Garcia Girls Final Essay

            In the book, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, four girls and their parents move from the Dominican Republic to the United States after their father was forced to flee from the Dominican Republic’s government.

This book is formatted from the most recent times to more distant times. It is separated into three parts and in each part, there are vignettes. These vignettes are written to specifically describe one sister, all four sisters, or the whole family’s experiences.

            Julia Alvarez includes a lot of her own experiences in her book through one of the daughter’s, Yolanda. The whole Garcia family is based off of Alvarez’s own experiences and family. In the book, the Garcia’s move from the Dominican Republic to the U.S, but Alvarez gave no specific detail on why. In her life, Alvarez’s family fled from the Dominican Republic because her father was caught up in a plan to overthrow the dictator and her family was forced to be on the run.

            This whole book talks about change that the family has to go through. Mostly, Alvarez talks about the change that her character, Yolanda, goes through. The first part of the book shows Yolanda when she is the oldest. The very first vignette talks about how Yolanda wants to go back to the Dominican Republic because of the experiences she’s had in America. Part I of the book describes Yolanda as a woman who wasn’t afraid of anything. She shows her problems with dedication and relationships in the vignette Joe. In this vignette, Yolanda has an affair with her therapist while still married to her husband, John. She describes that Yolanda is continuously leading John on, but when he gets the point and does something that he thinks she wants, she pushes him away and is disgusted.

 In the vignette after that, The Rudy Elmenhurst Story, Alvarez shows Yolanda’s true turning point from her old, religious, innocent self into what she is in Joe. In this vignette, Yolanda meets a boy by the name of Rudolf Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third in her first English class. Rudolf, known as Rudy in the story, grabs the attention of the innocent Yolanda. As Yolanda gets more and more obsessed with the dangers and excitement that Rudy brings to her life, the more Rudy pressures Yolanda to have sex with him, but the more he presses on, the more Yolanda resists. Rudy’s pressuring includes a lot of verbal abuse about how Yolanda was too religious:

“You know…I thought you’d be hot-blooded, being Spanish and all, and that under all the Catholic bullshit, you’d be really free, instead of all hung up like these cotillion chicks from prep schools. But Jesus, you’re worse than a fucking Puritan.” (99)

Soon enough after Rudy said this, he gives up on trying to get Yolanda to have sex with him and leaves her for a girl who is willing to give him what he wants. As proven, in this vignette, Yolanda starts out as a very innocent and religious girl, but in the vignette before that, Joe, Yolanda is cheating on her own husband. In between those two vignettes, there is something that has been left unsaid by Julia Alvarez, perhaps written in one of her other books. Yet, it doesn’t take much to see that not only does Yolanda change, but she changes so much that she goes from a proper lady who just wants to explore to a messed up slutty woman who cheats on her husband. I think that Yolanda is forced to change herself and this was the biggest turning point to her change in attitude and personality to which she looked at life in America. Because this vignette is written after the fact, Yolanda describe that this is just another relationship in college. In some way she describes her naivety and her looking down at herself from how she was in college.

“That’s the way I remember relationships starting in college – those obsessive marathon beginnings. It was hard to go back to your little dorm room and do your homework after having been so absorbed in someone else.” (92).

In this quote, Yolanda is ridiculing her own character and how she used to be. Because Yolanda is a direct reflection of Julia Alvarez herself, this quote shows how much Alvarez has grown from this vignette, not only the beginning of the book, but to how she was when she wrote this book. It shows that although she was a very naive girl, she was not afraid to admit it now, but still a little earlier on in her life, she looked down on how much she had done.

To clarify what I meant in the last paragraph, there are three time periods in every vignette: the time that is being talked about, the time that the character is telling the story and the time that Alvarez actually writes this book. All these times tell how much Alvarez has grown. For example, the time that The Rudy Elmenhurst Story occurred, Yolanda was a innocent girl. When Yolanda is telling this story, it is later on in her life and she’s been through more experiences and has turned into a whole new person who doesn’t believe in the morals she used to. When Alvarez writes this vignette, because of the paradox between Yolanda and her, Alvarez shows that now, her head is cleared and that she somewhat regrets the things she ad done and brings herself to admit her feelings and mistakes.

All in all, this book was very good. From the start, it was confusing, but once I finished the whole book, everything fit together. Part I was confusing because there was so much going on and the characters were not built, but started out from whole and then teared down to scratch. In Part II, it was the most clear because I knew what was going on. In Part III, it was even more confusing because of the fuzzy memories that each of the characters experienced. The timing of the book reflects on the clarity of each section. But when I read all of it, it became very clear to me, the genius of Julia Alvarez’s book. It was a very good book that showed that hardships of Julia’s family and her experiences as an immigrant to the US from the Dominican Republic.

Garcia Girls Blogpost #3

     After reading the whole book, things became more and more clear. Something that Alyssa had pointed out in class really intrigued me. It was the point that the Virgin Mary bank was stuck in the middle of her spin and it represented the time when the four girls were ending their time in the Dominican Republic and starting their new lives in America. Crystal pointed out the because the figurine is Virgin Mary, it represents something pure:

"The little figure rose, her arms swiveled. Then she stopped, stuck halfway up, halfway down." (274)

     From putting these two very deep points, I realized that it is true that during the beginning of the four girl's American experience, they are the most innocent when they go to America. When they were in the Dominican Republic, they were used to the things and people there, so they were not afraid to do what they wanted. When they went to America, they were in a new place with new rules. They didn't know the loophole of this environment and society yet, so they were afraid to do anything. They soon learned and experienced the things in America and have learned the boundaries they are given. They began to get used to the American society and culture where the view then, was that there was the freedom to do everything except for killing people and stealing things, which are all morals anyways. They exert this new found knowledge of what they believe they can do and as a result, they lose their innocence once again.
     An example of this is when Yolanda was in the Dominican Republic, she was a troublemaker and got away with everything. When she went to America, she became what can be called, a slut. She had affairs with many people and had become something very different from a innocent girl she was when she first arrived in America.
     The Virgin Mary's resemblance of innocence is very direct and I noticed that, but I would have never thought about the fact that in between the transition from the Dominican Republic to America, would be the time when there is the most innocence in the book.

  

Guys are pimps, girl's are sluts wtf? Response

"Some other people said because it's more common for a girl to be the ones who are cheated on and get their heart broken and since it's kind of uncommon for guys to get their hearts broken, they get pity. I still don't know why this happens." -Karen Chavez

     I got this quote from Karen Chavez's blog. This question has been on my mind for very long. Whenever we hear about a boy getting girls, he is always encouraged to get more or congratulated for having the game or "swag" to get those girls by hitting on them. Sometimes, it turns out that this guy is taking advantage of all the girls who had feeling for him and what does he get? A big high-five and pats on the back and automatic popularity. For what? For hurting a girl's feelings. Using her for fun, making her think that she's special, and then leisurely just dumping her with the rest of the girl's he's hurt. Yet, after all this, the only people who are hurt are the girls and they don't even get pity. All they get are comments like "I told you not to go for him." and things that basically tell them that they were stupid to like and trust a guy who they liked, someone who they wanted so much to be with. How is that even fair?
     When a girl has a bunch of guys, whether flirting or not, she's a slut, automatically. What the heck? When girls get guys, they on't get a congratulation. They get hate comments and get a constant roll of people making them feel horrible about themselves. Then, when the girl plays the guys, which is obviously a wrong thing to do, they are hated by everyone, girls and guys alike, leaving that girl alone. Why is it that boys get so much glory in hurting a girl and playing them, but when a girl does it, she gets to feel the pains and consequences of what she does?
    Does this mean the boys are expected to do things like this? Does that mean that in a way, girls are meant to be different from males in the ways they are supposed to act? So, there is something to do with gender that is keeping the barrier between what girls are expected and what boy are expected.
     Of course, this blogpost is just my point of view, obviously, a girl's. I'm not saying I'm right to say that boys are treated better and let off easier, but from what I see this is my conclusion that I've come to.

Kung Fu

     So last Sunday, I went to my weekly kung-fu class. Of course, I went for two hours again. It was fun alright, but strenuous nontheless. Normally, my kung-fu classes are made up of stretches and practicing forms, but last Sunday, it was much harder.
     For the first hour, I went to I ran suicides, stretched, and did flips. Normally, all we do is stretch and do some kicks. From the beginning of that day's class, I can tell that it wasn't going to be a laid back, fun day at all. The length we had to run for suicides were only around fourteen feet back and forth, ten times. When we thought we were done, our sifu made us run again, this time, around fourty feet back and forth, around eight times. We were already exhausted and were only around 45 minutes into our two hour class.
     For the next fifteen minutes, I was stretching. All we did was push each other down and stretch each other until our legs and arms burned with pain. We paired up with people the same height as us and did one hundred sit-ups. We have to run two more laps to let our muscles get warmed up. All this, and we still had around 45 minutes of class left. we ended up doing jump inside kick, fall down, pop up combo and cartwheel, step, jump inside kick, fall down, pop up combo for the rest of the time. first, we were separated into two groups, one high belts and one low belts. Low belts went first. They had to do jump inside kick, fall down, pop up combo ten times and whoever finished last would have to do it again. Then it was the high belt's turn, which included me. We had to do it ten times as well. When we were done, we had to do it one by one. If we didn't do it well, we would have to do it again and again until it was approved by our sifu.
     Then, we did cartwheela. It was a one step, late touch, round up cartwheel where you start standing facing you're right, then just put your arms down and flip yourself doing a half no hand cartwheel, but towards the end, touching the ground for support, and landing on both of your feet at the end. In order to do this, you had to swing your legs very quickly. We had to do this ten times and whoever finished last would have to do something extra. Thank god I didn't finish last. After this, we did cartwheel (late touch, round up) and then jump inside kick, fall down, pop up. These two combos were meshed into one and we had to do it directly after each other. This isn't considered hard at all. In fact, it is considered very easy, but we were conditioning, so it was more tiring than hard. We did this ten times and did them individually again.
     As proven, that day wasn't exactly what I would call a laid back day, but still. Kung fu is a stress reliever and a very fun form of exercise for me.

Garcia Girls Blogpost #2

     In the last post, Garcia Girls Blogpost #1, I wrote about how this book had a theme of innocence. Now that I've read the second part of the book (1970-1960), I realized that America has stolen a lot of what all the girls used to be. It changed them, matured them, scarred them, and forced them to adapt to life in America In the second part of the book, we get to see who Mami was when the family first moved to America versus the first part of the book where we see Mami exposed to America for a long time.
     In the vignette Daughter of Intervention, the author, Julia Alvarez, shows the power and influence that America had on Mami. Here, Mami is very excited about being in America and even describes herself that she had exerted her power as an American woman's freedom and had shed her old position in the Dominican Republic:

"She did not want to go back to the old country where, de la Torr or not, she was only a wife and a mother (and a failed one at that, since she had never provided the required son). Better an independent nobody than a high-class houseslave." (144)

      Because of living in America, Mami represents the differences in the majority of the countries other than America at the time: where women were constantly under the men and no matter what class they were, they would never be treated as equals. When Mami realizes that she holds this kind of power to be equal to her husband, she exerts this power in order to be the woman she has always wanted to be.
     In this specific vignette, Mami shows her power through helping her daughter, Yolanda write a speech and even defends Yolanda when her husband yells at Yolanda. This brings me to my next point. Yolanda has also gone through a lot of change from her typical culture into her new one in America. At the beginning of the vignette, Yolanda demonstrates her power as a child in an American family by talking back to her parents with less respect than she would have to in the Islands.
     In Yolanda's speech, she writes things like "I celebrate myself. The best student learns to destroy the teacher." In her old tradition, Yolanda would have probably been severely punished if she had said that in a speech to her teachers, but in America, Yolanda feels like she could say anything she wants to because she is living in a place where freedom and equality is encouraged for any race and any gender.

Garcia Girls Blogpost #1

I think I want to write and analyze more about Yolanda. At this point in the book, Yolanda is shown to be the smart child of the family in her mother’s eyes. In her sister’s eyes, Yolanda is the “bad one” because of the experiences that she’s had in college and other relationships she’s been in afterwards.  
Because the book is written in reverse chronological order, the beginning of the book represented the last part of the story and the end of the book represented the first part of the whole story. So starting from the beginning of the book or the end of the story, Yolanda was coming back to Dominican Republic after five years of living in the US. She talks about how she doesn’t want to go back to the US and gives a perception on the dangers and the situation that the Dominican Republic is in at that time.
Before Yolanda goes back to the Dominican Republic, she was respected by her mother for being the smart, poetic one and by her sisters as the fearless one. Yolanda’s stories in Part I helped build her character. In the vignette, Jon, Yolanda is having trouble with her husband John because all he wants to do is have sex while she finds him more and more unattractive. She goes to a therapist and falls in love with him. In the vignette, The Rudy Elmenhurst Story, Yolanda is a college student who falls in love with a boy named Rudolf Brodermann Elmenhurst the third. All throughout this vignette, Rudy wants to have sex with Yolanda, but she does not give in and Rudy leaves her for another girl who will sleep with him. Yolanda is described in this vignette that she is very innocent and that she is very devoted religiously. She has a sense of what is right and what is wrong and no matter what, will not give into the demands of a boy she loves if she doesn’t feel right. Yet, in Jon, Yolanda is not innocent at all. In fact, she has an affair with her therapist because she no long loves her husband John. She changes from a very innocent girl to what seems to be a self centered woman.
I’m not sure what her real character is and I want to see how she progresses through her life to end up in America and become what she is at the beginning of the book/ end of the story.