How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Book Analysis (Essay Example)

It would be fair to say that an immigrant has their life easy after moving from their country? From my point of view, it would be unfair considering being an immigrant is not easy, leaving your country for whatever reason is already hard, I could not imagine being in a different place, where you do not even know the language, the environment is different, and sometimes do not even know anyone. And in the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, we get the opportunity to know about that kind of lifestyle, the reasons why someone has the need to emigrate to a foreign country, and how complex the process can be like facing discrimination and struggling with the language. 

Furthermore, there is a chance that in our lifetime we get to know different people who had to emigrate from their country, and if we stop for a moment to ask them their reason behind that decision, all their answers are going to be diverse. For example, we got to read the reason behind Carlo’s decision to emigrate to the United States, which was to save himself and his family from being killed by Trujillo. In chapter eleven we read about a panicked Carlos when he first saw two men walking toward his house, and at first, he did not have any worry until he saw the guns, which indicated that Trujillo sent them, and immediately and being cautious he left to hide in the little spot he had in the closet (142-143). On the other hand, there is me, an immigrant whose situation is completely different from the Garcia family. I emigrated from the Dominican Republic in 2020, not as a refugee or for health reasons, but to get a better quality of life. And to be honest, the process is not easy, in fact, I waited more than 6 years to get an appointment with the United States Embassy to get my green card. I also had to leave the college that I was attending over there, because in the end, moving here was more beneficial than staying there, where even getting a job is difficult if you do not have connections. 

But sometimes, I do regret coming here, because I can notice when I get bad looks when I am speaking Spanish in public; when I say where I am from, or when people make fun of my accent. And in the same way, like me, immigrants face those humiliations and discrimination every day, even worst, they get services denied for the fact that they are not citizens. We can take as an example the TEDx What marrying an immigrant taught me about cultural bias by Kyle Quinn where he explained with details about them being the object of cultural bias and discrimination when at first, they got denied service in the DMV until Kyle told the person at the window that he was a citizen and the behavior changed (3:14-5:11).

Equally important, is how we feel contradicted by the values we are taught and those new values that we learn when we come here, which I may say are quite different, In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, we got to see how contradicted someone can be when they are in between two ideas that are opposite. An example of that would be when Yolanda was in college and was talking about boys leaving her at the end because she did not want to sleep with them and she narrates ‘‘By the time I went to college, it was the late sixties, and everyone was sleeping around as a matter of principle’’ (Alvarez 69). On the other hand, we see that even if she was already Americanized, she stays true to his Dominican principle and values and she said no to sleeping with Rudolf Brodermann (Alvarez 79). 

Moreover, if we see the ‘‘negative’’ side of learning a new language or coming from a country where the language is different, is that we must get used to the slang and jokes, things that we do not learn when trying to speak another language. Because it can happen what happened to Yolanda in chapter 5, The Rudy Elmenhurst Story, where she felt like an outcast since it was a struggle for her sometimes to understand the jokes, ‘‘For the hundredth time, I cursed my immigrant origins. If only I too had been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was making on the last two digits of the year, 1969; I too would be having sex and smoking dope; I too would have suntanned parents who took me skiing in Colorado over Christmas break, and I would say things like “no shit,” without feeling like I was imitating someone else (Alvarez 74).

Now speaking positively about learning a new language, is that we get to make more connections with others, we have more ways to the culture and life. And it plays a crucial role in our life, we get better opportunities with education and even with getting better jobs. and as Lera Boroditsky stated in the article HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? ‘‘Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.’’

In conclusion, watching the title of the novel which is How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents suggested that the sisters somehow forgot their native language, which resulted in being Spanish, and how each one of them lost it in diverse ways. And how trauma, being judged, and feeling like an outcast can make you self-conscious to the point of erasing an important part of you. Therefore, the pathway of an immigrant is certainly not comfortable or easy, and how wanting to escape from an inconvenient situation is already hard, we must remain from any type of humiliation to the point where their dignity could be affected and give them respect that as a human they already deserve.