How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

“They were passionate women, but their devotions were like roots; they were sunk into the past towards the old man.”

The sisters’ husbands are upset that their father-in-law only wants his daughters to come to his birthday parties and that they are not invited. They lament the devotion the girls have to their father and to their roots. This sentiment expresses a key theme in the novel, the pull between tradition and freedom, between past and future.

“The daughters could almost hear his thoughts inside their own heads. He, who had paid to straighten their teeth and smooth the accent out of their English in expensive schools, he was nothing to them now. Everyone in this room would survive him, even the silly men in the band who seemed like boys—imagine making a living out of playing birthday songs! How could they ever earn enough money to give their daughters pretty clothes and send them to Europe during the summers so they wouldn’t get bored? Where were the world’s men anymore?”

These words reveal some of Carlos’s strongest values and fears. He wants to provide for his daughters, but he also wants their respect. The culture they come from is patriarchal, but things are different in America in the latter part of the 20th century. This world is not one that values him in the same way that his previous world did. This passage also refers to the novel’s title, highlighting that Carlos himself played a key role in his daughters’ assimilation into American culture, which includes losing their accents.

“The mother dressed them all in diminishing-sized, different color versions of what she wore, so that the husband sometimes joked, calling them the five girls.”

These words symbolize two key points in the novel. First, they demonstrate how difficult it is for the sisters to differentiate themselves as individuals, reflecting The Difficulty of Forging a Self-Identity, a key theme in the novel. Second, these words demonstrate the way in which Laura associates with her daughters, taking a large part of her identity from being among them and being their mother.

“She said that just because they’re different, that was no reason to make her feel crazy for being her own person.”

Yolanda is upset because John has told her that she should see a psychiatrist. This relationship is fraught for Yolanda because she finds herself losing herself, via her name, when John begins calling her Joe, an Americanized version of Yolanda. Here, she asserts herself and maintains that their differences do not imply that something is wrong with her, an attitude she spent much of her life fighting against as an immigrant.

“If only I too had been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was making on the two digits of the year, 1969; I too would be having sex and smoking dope; I too would have suntanned parents who took me skiing in Colorado over Christmas break, and I would say things like ‘no shit,’ without feeling like I was imitating someone else.”

Yolanda is in college and regrets her immigrant background because it makes her feel different from other people. Again, she is railing against the pull between tradition and freedom. She believes that if she had been raised by American parents, she would not feel encumbered by tradition and would enjoy her freedoms more authentically.

“Perhaps if Rudy had acted a little more as if lovemaking were a workshop of sorts, things might have moved more swiftly toward his desired conclusion. But the guy had no sense of connotation in bed. His vocabulary turned me off even as I was beginning to acknowledge my body’s pleasure. If Rudy had said, Sweet lady, lay across my big, soft bed and let me touch your dear, exquisite body, I might have felt up to being felt up. But I didn’t want to just be in the sack, screwed, balled, laid, and fucked my first time around with a man.”

Yolanda respects language, but Rudy does not. His words for sexual acts are crude, in Yolanda’s mind, and she is not willing to have sex with someone who sees sex in the ways he describes it. He is not willing to speak in her language of love. As such, the two remain frustrated and break up.

“We spent the rest of the evening confessing to our giggly, over-chaperoned girl cousins the naughtiness we had committed up in the home of the brave and the land of the free.”

Here, the Garcia girls are talking to their female cousins on the Island when they learn that their mother is coming for a visit because they have done something wrong. They do not know what infraction they have committed. These words highlight the two different cultures the girls are caught between: that of the seemingly overprotective Dominican Republican culture and that of the relatively free American culture.

“She’s got her rights too.”

Mundín says this as the sisters want to stop Fifi from having sex with Manuel because Manuel will not use contraception. Mundín is almost taunting the girls with their ideas of liberation. On his watch, he is okay with a cousin having sex with someone he likes because the only way the culture of machismo survives is through male loyalty.

“‘She’ll get over it.’ Meaning Manuel, meaning her fury at us, meaning her fear of her own life. Like ours, it lies ahead of her like a wilderness just before the first explorer sets foot on the virgin sand.”

These are the words of the narrator as the Garcia girls have brought Fifi home to the United States and away from Manuel. They do this against Fifi’s wishes because they believe she will be better off in America, where she will not be subject to the whims of her macho cousin, Manuel, and the control he attempts to exert over her. Fifi is unhappy, but the sisters maintain that their actions were in her best interest.

“Her daughters never called her Mom except when they wanted her to feel how much she had failed them in this country. She was a good enough Mami, fussing and scolding and giving advice, but a terrible girlfriend parent, a real failure of a Mom.”

With these words, the sisters understand the difference between what is expected of mothers in the United States and back on the Island. On the Island, a mother is supposed to be a guardian and a guide, while in the United States, the sisters believe, a mother should be more of a companion. Their mother parents the same way in both cultures and refuses to cave to their Americanized ideal of motherhood.

“Here they were trying to fit in America among Americans; they needed help figuring out who they were, why the Irish kids whose grandparents had been micks were calling them spics. Why had they come to this country in the first place? Important, crucial, final things….”

The daughters are frustrated with their mother because they are seeking guidance from her. They feel out of place in their new culture. They do not feel like they fit in anywhere. They are upset because their mother is spending her time creating inventions to make American women’s lives easier, while her own daughters are struggling.

“The public school was a mere two blocks beyond the Catholic school, but Laura Garcia would not hear of it. Public schools, she had learned from other Catholic parents, were where juvenile delinquents went and where teachers taught those new crazy ideas about how we all came from monkeys.”

These words explain Laura Garcia’s concerns about public schools. They are the reason she sends Carla to a Catholic school further away when she cannot get her into the nearest Catholic school. In reality, Laura was experiencing trauma at the hands of bullies at the Catholic school.

“I liked them a lot, especially my grandmotherly fourth grade teacher, Sister Zoe. I had a lovely name, she said, and she had me teach the whole class how to pronounce it.”

Here, Yolanda explains a positive experience she had with a teacher, and as such, she demonstrates a way in which authority figures can help young immigrants feel at peace in their new home. Instead of Americanizing Yolanda’s name or pronunciation to make life easier for the other students, she has Yolanda teach all the students how to properly say her name, lending Yolanda a sense of dignity.

“Sandi turned to the woman whose blurry, alcoholic eyes and ironic smile intimated the things Sandi was just beginning to learn, things that the dancers knew all about, which was why they danced with such vehemence, such passion.”

Sandi and her sisters all must figure out how to be American and how to be adult women. Here, after seeing the Spanish dancers and seeing Mrs. Fanning kiss her father, Sandi thinks about these things that adult women know that she has not learned yet. She is just on the brink of her sexual awakening and her journey into womanhood.

“I know what tears await them there, but let her be spared the knowledge that will come in time.”

Chucha knows the difficult time the Garcia girls will have living in a strange land. She knows because she was forced into that life as well. Still, she does not want to scare the girls because the fate will be theirs whether they are prepared or not. She wants to preserve their innocence for a bit longer.

“I see their future, the troublesome life ahead. They will be haunted by what they do and don’t remember. But they have spirit in them. They will invent what they need to survive.”

More than many people, Chucha understands the difficulty of being an immigrant. Here, she denotes the trouble of memory: Some of the girls will remember more than other girls about the Dominican Republic. She also knows, however, that they have enough gumption within them to survive whatever the world throws at them.

“But the tyrant who had seized power was jealous of anyone with education and money, and so Papito was often sent out of the country on a bogus diplomatic post.”

While the reign of terror of Raphael Trujillo is an undercurrent throughout the entire time the family is in the Dominican Republic, the author explains one way, besides violence, that Trujillo attempted to maintain power. It is also one of the most direct accusations against Trujillo in the novel.

“I breathed a little easier, having gained a cat-sized space inside myself.”

While Sandi and her sisters and cousins are preparing for art class, Sandi cannot help herself and begins drawing on the paper before it is time. This represents her drive to express herself through drawing. This is similar, at times, to the ways in which Yolanda feels a compulsion to express herself through words. Silence, for the Garcia girls, is not always possible. They need to let their inner thoughts and feelings out in some way—Yolanda when she is older, and Sandi when she is younger.

“The Catholic sisters at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows Convent School were teaching me to sort the world like laundry into what was wrong and right, what was venial, what, if you died in the middle of enjoying, would send you straight to hell. Before I could ever get to my life, conscience was arranging it all like a still life or tableau…I was not ready yet to pose as one of the model children of the world.”

All the girls are trying to figure out their place in an ever-changing world. They are frustrated by the restrictions placed on them both when they are young—here, in the Dominican Republic—and later when they are older in the United States. They have an inner desire to figure out the world on their own and to rebel against strict rules and norms.

“But I was a changed child. Months of pampering and the ridicule of my cousins had turned me inward. But now when the world filled me, I could no longer draw it out. I was sullen and dependent upon my mother’s sole attention, tender-hearted, and whiney: the classic temperament of the artist without anything to show for my bad character. I could no longer draw. My hand had lost its art.”

These words represent Sandi’s plight once she loses her ability to draw. It is not that she cannot physically draw anymore. Rather, her spirit of an artist has been broken and yet still remains, leaving her feeling trapped inside herself.

“For a moment, I didn’t know how being good worked. Most times, Mami was around, telling me the rules: you weren’t supposed to give away gifts you received. Gladys should keep her wallet. But that meant I should keep that old bank, which to give away would be a generous deed.”

These words illustrate the unintended consequences moral decisions can have. Carla wants Gladys to have the bank that Gladys, herself, does not even want, but she knows she is not supposed to give away gifts. She gives Gladys the bank out of generosity, but because a misunderstanding ensues, Gladys ends up leaving service in the house.

“By then, having consulted her American education, my mother decided it would be cruel to press charges. The poor woman didn’t know any better.”

Much is made about American education throughout the novel, specifically the ways that it can change a person. In this instance, Mami decides not to press charges against Pila, who has been stealing from them. Her reasoning, however—that the woman could not have known better—illustrates Laura’s prejudicial assumption that a woman from Haiti could not have learned proper morals. She only refrains from pressing charges because she thinks the woman is beneath her morally.

“I did not know at the time the word for saying one thing and doing another, but I did know plenty of practicing adults, and I was not going to be gypped of a well-dressed kitten by a moral imperative given to me by an exception to the rule!”

This comes from the last story in the novel, and as such, it is the earliest story of Yolanda. As a child, she does not know the word “hypocrisy,” but she can still sense it. This statement demonstrates how she has learned to judge advice partially based on who is giving it and the light in which it is given.