Garcia Girls Essay!

I chose to write about question 1 and 2. What was the author’s purpose in writing this book, and how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved? For what audience is this book intended for, and how can you tell?

In the story of How The Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, Julia Alvarez tells the story of four sisters. She goes into depth and analyzes their life from the very beginning to the current stage in where they are in their lives told in the book. The author intended to tell the story of how moving to a new country can change the lives of many people especially those of a younger age. This story can appeal to a wide variety of audiences, but mainly, I think that Julia Alvarez is trying to appeal to a younger audience for the purpose of having them relate to the story she tells.

Julia Alvarez’s purpose in writing this book is to show the lives of four sisters and how they had evolved over the years. The main purpose of this novel is to show the changes that occur throughout every one's life. Everyone has their own destiny in their lives and it takes a lifetime to figure out how it will all work out. People must come face to face with a variety of problems that emerge when they grow out of the different stages of their lives.

The book, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent, is split into three parts where each segment is meant to tell the story of the girls from different time periods in their lives. For example, the first part of the book is told in present time. At this time, we expect the book to be told from the very beginning, but the girls are already grown up and they seem to be remembering how they had got to that place in their lives simply from looking back at their past. As we take a closer look at the story behind the book, we get to know more background information about the four Garcia sisters. As we read more into the story, we learn that the girls homeland is the Dominican Republic. By the end of the book, we come to know that the entire Garcia family was forced to move out of their homeland of the Dominican Republic to the new country of the United States. The girls learned how to become more Americanized after being raised in the United States for such a long period of time, “Yoyo suggested, thinking it would be nice to have a little pot to smoke when things on the Island got dull”. After straying from the life they had in the Dominican Republic, the Garcia girls started to act more like the girls that were raised in the States. From this, I can tell that the purpose of the author was to tell a story of the girls in a way that shows how changes are made when people are stripped of their past and are forced to make a new future out of themselves. In another sense, the girls had to make those changes in their life in order for their society to accept them. When the girls first arrived at the United States, they were being picked on because of their accent. Thus, showing how the title clearly makes sense. since one of the sisters, Carla wanted to survive in that society, she began to get rid of her cultural language, “The girl she had been back home in Spanish was being shed” (153). The entire migration left the girls conflicted with many aspects of their new lives. They were forced to change or rather better situate themselves with a whole different type of social environment. Them being teenage girls also had a negative impact on them. Their era of girls were so different from what they could have been back home in the Dominican Republic. Thus, that lead to a change within the girls live for the years to come.

Julia Alvarez’s purpose of her story was achieved. Although the book has its’ weaknesses when it comes down to the organization of the book, the story does achieve its’ purpose when its telling the entire story. The book tells a story of how change happens when a family is forced to move somewhere new.The story has a positive effect on the readers even if they do get confused with the arrangement of the books’ parts.  The audience intended for this book was for a younger range of people. I believe this to be true because the majority of the book was based around the girls at a younger age. Two thirds of the book discussed how the Garcia sisters were either young girls or when they were at the age of adolescents, “We took turns being the wildest,” (86) Usually when teenage girls are growing up, they go through a rebellion stage. This is a situation that occurs during every teenage girls life. It works well with this story because Julia Alvarez incorporates this aspect of a every young girls life in a way that reveals to her readers that this book was intended for a younger audience. In another sense, the story tell the struggle of the girls when they are forced to move to a new country. This subject is what would bring the audience in. Personally, books that have a lot of drama or the ones that tell a compelling story are the books that attract me and make me actually want to read the book. This book works to its’ advantage since it is all based around a central theme that shows the different challenges that come with living in a new environment. How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent, is a story that mainly appeals to an audience that is around the same age that the Garcia characters were throughout the biggest portion of the book.

How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent is a irresistible book that any reader would not be able to put down. The main purpose of this book is to tell the story about girls that change for their society after arriving to a new country from the Dominican Republic. It shows that a new country can change people in many ways. Not only that, but this book is one that appeals to an audience that understands what it is like to be in one of those girls’ position when it comes to dealing with an everyday teenage life.