Topic & Thesis on Julia Alvarez
Running head: TOPIC & THESIS 1
TOPIC & THESIS 2
Topic and Thesis on Julia Alvarez
Topic & Thesis on Julia Alvarez
The topic of choice is Yolanda Garcia’s struggle to be a loyal member and a successful novelist. Personally, I think that Yolanda’s efforts to be a successful author and at the same time have to be a loyal family member are an indicator of the various struggles that Yolanda undergoes as she tries balancing between her education life that is becoming a novelist and her role as a member of Garcia’s family.
In reading the first chapter of the book, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent” we see Yolanda struggling in desperation in her search for a guava grove assisted by a young boy. As she tries changing her flat tire, the two men approach to and offer her assistance, but Yolanda refuses not because she meant it but because she does not want the two American men to realize that she does not speak Spanish even though she is an American thus avoiding embarrassment.
In her struggle to becoming a novelist, Yolanda has to pretend to be an older sister to Sarita only to treat her as a pet for the purpose of studying her (Sarita’s) acculturation in a class project. Additionally, Yolanda is a traumatized lot in seeing her father’s gun, and it is not entirely clear why she would do between telling the SIM about the weapon and keeping silence to prevent her family from the trauma that will come with such a scenario where slaves are found with a weapon in the White neighborhood. Yolanda still struggles to convince her husband John in referring to her using her Spanish names, but this is not the case. John chose to call Yolanda by her American nicknames an act that Yolanda hates so much. However, as it turns out, Yolanda came to realize the importance of language in defining her identity especially as she tries to become a novelist.
References
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. New York: Plume, 1991. Print.
Bess, J. (2007). Imploding the Miranda complex in Julia Alvarez is how the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. College Literature
