How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

These Books Made Me

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We are back for season 3 with a coming of age story told in reverse. This episode we dive into Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the 1991 reverse chronology story of four sisters who flee to the United States from the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. As we look through Yolanda's eyes at the world of New York City and the Dominican Republic in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we dissect Alvarez's depiction of class, race, acculturation, and machismo. We delve into the dynamics of sisterhood, boyfriends with ludicrous names, the ubiquity of certain aspects of adolescence, and complicated families. We also learn that some of us are Sandies but some of us are Lauras. Finally, we are taking it to the streets, er... stacks, with our new Person in the Stacks segment and asking what tastes like home.
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at [e-mail]. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.
We mentioned a lot of topics in this episode. Here’s a brief list of some informative articles about some of them if you want to do your own further research:
Rafael Trujillo: https://www.biography.com/dictator/rafael-trujillo
The Parsley Massacre: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/10/07/555871670/80-years-on-dominicans-and-haitians-revisit-painful-memories-of-parsley-massacre
Which Garcia Girl are you? https://www.buzzfeed.com/thesebooksmademe/which-garcia-girl-are-you-78z2e2u4rp