The End.

We have finally reached the last page of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.  It's been quite a long journey since we started reading the book in Part I.  We've traveled with the García girls from the Dominican Republic and their spoiled lives, to America and their humble beginnings.

There has been a lot about sexuality in this book, and for the topics that Julia Alvarez focuses on and emphasizes the most in this book, it actually makes sense at the end of the book for her to write the book in reverse chronological order.  We first read about what the García sisters are like after moving to America, and adapting to the extremely different life that they started here than the Dominican Republic, where they had much power and money.  They had to try much harder in America to fit in, and they changed from being the typical "good girls" that their parents and relatives expect them to be, and start being more risky.  They stay out with boys without a chaperone, and lie to their parents about where they are when they call them to check on them.

The title of the book explains what the story is mostly about; how the García girls lost their accents and a lot of their culture, and became influenced by America.  In the last vignette, "The Drum,"  The kitten that Yolanda found in the shed, seems to symbolize the García sisters.  The four girls left the Dominican Republic far before they had matured enough to fully understand their culture and be able to maintain the culture that their family kept, like the kitten was taken away from its mother before it had matured enough to learn to survive without its mother's support.  They struggled as a result, since they still had to live up to their family's expectations of their success and constant good manners and actions that reflected well in their culture, even though the daughters were embarassed of their thick accents, and wanted to be able to do things the American way, not the Dominican Republic way, which they left far behind.  Because of the quick transition between their life in the Dominican Republic, and life in America, they were somewhat "injured" by the change.  They grew up with their focus on fitting in, rather than the cultural values that their family stressed.