How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

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How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a novel of acculturation by Julia Álvarez first published in 1992. Told in reverse chronological order and from shifting points of view, the novel, which consists of 15 interconnected short stories, covers more than 30 years in the lives of four sisters very close in age who, together with their parents, are forced out of Trujillo's Dominican Republic and start a new life in New York City.

[edit] Survey of chapters

Part I (covering events between 1989 and 1972)

"Antojos"
"The Kiss"
"The Four Girls"
"Joe"
"The Rudy Elmenhurst Story"

Part II (1970—1960)

"A Regular Revolution"
"Daughter of Invention"
"Trespass"
"Snow"
"Floor Show"

Part III (1960—1956)

"The Blood of the Conquistadores"
"The Human Body"
"Still Lives"
"An American Surprise"
"The Drum"

[edit] Outline of the plot

The Garcías are one of the prominent and wealthy Dominican clans tracing their roots back to the Conquistadores. Carlos García, a physician and the head of the family, is the youngest of 35 children his father sired during his lifetime, both in and out of wedlock. Laura, Carlos's wife, also comes from an important family: her father is a factory owner and a diplomat with the United Nations. Many members of the extended family live as neighbours in large houses on an expansive compound with numerous servants. In the early 1950s the García girls are born. Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofía enjoy a happy, protected childhood and are brought up by their parents, aunts and uncles to preserve the family traditions. Their countless cousins serve them as playmates.

However, their idyll is disturbed when visits to, and raids of, the family property by the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, dictator Trujillo's secret police, increase in frequency and severity. At one point Carlos García, who is suspected of belonging to a group of people plotting to overthrow the régime, escapes them by the skin of his teeth by hiding in a purpose-built secret chamber accessible from his bedroom cupboard. Immediately afterwards, the García family leave the island to go on an extended holiday in the United States. Leaving most of their possessions behind, they settle down in New York City, now confined to a modest-sized apartment without any domestic workers.

The Garcías have not come to America unprepared. Laura García has gone to school in the States, and has a good command of English; her husband has been there on his frequent business trips and knows people who are in a position to help him find a job despite the fact that his doctor's diploma is not recognized in the new country. For their girls, the couple have secured places at traditional Catholic schools where they will also be taught to speak accent-free English.

The girls, however, have no difficulty "losing their accents" and, along with them, the customs and traditions of the old country. While during their first few months in New York they regularly pray to God that they will soon be able to return to their homeland, they quickly start appreciating the advantages of living in a "free country" so that even being sent back to the Dominican Republic for the summer becomes a form of punishment for them. For example, according to the "old rules," a teenage girl must not go out unchaperoned, but in the United States of the 1960s this is practically unheard of. Gradually, their parents give in to the way of life that surrounds them, especially after moving to a nice house in Long Island and realising that they will never go back to their native island for good again.

The four García girls are also faced with the darker side of American society. At school, latent racism is occasionally vented by other adolescents calling them "spics"; on her way to the bus stop, Carla falls prey to a child molester who masturbates in his car while pulling up at the curb and talking lecherously to her through the open window; and at a posh Spanish restaurant, Sandra witnesses a married American woman, the wife of their host, getting drunker all the time and in the end amorously kissing her father on the way to the toilet. Recreational drugs are easy to get hold of, and when she is sixteen Sofía forgets a small bag of marijuana behind a bookcase after showing it to her sisters. While the girls are visiting their relatives in the Dominican Republic, it is found by a maid and presented to Laura García:

The dreaded and illegal marijuana that was lately so much in the news! Mami was sure of it. And here she'd been, worried sick about protecting our virginity since we'd hit puberty in this land of wild and loose Americans, and vice had entered through an unguarded orifice at the other end.
Immediately, she contacted Tío Pedro, a psychiatrist "uncle by affection" with a practice in Jackson Heights. Tío Pedro was always consulted when one or the other of us daughters got into trouble. He identified the oregano most surely as grass, and got Mami free-associating about what else we might be up to. By the time she touched down on the Island forty-eight hours after finding the Baggy, we were all addicts, fallen women with married lovers and illegitimate babies on the way. One teensy hope she held on to was that a workman or a house guest had left the pot there. She had come to find out the truth, shielding Papi from the news and the heart attack he would surely die of if he knew.
Since we were caught by surprise, we didn't have a plan. At first, Carla made a vague attempt to discredit Tío Pedro by revealing how he always ended our sessions with long hugs and a pat on the butt. "He's a lech," she accused. "And besides, what does Saint Peter know of grass?"
"Grass?" Mami scowled. "This is marijuana."
Carla held her tongue.
(from "A Regular Revolution")

Eventually, none of the four girls lives up to their parents' expectations. Although they do not seem to lose their virginity early—at least Yolanda is still a virgin when she is at college, and even then is very reluctant to have sex with her boyfriend Rudy Elmenhurst— their sex lives do not conform in any way to their parents' strict code, in particular because, at least at first, the girls do not get married and do not produce offspring. After graduating from university, Yolanda has a series of lovers and then ends up with an older college professor who is unable to take a clear decision and leave his wife once and for all. Carlos and Laura García also have to cope with some further drug abuse and mental collapse in the family. The "girls" even forget their Spanish so that Yolanda, on revisiting her native island in the late 1980s, is immediately identified as a tourist by the rural population and treated as such.

The novel ends (or rather begins) on an optimistic note with a family reunion. Sofía, the youngest, is the only one who is married with children: her baby son, Little Carlos, is the first male born into the family in two generations. Together with her husband Otto, a German scientist, she invites the whole family to come to her place in Michigan on the occasion of her father's 70th birthday. Her father has not spoken to her for years, ever since Sofía fell out with him after he had gone through her private things and discovered, and read, Otto's love letters. Now that his name will live on in the United States, Carlos García seems placated and again willing to enjoy the company of the whole family.