I chose to write about the first question. What was the author's purpose in writing this book, and how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved?
In the story How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent, four girls are learning about the way they must live their new lives. The author, Julia Alvarez has many purposes for writing this book, but the overall theme was based around teenage girls and their struggles.
I think that the purpose of the author to write this story was to inform her readers about teenage girls. She wants us to be able to know the problems of typical teenage girls. She tells us of how the Garcia girls struggle within their new society. I can tell that this was the authors purpose because the whole book was based on the problems that the Garcia girls had to come to face with, “They were disclosing her secret shame: her body was changing,” (153). The girls have grown so much from when they came from the Dominican Republic. One of the many changes with the girls was their appearance during puberty. One of the sisters, Carla, tells people to stop mentioning the fact that her body was going through changes. This arises with a new problem for Carla that she has to go through. Carla is left with not being able to do anything since puberty and body changes are just a way of life. She has no control over her body and with the changes that she must go through. The author is trying to get the message across that a typical girl has to face a lot of problems throughout their life and her character, Carla, had to get stuck with one of those many adolescent struggles. Along with that, Carla will not be able to stop many more problems that come in everyone’s’ lives since most, we do not have control over them whatsoever. Throughout the entire story, Alvarez tries to get the point across that when the girls arrive at the United States they must come to face with a lot of problems including those with their body. Not only that, but she also wants to show that every girl has to face problems like this.
As the girls keep growing, the author shows her readers the many problems that these girls have as they are teenagers. One main problem that the girls have is men. Sometimes, a woman’s’ main problem has to be with men. Teenage boys usually become a matter of difficulty during a teenage girl’s life. The girls are either pressured into doing something that they do not want to do, or they let a man take over their lives, “What the hell do you have to make a list of the pros and cons of marrying me for?... Stop violating me I hate it when you do that,” (74). In one scenario, another of the four sisters, Yolanda, is in a relationship with a man named John. Yolanda is not even married with this man yet and she already has to fight with him so he knows that she can not be taken for granted. As stated before, men are a major part of a woman’s life and they play a major role with their interactions. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent is just another example of this because a man in this story is having an affect on one of the sisters. Yolanda is put through a lot because of a man that is a huge part of her life. This brings down confusion on her and she is not so sure whether she wants to marry John anymore or not. Not only that, but John makes it seem as if Yolanda has her times when she is good and when she is not so good. This is shown when Yolanda is talking about her pros and cons. The fact that the authors purpose is to inform about women problems works well with her examples given in the story since they include struggles with either their body image or men.
Another factor of this story is the fact that they show how their lifestyle in their homeland of the Dominican Republic changed so much when they arrived to the United States. Their lifestyle in the Dominican Republic differs from that of the life in America and that is what causes the girls to change in order to fit into their new home in a different place. The girls went through changes since America is culturally different to the Dominican Republic, “The girl she had been back home in Spanish was being shed,” (153). As a result of the move, one of the girls admits to going through a change since arriving at the United States. Everything that the girls have had to go through has changed them to better fit their society. All the problems from men to a changing body image, to their family’s pass caused a difference in the Garcia girls. Another thing that had changed the girls was the fact of not being saints as much as their father thought they were. The sisters had to learn quickly about the lifestyle and how the American girls lived in that country. Thus, the girls started to sneak around and behaving badly behind their father’s back. In the end, the father found out about one of his daughters Sofia, not being a virgin. The truth had finally come out and then she was kicked out of the house by her father.
In this book, the beginning was the end and the end was the beginning. In the end, Yolanda wanted to keep a cat, but a stranger had told her that it could not survive without their mother. I think this is where Yolanda started to think. After she took the cat inside she started banging on the box to hide it from her parents. The cat and that scenario signify the girls and the fact that they tried to hide part of their lives from their parents. It is just a tiny flashback to show how the girls went on to live their live which was somewhat a mystery to their parents, especially their father.
Finally, the author’s purpose to writing this book is to show that moving form one country to another can rally change people. Taking away someone’s culture and removing them from their homeland can have a negative affect on people. The way a person lives is what can be the major change in their lives.
