How the Garcia Girls Lost their accents

I really liked this book I haven’t finished it but so far I’ve been enjoying it a lot. I think compared to the other book it cover issues that affect more people that move to USA. Especially those who are young enough, to assimilate the new culture. I believe that those that move a little older don’t lose much identity they know who they are, either Mexicans, Salvadorians, Nicaraguans, Cubans… and so on they have an identity. In this book it focuses more on those that come younger to the USA and are no longer one nationality but a mixture of two, and how they battle between roots and influence of the new culture. We see this a lot in the story about Yolanda who refuses to sleep with Rudy, in this story we see a battle with the new culture which does not condemn this type of behaviour versus her roots which influenced by catholic beliefs condemns sleeping around. She says “ I would never find someone who would understand my peculiar mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles.” She feels like she does not fit in and I think one of the major themes of the book is finding one’s own identity. And the fact that they keep on traveling back and form the USA to the Island shows that they have not found where they belong, because they keep on doing it even, when they are not forced to.
In the style of writing I found very interesting that Alvarez besides writing both in English and in Spanish he also incorporates a lot of Spanish sayings like “with patience and calm even a burro can climb a palm”(135) In general I really like this book.