Garcia Girls Final

The book

The Garcia Girls Lost their Accent

by Julia Alverez is about four sisters and how their lives evolved into the lives they lived to the lives they are currently living. The book is written in reverse chronological order, as confusing as that may seem, presumably, it is what made the book a topic of intrest for schools to expose their students to. In the beginning, she gave us characters that I personally didn't care for or feel any connection to and her writing gave an understanding of each personality we experienced as readers and brought emotion to the audience. Finding out who each girl was and how they got there was quite interesting. The book also did not have an ending, it was a loop. It started and ended with the same emotion and almsot same place in time. Alverez's style is unique to what I am used to for school reading material. I think the reason we were supposed to read this was not to find meaning in the book and shed light on topic that is yet to be discovered, I think it was more about writing. Alverez contorted her readers to think exactly what she wanted the to, essentially she mind effed us to be her puppets and I respect the hell out of her for it. To me it seemed like she didn't care if her audience liked it or not, in any circumstance, she seemed to have the last laugh.

In the book

The Garcia Girls Lost their Accent

by Julia Alverez,it almost seemed like a diary because of the personality she brought to the book. She seemed very secretive and open about what she wrote so I still can't tell if it's a therapy or if it's just a story. With each character she brought the most intimate stories that would either scar a child forever or shape who they would become. I must admit, I couldn't put the idea of sexual abuse out of mind. Sex was the underlying theme for the entire book, in every chapter and every story there was something involving sex. If it was sleeping with a married man to proving that you are a lady to your cousin to having pornographic pictures that the family gardener looked at. The sexual abuse theme seemed to be true for Yolanda and Sophia, and had the biggest impact on their lives. Yolanda's seemed to effect her later in life causing her to make decisions that were "vulgar" and not socially acceptable. Sophia on the other hand, she was effected throughout her life. The first symptoms of her inappropriate showed with her relationship with her father. She expressed and attraction that should have still been foreign to her, especially to her father.

Sophia was a character of intrest for me. Sofia is the youngest daughter, in the beginning she was a girl who seemed to have inappropriate feelings towards her father, later, as she got older, she had constant boyfriends and ran off with a man named Otto from Germany-against her fathers wishes which created a tense and hostile relationship with him. After a failed relationship with a Dominican boyfriend that seemed to be the turning point where she finally embraced American attitudes toward sexual relationships. She challenges all sexual double standards that she finds in Dominican culture and claims independence. When she had her children it seems to be the ice breaker for her and her father, but at his birthday party she flaunts her sexuality and his powerlessness to control it by kissing his ear in a particularly seductive way brining up the inappropriate relationship once more. Later in the book it is discovered that because of her age, she hardly has any memories of the Dominican Republic, but for some reason she does remember the Haitian maid, Chucha, who performed voodoo spells and slept in a coffin.

Overall this story fascinated me, not necessarily for the content but for Alverez. Not many people will admit to it, but she did control the entire book. She used her influence to shape her audience views. Even if no one believes this, just having that feeling of confusion at the end of the book when it just starts at the beginning is just Alverez having control over you. I found this extremely interesting and ended up wanting to meet her for a better understanding of the book and learn how she got the audience to fall under her spell.

Final Response to Garcia Girls

Well, this book was extremely confusing. In the beginning I didn't really care about anyone and didn't think too much of it. By the end I still wasn't into it, but I started liking some of the characters.

Personally I think this book was written as some sort of a diary. It seemed extremely personal but disguised as a story. Alverez, said to be the character Yolanda, had major issues with sex and sex was the main underlying theme through out the entire book. So, I'm guessing there was some abuse in her life. I also think that this book was written for people from the ages of twenty-seven to thirty-five. These may seem like random numbers, they are, but they seem to be true. Especially because Mr. Sutherland fits this standard and enjoyed the book.

I admit to not being fair to this book, I didn't give it my full attention and skimmed through it a lot. This probably wasn't the best idea because the book is known to be a difficult read and confusing. I probably didn't give it the credit it deserved.

Sometime later in life I will probably reread it-preferably when I am of the ages twenty-seven to thirty-one-and will probably have a better understanding of it. In the group discussion this was agreed on, but the rebuttal was that as teenagers we have certain ideas that only pertain to our age group. I do think this is revenant and very understandable, but I also think that it is harder for us to relate to such complex material.

Overall this wasn't that horrible of a book. I actually liked parts of it. Some of the messages were not understood and fulling relating to each character is close to imposible, especially for our age group. One thing that I didn't understand was if these were all here memories but said from different perspectives or if these were the memories from her family members and loved ones.

So, as I have expressed to some people, I think I am going to be a very crazy old person. It is just predetermined.

One of the reasons I think this is because of my Granny. She is pretty damn crazy (in the good way) but never the less crazy. It's sad actually, I hold a lot of hostility towards her and we're running out of time to make amends. I'm not quite sure what to do about it. She may be crazy and controlling but she is my Granny and she gave birth to the person who gave birth to me. She was also the person who I was with for like 90% of my childhood, but when I was able to start thinking for myself things went south. At this point I'm not sure if anything would make a difference. Currently she has alzheimer's disease so I don't know how much longer she will be able to remember me. Right now, I don't know if she knows we don't get along well. I don't even know if she knows that I am a teenager and not a little girl anymore. Actually taking the time to think about this, it really saddens me. How would it feel to one day wake up and not recognize your daughter, to not even know you had a child.

I don't know if I can handle this when I'm older. Granted my Granny likes messing with people so she does make things harder to differ from alzheimer's or her just playing around. Sometimes it's very evident, when she gets a blank look in her eyes, it's like looking at a doll. She also doesn't eat very well so her blood pressure is high and her body is giving out. That is one thing I know I couldn't deal with. I couldn't be restrained from movement. I honestly hope we make amends before it is too late, she is a good person, she may be lost and unorthodox, but she is still my Granny.

Responce to Stan

I read Stan's blog because most everything I saw in recent posts were responses to his, so I decided to read it Stan's Blog

"My take on the whole love scenario is that it is completely made up. It is just a state of mind that your brain tricks itself into believing is real... At this age you are guaranteed this feeling of "Love"...At this stage in our lives relationships are not meant to be everlasting, at this age relationships are just for the fun of it, or at least in the beginning they are."
I have to admit I used to think that way too. Especially because I always saw my parents fighting and thought that it is impossible to love someone forever, and the only true love I saw was between my Aunt and Uncle who were married longer than they weren't, but this came to an abrupt end when he passed away. That was when I had no hope for love because I thought it couldn't last. This is only one way of looking at love though, there are different ways of loving someone (as I posted in another blog). In this case it is talking about a romantic relation.

Talking about his girlfriend Stan states,"I love her to death and i would do anything for her on any day. But would i shed a tear if she left me? If she cheated? No, i wouldn't."
I think this is an automatic response for some people, I have been cheated on before and I didn't cry, I got angry and after about two weeks I made sure that he had dropped of the face of the planet and I was just doing things just to spite his actions. I think that it's a result to being hurt, I may not have cried but I was still hurt.

I always thought of myself of leaving the love of my life, just picking up and leaving for no reason other than being scared. I also never saw myself in a long distance relationship, let alone it lasting and being extremely important. It's true, I don't believe in love for some cases and for some people, but I can't deny being in love. Granted we are hella young and the odds of staying together forever are one in a million, but I have seen lovers starting in high school and I have seen them grow as people and still be just as in love as they were the first time they laid eyes on each other. I hope that this will be the case because I'm not going to let the phrase, "All good things come to and end" be true.

How the Gracia Girls Lost their Accents Response 2

I think that How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents is rather boring. Not saying it is not good, it just is not very interesting to me. The only character I care for is Sophia. This is because she is a bit of a wild child but she does accept responsibility for her actions. When pot was discovered by the maid-thinking it was oregano-in the four girl's room, Sophia took the blame even though none of them were innocent. I did discuss the novel with Mr. Sutherland for a different perspective than a student forced to read it. He actually really enjoyed it and had just about the opposite reaction of many students. I found this very interesting. I wondered if it was his teacher training or if it was just a more mature outlook on the book, but his words did give me hope for a more interesting ending for the book.

One of the reasons I thought that the students don't enjoy the novel as much as Mr. Sutherland is because of how split our attention has to be. Ever night students are assigned homework and just by having a life our attention has to be focused on many topics. One of my personal problems with this book is that it is the last thing I do. Once I'm in bed and all I want to do is sleep, that is when I read, so it makes it just that much harder to concentrate. I was also thinking that the novel might not be what students are looking for in a story. After reading Night we might have expected something that spoke to us and really made us think and question many things. Granted we chose the book by vote, we still didn't really know what we were getting into. I will honestly admit that I chose the book by the cover. The title looked interesting, the picture was enticing, and the little blurb on the back made it sound like a really really good book. The book is actually a good book if you really think about it, it just wasn't what I expected.

Sleep Deprivation

ASTI has turned me into a zombie. Yes, I do extra curricular activities so it does make my life more chaotic but I am now fully running on auto pilot.

Today I was asked by a friend to help with concession stands at his school play, so I agreed knowing I had friends there. In the first act I was awake and lively, I sold food, I helped out, I did whatever was asked of me, in the second act I fell asleep. Because I missed the first act I was confused just coming into the second act with no prior knowledge. To be frank it kind of sucked. I was with friends I haven't seen in a very long time and I was actually doing something that didn't involve dance or school, and I fell asleep.

During the first act I was back stage, I met so many new people and it was quite fun. We told stories and got to just have a good time. This made me realize how I've stopped just goofing off in life, I only do things for a purpose. I also noticed how I can't "waste" my time anymore. I couldn't sit through one act with out being antsy, I quickly grew impatient and wanted to use my time in a better way than I was currently doing. I was constantly moving and talking to new people, almost learning about them as individuals. This was interesting to find out how different I am in social settings. I still am functional and can fit in in an environment such as this, I just view it in a different way. Instead of being the center of attention and radiating good emotions, I've converted to taking note into every mannerism someone has, taking it into account and having fun in that way.

Learning these new techniques I have, I think it has to do with not sleeping or relaxing. Instead of learning my environment the kind of forcing people to shape their views to mine, I save all that energy and focus it to not having any conflicting personality traits with them. This is probably better in the long run, but before I over analyze myself, I'm going to sleep.

Response to "Innocence"

I said something along the lines of, "What is innocence or how did it come about" in Sutherland's class today. So these are my thoughts:

I don't know what being innocent actually means: free from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil-blameless, harmless in effect or intention, and free from legal guilt or fault-lawful. This was not helpful at all. These are the "terms" we discussed all day in class. The first thing that poped in my head was that someone was not exposed to the horrores of the world-completely disregarding any legal terms. The group I was assigned to discussed all of the questions Mr. Sutherland gave us, the we bagan to discuss all the scenarios that could have taken "someones innocence", the we bagan talking about personal thoughts of how we individually we are and how we feel about our innocence or even if we still have it. Annie brought up some very interesting points of how she isn't innocent to the world's problems but she is innocent to other things. This kind of gave our group another look one the term innocent, because of how many different ways one can be innocent.

Another aspect of innocents is what you think of yourself. You define how innocent or not innocent you are. Things can happen to you but you don't have to have it effect how innocent you are, but thats thinking of things as a "high school innocence". Personally, I feel bad for men. Being innocent isn't considered a good thing for them, usually if they are, they are ridiculed for being so-this was also a conversation in our group. We talked about how men who haven't slept with someone is usually outcasted for not being "cool" but if they sleep with many different partners they are considered a stud, but if a woman does this she is considered a slut. This duble standard confuses the hell out of me.

Response to How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents

This book is extremely confusing. I've noticed that I started falling asleep while reading, I try very hard to stay awake so I am constantly moving so I probably look a little crazy.

The more I read the less intrigued I am, but there is this certain thing that just holds me and keeps my attention. There is this certain undetermined factor that just keeps me reading. This is baffling because I don't necessarily enjoy the book. It's written in a very interesting manner, out of order, reverse chronological order with multiple perspectives. That is pretty intense. Some parts of this book are just...not what I am accustomed to. The youngest daughter shoved her tongue into her fathers ear and nibbled on his ear-while he was blind folded-for a game her family was playing. Gina brought up that Sophia and her father might have had a "different" relationship, this is just a theory because we have no evidence to back it up, yet. Annie brought up another point that later in the book Sophia's mother tried to hide her success from her husband, so there seems to be a lot of under lying messages that are yet to be found.

This book has a lot of sex, but it's not upfront. So, I'm left thinking I have a dirty mind. Thankfully we had a class discussion and I am not the only one thinking there is underlying sex everywhere. It's just kind of there. This book might be so intriguing because of the preshadowing used in the book. I know that the book flows in a reverse chronological fashion so it leaves me wondering how the characters ended up the way they did. Especially Sophia, I know that Yolanda is the "main" character but Sophia just seems like there is much more than one would expect, but her relationship with her father is worrisome.

As for what is going to happen, I don't have a clue. I am barely comprehending the current events let alone what has happened in the past. I think that Julia Alvarez enjoys messing with peoples minds if so, she is very good at it. I feel like what she wants us to think is right infront of us but I'm looking in the complete other direction. I guess only time will tell how I end up feeling about the book.