How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Synopsis
The four Garcia sisters come to terms with their Dominican roots, their lives in America, and their emerging feminism.


My thoughts
I was really looking forward to reading this book. To be honest, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. The book would work well if it were just a series of standalone essays. But it tries to be more than that and falls short. Because the book goes in reverse chronological order, there is no resolution to many of the questions raised at the beginning, so it feels incomplete.

But I still have many positive things to say about the book. The girls all have distinct, strong, often conflicting personalities. The depiction of sibling rivalry is pitch perfect and the various crises the sisters face are entertaining to read and easy to relate to. The stories move along quickly, so it doesn't take long to become engrossed in them. (This was a huge plus for me—I read the book while I was visiting family and needed something I could pick up and read during the short gaps between family obligations.) The narrative shifts back and forth between the sisters, giving you a panoramic view of the younger generation's experiences and opinions. It makes you feel like you're friends with each of them, so you're privy to their personal insecurities and internecine squabbles.

There are various levels of culture clash—the older generation's difficult adjustment, the younger generation's intolerance of their parents' backwardness. Alvarez does a particularly good job describing the sisters' sense of homelessness, their inability to feel entirely at home as Americans or Dominicans and their struggles to define and own (with varying degrees of success) their identities as dual citizens. Her firsthand experience is apparent here.

Bottom line
The vignettes are resonant and highly personal, but don't expect a cohesive narrative or a sense of closure.

Fine print
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez
Genre: Fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library