Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez

When her sisters go and visit her, the girls think that she looks like “the after person in one of those before-after makeovers in magazines” (117). Sofia essentially changed everything about her after just a few months in the Dominican Republic. She goes from someone that smokes weed and has wild stories about boys to a girl who is in touch with her Dominican roots. However, in Sofia’s case, parts of her identity are rooted in her innate characteristics. Even though some things have changed about her, there are still things that are the same about her.

In Julie Bettie’s, “Women Without Class”, she studies the differences between white and Mexican-American working-class senior year girls in high school. She aims to explain how race and gender intersect with class to shape both success in high school as well as class future. Not only are symbolic boundaries found between the girls that she studies, but also many factors including cultural capital and peer hierarchy that effect these students. Firstly, the symbolic boundaries created between the preps and las chicas starts with the symbolic economy of style.

In the story, “Names/Nombres,” by Julia Alverez, a young girl named Julia had strong Caribbean heritage, despite growing up in America . One problem she faces on a daily basis is the pronunciation of her own name. During school hours, she has noticed that many people manage to figure out ways to incorrectly pronounce her name, creating new and similar sounding names. Julia had a hard time getting used to her newfound titles and eventually got called far fetched names like Jules or Judy Alcatraz. Sometimes, Julia’s classmates would question her “exotic” heritage, curious to learn more about her, which only made her more embarrassed and singled out as different.

For many years, Latina women have been seen in popular US media and films such as West Side Story, Evita, La Bamba, and many more. However, the Latinas have only been portrayed as sexy and stupid women in these movies. Though these stereotypes are only meant to get a laugh from the US film watchers to see the Latina maid try to speak English with a heavy accent, the stereotypes are insulting and don’t represent the Latina women or culture accurately. In her memoir, “The Myth of the Latin Women,” writer Judith Ortiz Cofer analyzes many presumptions that her white audience might have about Latinas and argues that the stereotypes exist but they are inaccurate. In order to convey how Latinas are affected, Cofer recalls numerous personal encounters

Because of this, Yolanda is stuck in the middle. She does not know whether or not she should become completely American, or stick to her roots. She loves when she is called her real name instead of the “bastardized”, American version, but on the other hand, she hates the patriarchy that is part of the Dominican culture (81). The same goes for other many other things. Yolanda both hates and loves both of her cultures, but trying to fit in with both of them at the same time is too much for her, especially because she sees herself as secondary compared to Americans.

The reader can also compare Lulu’s situation to the one in the Becoming La Mujer by Maria Navarro, which also focuses on the difficulties a woman will face, such as sex. Women are faced with this problem everyday; to be sexually active means they are “whores” or “not pure” however, if they are still virgins they are considered to be “prudes”. Women are everyday victims of labeling. People will always associate you with your one mistake. In Becoming La Mujer, the woman who is presented in the article deals with judgement of her family like many other females may be face.

Up until the 1960s Anglo social scientists wrote most of the literature about the people of Mexican- descent in the United States. Their analysis of Mexican American culture and history reflected the hegemonic beliefs, values, and perceptions of their society. As outsiders, Anglo scholars were led by their own biases and viewed Mexicans as inferior, savage, unworthy and different. Because Mexican scholars had not yet begun to write about their own experiences, these stereotypes were legitimized and reproduced in the literature. However, during the mid- 1960s scholars such as Octavio Ignacio Romano, Nick Vaca, Francisco Armando Rios, and Ralph Ricatelli began to reevaluate the literature written by their predecessors.

Sexuality in adolescence Sexuality is the most notorious and common sign of development in adolescence. “The House on Mango street”, by Sandra Cisneros is a coming of age novel, where Esperanza transitions from a girl into a young teen. In her journey, Esperanza comes across many challenges, she is forced to grow up by life’s adversities. In the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, a mother advises her daughter and scolds her into becoming a decent woman. In her guidance, the mother is worried about her daughter’s sexual activity and warns her about the consequences of improper behavior.

The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María is an essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer that addresses the impact of stereotyping on Latino women. Throughout the essay, Cofer relates her personal experiences with stereotypes to discuss how they have negatively affected her life and the lives of other Latinas. She also explains how these stereotypes originated and calls on her audience, the majority-white non-Latino population, to stop propagating the stereotypical portrayals of Latino women. In The Myth of the Latin Woman, Cofer speaks out about how stereotyping hinders the process of assimilating to a new culture by appealing to ethos through her personal experiences, using similes that show how stereotypes create isolation, and adopting

Lola takes advantage of her deteriorating mother whose illness represents the declining hold of the norms over Lola. Since her mom “will have trouble lifting her arms over her head for the rest of her life,” Lola is no longer afraid of the “hitting” and grabbing “by the throat” (415,419). As a child of a “Old World Dominican Mother” Lola must be surrounded by traditional values and beliefs that she does not want to claim, so “as soon as she became sick” Lola says, “I saw my chance and I’m not going to pretend or apologize; I saw my chance and I eventually took it” (416). When taking the opportunity to distinguish herself from the typical “Dominican daughter” or ‘Dominican slave,” she takes a cultural norm like long hair and decides to impulsively change it (416). Lola enjoyed the “feeling in [her] blood, the rattle” that she got when she told Karen to “cut my hair” (418).

I’m Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is a novel by Erika Sanchez. The main conflict is that Julia’s sister Olga has recently passed away, so Julia struggles with her mental health, depression and grieving, and the stress of schooling additionally with her home life and close relationships. Julia is very dismissive because of the close and messy relationships she has around her life. Julia is very self conscious because of the way her mother talks to her. Ama tries to set an expectation on Julia saying, “ You have to be pretty for your family.

Anzaldúa was a Mexican American who was a well-known writer and had a major impact on the fields of queer, feminist, and cultural theory. Her most famous work is Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza which includes poems, essays, and short stories. Anzaldúa was no stranger to the use of literary theories in her writing, which is evident in her short story “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Here, the author uses a combination of feminist, reader-response, and psychoanalytic theory to show the struggle of being oneself when they’re Mexican-American. Through the use of feminist theory, she explains how a female is labeled as an “habladora” when she tries to voice out her opinion about something; reader-response theory provides the reader with an understanding of the struggles of self-identity, which they are able to relate to, especially Mexican-Americans; and lastly, psychoanalytic theory illuminates on her childhood experiences, which could explain why Anzaldúa believes in what she does, such as the idea that Anglo people have tried to tame her tongue—in other words, her language.

For as long as people can remember, the stereotype that men have “more power” than women in a relationship has been a relevant argument. In the novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents the Author, Julia Alvarez, writes about four girls and part of that revolves around their relationships with men. In all of their relationships with men, he has the power in the relationship which means he makes the decisions for them. When they lived in the United States the girls and their mother had more say in the society. When they lived in the Dominican Republic men just saw them as submissive housewives who bear their children.

This caused her to alienate herself since her mother asked her to keep a part of herself hidden from the world by binding her and making sure no one found out she menstruated ealy (Anzaldúa 1983, 221). This will later isolate her further but ultimately lead her to reflect on the racism that surrounds her. In addition, Anzaldúa’s identity also suffer because she denied her heritage and the traditions that with it. She mentions that she felt ashamed of her mother and her loud tendencies, it is an archetype that most Hispanic mothers are loud by nature, and the fact that her lunches, or “lonches”, consisted

Eliza Haywood writes the cautionary tale Fantomina in order to instruct women against pursuing their sexual desires. The protagonist, an unnamed “Lady of distinguished Birth” (41), secretly pursued her desires for Beauplaisir under the guise of four different personas, ultimately leading to the ruin of her reputation and being sent to live in a monastery. I will refer to the main character when she is not disguised as the protagonist to avoid confusion. I will be discussing female sexuality, where I will be focussing on certain aspects including sexual identity, sexual behaviour, and how social and religious aspects affect this sexuality. I will argue that Haywood uses the cautionary tale in order to represent female sexuality as distinguishable