After her parents' failed attempt at a life in America, she returned to the Dominican Republic at the age of three months as her parents preferred the dictatorship of Trujillo to the US. Julia Alvarez herself was not born in the Dominican Republic, but in the United States. The family is displaced to the United States after living an established, upper-class life in the Dominican Republic, and is forced to face the challenges which come along with being an immigrant family in a foreign land. In How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez succeeds in altering the events of her own life to create fiction. The García family is an example of this phenomenon. Critic William Luis describes the situation of immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States during the revolution: 'The displacement of Caribbean people from their islands to the United States, for political or economical reasons, has produced a tension between the culture of the country of origin and that of the adopted homeland, one representing the past and the other future of the immigrant'.

Central control over the military, the economy, and the people meant that only a select few were allowed to leave the island. The years between 19 were a period of oppression and instability in the Dominican Republic as the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo came to an end with his assassination in 1961, only to be followed by military rule, revolution, intervention by the United States, and further dictatorship. Although it is told from alternating perspectives there is particular focus throughout the text on the character of Yolanda, who is said to be both the protagonist and the author's alter ego.īackground and historical context The text consists of fifteen interconnected short stories, each of which focuses on one of the four daughters, and in a few instances, the García family as a whole. It deals with the myriad hardships of immigration, painting a vivid picture of the struggle to assimilate, the sense of displacement, and the confusion of identity suffered by the García family, as they are uprooted from familiarity and forced to begin a new life in New York City. The novel's major themes include acculturation and coming of age. Told in reverse chronological order and narrated from shifting perspectives, the story spans more than thirty years in the lives of four sisters, beginning with their adult lives in the United States and ending with their childhood in the Dominican Republic, a country from which their family was forced to flee due to the father's opposition to Rafael Leónidas Trujillo's dictatorship. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a 1991 novel written by Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez.

Antojos by julia alvarez