Last Writing Piece on Garcia Girls

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a reflection of Julia Alvarez, the author’s life.  Many events in the story are reflected in Alvarez’s life, and the sisters are like her and her sisters (I think they are like her sisters).  Even though this book was quite interesting and extremely unique, the book was complicated and difficult to understand for many reasons. 

I didn't vote to read this book mostly because if its structure.  Its reverse chronological structure and short vignettes is extremely confusing for me, and I personally prefer different books to read.  Because of the reverse chronological story, the book starts with a scene in the middle of the Garcia girls' story of their journey from the Dominican Republic to the United States, and how they adapted to the different cultures.  Alvarez begins the story by saying,

"The old aunts lounge in the white wicker armchairs, flipping open their fans, snapping them shut.  Execpt that more of them are dressed in the greys and blacks of widowhood, the aunts seem little changed since five years ago when Yolanda was last on the Island...The cake is on its own table, the little cousins clustered around it, arguing over who will get what slice.  When their squabbles reach a certain mother-annoying level, they are called away by their nursemaids, who sit on stools at the far end of the patio, a phalanx of starched white uniforms."(1)

 Even though the great amount of detail used on the first page helps the readers visualize what is happening to the characters at the start of the book, it does not explain much about who Yolanda is, where this scene is occurring, and for what specific reason they are there.  From reading, the cake was island shaped, and I was confused about whether the party and cake was for Yolanda's birthday, or for a welcome back party, since Yolanda hadn't been on the Island "since five years ago."  To be honest, I'm still kind of confused about what the Island is.  I think "the Island" refers to the Dominican Republic, but I'm still not sure even after the group discussions.  I asked my group members and a few other friends and classmates about it, and they tell me that they are not sure either and that it is probably the Dominican Republic that it refers to.  As the story progresses, it is still hard to understand the different characters with the changing narrators and perspectives of the story that change between vignettes and even in the vignettes without an extremely clear indication of who the narrator is changing to, and when.  Because we do not know all of the characters like Chucha, the Garcia's Haitian maid who supposedly practiced voodoo and slept in a coffin, and had the only first person narrative in the story.

The book talks about Alvarez’s life in the Dominican Republic and her adjustment in the United States.  It portrays the many difficulties and destitution that she and her family faced as immigrants.  Unlike the Garcia girls, Alvarez was born in New York, New York, but moved back to the Dominican Republic when she was three months old.  In 1960, she and her family fled the Dominican Republic, and went back to the United States. Like the Garcia girls, Alvarez and her sisters were raised along their cousins, and were watched by their mother, maids, and aunts.

Sort of like Carlos, Yolanda’s father, Alvarez’s father was also in risk of being arrested or killed by the government in many different reasons.  Carlos was in risk because he resisted Trujillo's military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, and because of his political activities, was forced to leave the Republic and escape to the United States. Alvarez’s father was involved in a plot to overthrow the dictator and military ruler of the Dominican Republic.  Because the plans were discovered, He had to flee the country with his family with the help of an American agent, and fled to New York, where they once lived.

Just like the Garcia girls, life in America was not like they imagined it to be.  The sisters and Alvarez missed their family in the Dominican Republic and the respect they had there, and didn’t feel like they fitted in with their thick Spanish accents.  They had little money, and struggled to live with the small amount of money that they held.  They all struggled to adapt to the new American environment, and the extremely diverse and different culture.

A lot like Yolanda, Alvarez wrote poetry.  They both wrote, for Alvarez she wrote both poetry and stories, and enjoyed storytelling, especially ones that they made up on their own.  In their culture, Alvarez’s relatives criticized her for “lying,” because she didn’t tell the truth in her stories, but rather, made up things of her own.

Yolanda often wrote her poems alone and in the dark: "This was Yoyo's [Yolanda's] time to herself, after she finished her homework, while her sisters were still downstairs watching TV in the basement.  Hunched over her small desk, the overhead light turned off, her desk lamp poignantly lighting her only paper, the rest of the room in warm, soft, uncreated darkness, she wrote her secret poems in her new language" (136).

Yolanda wrote her poems during her free time, but only when her sisters were occupied with something else to do, so they wouldn't distract or bother her in any way.  She wrote her poems in the near-dark, with only a desk lamp lighting up her paper.  The rest of the room stayed dark, yet warm, and created a soft darkness that allowed Yolanda to express her feelings, and for her ideas to grow better.  She wrote in the dark much better.  When Alvarez refers to "new language," she doesn't only mean English, which was a new language to Yolanda since she came from the Dominican Republic, where she had only ever spoken Spanish, but she also refers to the language that is different from everyday language that Yolanda used when she spoke.  When she wrote poems, they were much deeper and meaningful than the words that she said daily, and so was therefore in some sense, her new language, that was personally hers, and was understood and interpreted differently by different people. 

Although How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents was not a bad story, I probably wouldn't pick up a book like this to read on a daily basis.  It is complicated and difficult for me to comprehend, and it takes a lot of analysis for me to finally sort of understand what is going on in the story.  The reverse chronological order of the story doesn't work for me very well, and I personally haven't had a good history with vignettes, especially after reading my first book with vignettes, The House On Mango Street, last year.  That didn't make much more sense than this book did.

Rubik's Cube

This weekend is a full and busy one.  I hope I will still be able to get some rest and finish all my homework, especially finishing reading Garcia Girls before Tuesday lunch.

Even though this weekend is jam-packed, I cannot resist the call of the lone Rubik's cube, quietly sitting on the table, waiting to be solved.  This one is different from the others though.  Instead of a three-by-three, it's a four-by-four.  Which I don't know how to solve.  I can always try though.  Which is what I hope to be able to do sometime this weekend.

Instructions and directions for how to solve these cubes (all sizes) are nearly impossible to find, or else it takes hours to finally find a good one that is understandable.  Videos are completely helpless.  People who try to explain how to solve the cube make no sense at all to me, and I am plunged into confusedness once again, and begin searching around to find another place with solutions.

Way back from the middle school, or maybe even fifth grade in elementary, I found a Rubik's cube, and I learned how to solve one side and two layers of the cube (without print-out instructions :), but I didn't have the patience to try to learn the rest.

Last year, I found a print-out of instructions for how to solve the three-by-three, and spent hours and days trying to figure it out, and then another million hours practicing it, and attempting to memorize it.  I finally understood it a few weeks later, and I was addicted.  Any free time I had at home, I would spend in my room with my cube.  Twist here, turn here and again here, repeat the process again, look at the colors, double check to make sure that part was completed, think, start next sequence for next part to solve.  That was the way I solved the cube.  Part of my motivation to finally solve the cube was to show others that I could solve it, and another was to prove to some people that I was just as intelligent as they were, because I could solve the cube.

Some people find it so amazing that people can solve a Rubik's cube, but honestly, it isn't that hard.  Just set aside some time, find you're motivation and perseverance, because trust me, when you first start, this isn't a simple problem that you can solve in a few hours.  It takes time and much effort to figure out the instructions and memorize the steps to finally solve the cube.  It took a lot of muscle memorization, and by doing the steps time after time, it sticks.

This weekend, I will try to dedicate as much free time as I am able to find to solve the confusing four-by-four.  So far, I've solved a side, one layer, and I'm working of solving the corners.  I moved the corner cubes to their respectable locations, but I need to twist them, so their colors will match with the right sides.  Off to solve it!

The Garcia Girls Confuse Me D;

When our class voted on which book to read, I admit, I didn’t vote to read How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.  When looking through the three selections of books, I found that this book and The Joy Luck Club had the most appealing story line.  I really liked how Julia Alvarez wrote about the topic of how the American culture and life changes a traditional family from the Dominican Republic.  It provides interesting insight into their culture, and compares it to how different it is from the American culture.  

Before I started to read the book, I asked my friends and classmates if they had read it, and I kept on getting similar opinions from them.  They kept on telling me that the book was confusing and boring, so I had prepared myself for the worst, but when Sutherland read the story out loud in class, I found it quite the contrary.  The first vignette wasn’t very confusing, and it was interesting, although I didn’t know anything about most of the characters, except the names of the four sisters.  

I personally think that even though this book may be difficult to read, it helps me grow as a reader, because I have to read a few times to understand what is happening, and this is the most I have ever annotated any book.  I used to always avoid annotating a book last year, and I would just read, then do something else.  With this book though, I need to take time and take it all in, and slowly let it sink in before I can really understand what it means.  

The fact that the book is in reverse chronological order makes it confusing and a pretty hard read.  It’s hard to follow the story, and I am constantly confused by the characters and events that happen.  I understand what happens, but I’m still confused about who is narrating the parts, and what happened to who.

I’m a bit worried and nervous about reading the rest of the book.  Will the book begin to make more sense?  Will Alvarez clarify events and characters more clearly?  I’ll be able to finish Part II of the book by next Tuesday for sure, but understanding what I read is a whole other story.