How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Part 1

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent is the story of four girls living in America and of the stories of how they got there. The names of the four sisters are Yolanda, Carla, Sofia and Sandra. The book is separated into three parts that consist of many short stories. In the first part of the book, it is telling basically of how the girls are living their lives in the present.

In the very first chapter, Yolanda is the first girl that is being discussed. The setting of this short story I think is back in their home town of the Dominican Republic. Yolanda is visiting her family and they point out the obvious changes of her from how she is Americanized. They speak of the word antojos which in Spanish means, a craving for something food related. As a result, Yolanda goes on a search for her antojos which just so happens to be guavas.

In the next short story, the author talks about the other daughter, Sofia. In my perspective, Sofia is the wild child out of them all. Basically, it talks about how she had met this German guy named Otto back then and they would send letters to each other that spoke of their sexual nights. When the girls’ father had found these letters, he was furious because of the fact that the letters made him suspect that his daughter was no longer a virgin. As a result, the father had kicked his daughter out of the house and she went all the way to Europe in search of her man. Next, they had a party for the fathers’ 70th birthday. They were playing a game that didn’t end so well because of Sofia.

The next part of the stories is still just talking about the daughters and how they came to be what they are now. They all have had their problems in the past and the book is based purely on their lives.

So far, I am really confused about this story and what the main subject is. I think that the book does have a lot of potential to be a story that is interesting, but I do not think I will find that out until the end. The thing that confuses me the most about this book is the fact that it is written in backwards chronological order which sets that book up for confusion right away. All in all, I think that the more I read along, the better sense this story will make to me.