De como las muchachas Garcia perdieron el acento
Written by Julia Alvarez
Narrated by Adriana Sananes, Rosie Berrido, Laura Gomez and
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Julia Alvarez
Born in New York City in 1950, Julia Alvarez’s parents took her back to their native country, the Dominican Republic, shortly after her birth. Ten years later, the family was forced to flee to the US because of her father’s involvement in a plot to overthrow the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Alvarez has written many bestselling novels including: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!, In the Name of Salomé, and Afterlife. She has also written collections of poems, non-fiction, and numerous books for young readers. The Cemetery of Untold Stories is her most recent novel. Her awards and recognitions include the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards for her books for young readers, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.
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En el tiempo de las mariposas (In the Time of the Butterflies) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Más Allá (Afterlife) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for De como las muchachas Garcia perdieron el acento
27 ratings26 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Four young sisters and their parents flee the corrupt regime ruling their small Caribbean island and relocate in the US. In separate chapters the four sisters, now a psychologist, an artist, a poet and a young mother, recount memories from their early years on the island and their sometimes harsh transition into American society. The chapters are interesting on their own and almost take on the flare of short essays, but digesting the book as a whole feels a little like reading through a strobe light. Although you know action is happening between the flashes, you only get glimpses of brilliance with dark spaces in between. Overall, the book was enjoyable and I'm sure many young women, especially immigrants, would relate to Alvarez' work, but I have to say I feel it could have been so much more. Bottom Line: Good, but not great.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More than just a novel about immigrating (and returning home) -- this is a literary exploration of language and family and identity.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The story is a backwards look at generations. It tries too hard to be The Joy Luck Club and doesn't go deep enough.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I liked the idea of this book as well as the descriptions. I thought there were a lot of unanswered questions and it makes me wonder if there are other books that tell the rest of the story. Perhaps the whole point of the book was the family stories continue on and on with no end, that the stories we tell to illustrate our lives wax and wane and change as they are retold until you can't tell what actually happened.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. I like books about the immigrant/first generation-American experience, and this one is full of humor and grace.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This is one of those rare occasions where I just don't get what everyone else sees. For me, the story would be easier to understand through more distinct short stories, rather than the Cubist approach Alvarez uses. The story certainly does convey some of the cultural nuances of the Dominican Republic, but I found even this to be overkill in places. For example, in one passage, she includes a series of malapropisms used by one of the main characters who had migrated to the US. There were so many that they started to seem unreal. I've read a reasonable diversity of cultures and gender emphasis. This just didn't work for me.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Some parts were better than others. It would be good for someone who has no idea of life in the Dominican Republic and what it is like in America for Dominican Americans.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I found parts of this book very amusing but parts of it irritated me also Found the going back and forth confusing at times and found the four sisters, in parts, almost sounded the same. I think I was missing a depth of character that I needed to see and only had brief glimpses of in Yolanda. I think my favorite characte5r was the mother and all her stories.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The story of the four Garcia de la Torre sisters whose family left the Dominican Republic to live in New York. They gradually get over their home-sickness, but even as adults they are unsure whether they have lost more than they have gained. I liked the way it was written, going backwards in time starting with their adult life in New York and ending up with them as small children on the island.Poignant and very enjoyable.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I did not enjoy this book as much as Alvarez' In the Time of the Butterflies. This book tells the story of the Garcia family and their four daughters as they flee the Dominican Republic and move to the U.S. The book jumps around in time, and I think that maybe it was this aspect that I liked the least.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another "sister" story, this one about life in the Dominican Republic and the United States, told, interestingly enough, in reverse chronological order. See also In the Time of the Butterflies.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How the Garcia Girls Lost Their accents is a book with a series of short stories that recounts the lives of four Dominican-American sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia. It describes the families struggles as they try to adjust to their new american life without loosing their dominican tradition and heritage. It talks about the womens battles with trying to keep their language and staying loyal to their father.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well not to long ago did I finish reading this book.I got to say it is a joyfull story.This story is based upon how a young lady loses her accent.It talks about there history as young little girls and there good/bad moments.It is a hipanic book but not only does the cover catch your eye but the story as well.It talks about her antojo,kiss,and much more.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book was good, but the conclusion wasn't very satisfying (or conclusive, if you will). It tells the story of a family with four daughters who emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. The tale moves backwards in time, expanding your understanding as it goes of how they ended up being who they are. It was most interesting to me when I reached the description of their childhood on the island.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful story! I was hooked since I started reading. The main theme in the book is family and its importance.The García family is really tight. Even after the girls grow up and have families of their own, their childhood family (Papi, Mami, and the four girls) is still kind of like an exclusive club that no one else can join. There is a quote that got me and made me understood how they value their family. "Even after they'd been married and had their own families and often couldn't make it for other occasions, the four daughters always came home for their father's birthday. Surely their husbands could spare them for one overnight? This quote sums up how important family is for these girls. The tone of the story is ironic and critical. This novel is ironic because what the characters say they want and what the author knows they want are two different things. It is like the author is watching the story from above. I really enjoyed reading this book!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book can be a bit challenging for youth with its constant flash backs and flash forwards in the characters' lives. However, this unique style of writing gives the book a character and quality that makes it interesting. This story about four sisters coping with and adapting to a new culture in America when they are forced to flee their home in the Dominican Republic due to political reasons is a touching and dramatic portrayal of family ties and coming of age. I would recommend this book for students who enjoy historical and/or multicultural fiction.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This book had potential to be great...but didn't really make it...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I am so glad I discovered Julia Alvarez. This inventively written and hugely entertaining novel is actually a series of interlinked stories about the four Garcia girls, who move to the United States from the Dominican Republic when their family has to flee from their father's political involvement in that country. The stories skip around in time and space: in some, the girls are adults with husbands and emotional breakdowns, in some they are visiting the Island as teenagers and reconnecting with family there, and in some they are newly arrived in America trying to navigate and negotiate this new plac as children. I was particularly fascinated with the idea of living in two languages. The third sister, Yolanda (possibly a stand-in for Alvarez herself?) is a poet who battles the different meanings of words in Spanish and English, especially as they concern love and relationships and her sense of her own identity. Identity is also hard-won when the characters are always called "the four girls," a nearly collective entity by their mother -- both parents are wonderfully drawn characters. Highly recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book was okay. The auther did a good job switcihing back and forth from present tense to past tense. Overall a good book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A series of short stories, told in reverse chronological order, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent tells the journey of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia exiled from their home in the Dominican Republic to New York City in 1960. The stories are told from the POV of both the daughters and their parents. We see how the daughters come of age, how they and their parents survive the cultural and class transitions of their wealthy privileged life in the Dominican Republic to New York Hispanic immigrants. Because their history is told in reverse chronological secrets and histories and revealed in later chapters that provide context to actions in earlier chapters, making for an interesting read. The book brings attention to issues faced by immigrant families, the isolation and loneliness, the feeling of being in and out of both worlds, the feeling of loss and the consequences of these issues to the immigrant child. 4 ½ out of 5 stars.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Eh. I didn't really feel like they were exiled or in any extenuating circumstances. I never felt very connected to the characters either. Disappointed.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It seemed wierd to me that although I enjoyed this book, I never got around to writing a review for it. It is almost three months since I created this entry, and I see it whenever I browse the page - but never have anything to say about it.Perhaps that is the most accurate message I can send about this book. It was good, it was enjoyable. The characters were well developed and the author did a good job capturing the world the Garcia Girls lived in: growing up in the Dominican Republic and moving to NYC; the process of becoming "American Girls" and the struggles that each family member had with their identities. But it didn't stick. It didn't haunt me or make me sit back and wonder about it. I don't go through my daily life and come across things that remind me of it.It might have one thing I remember and will reference in the future - it is written in short chapters, starting with the most recent and going back to the 1960's in the Dominican Republic. That was an interesting way to write the book - but after every chapter I was left with questions that I knew would never get answered. That was frustrating.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this quite a lot, but I really think it should have been marketed as a book of short stories. Instead it's a book of short stories that is called a novel, yet has none of the cohesion or overarching plot required of a novel, though the stories are all about the same four women. It's also very obvious that many of these stories were originally published separately, as there's a lot of repeated background info, introducing characters as if we've never met them before when it's the fifth time they've appeared, etc. There are also a handful of stories in first person, when the majority are third person, and that kind of makes it feel patched together, too. (There was also one very bizarre story where it was first person, except all the girls were named in third person. So even though the narrator was saying I and we and us in reference to the four sisters, it sounded like there was a mysterious fifth sister doing the narration because she attributed actions and dialogue to all four in third person. I...have never seen a story written like that before and hope never to do so again. It was disconcerting and a very strange choice.)Anyway, I really did enjoy the individual stories quite a lot, and found the book hard to put down. I just am kind of annoyed with it for saying it's a novel when it's not, as that made me keep expecting things that it never delivered.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alvarez has undeniable gifts as a writer. I liked a great deal about this book, for instance, the settings are wonderfully evoked. The horror of the Trujillo dictatorship is counterbalanced well with humor and life's small daily details, from a child's perspective. In some ways the book cut into very deep,rich veins of family life,and at other times was evasive. All in all, well written and recommended
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Alvarez's novel delves into the American immigrant experience from the perspective of four sisters. The innovative narrative is in reverse chronological order, beginning at present day with a deracinated adult woman returning to a now foreign Dominican Republic, and traces back to the family's flight from their homeland. Through this four narrators, Alvarez explores the challenges presented by conflicts of race, class, and ethnicity, juxtaposing the girl's experiences in both the United States and the Dominican Republic.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5For me, this was a book with no beginning and no end. It did have sections that were entertaining, and a couple of lines that were memorable. Not a book I would really recomend.