Throughout her novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez uses a unique style of writing that contributes to the weaknesses of the book and its difference when compared to books with similar genres.
The author’s writing style can only be described as unique because of the distinctive organization and development of this novel’s storyline. If an individual simply picks up this book and starts reading, confusion would most likely rise immediately because of the reversed storyline organization, inconsistent character viewpoints, and unclear character descriptions and events.
For one, the story does not progress through the usual chronological order but instead, starts in the present and moves backwards so that the narration in the next vignette – or maybe even as soon as the next paragraph – would have happened before what the reader has just read. This style of writing can sometimes throw the reader off because the reader has to constantly keep in mind that the detail they just read had happened further back in time than the detail they had read before that detail. Although I do not have a problem with this reversed chronological order in the storyline, I sometimes find it hard to follow the before and after of the stories and vignettes.
The second thing is the inconsistent viewpoints. Although Alvarez does give the names of the characters who play a part in narrating the vignette it is sometime had to differentiate between two characters that might both play a part in narrating in the same vignette. For example, in the vignette “The Four Girls” in the first section, the author lists that Carla, Yolanda, Sandra, and Sofia may be narrating but the story wavers between all four characters so that the reader cannot truly pinpoint the character that is telling the story. In this sense, the story becomes more of a third-person narration and it seems inconsistent when other vignettes have one character telling the story and is made clear who the vignette’s focus is on.
The third writing style Alvarez uses is that she does not introduce the characters who are playing a role in the vignette at the beginning. She dives straight into the story and leaves the reader to figure out which character is telling the story as though the reader already knows what happened in the story. This can be exemplified in the last vignette of the third section, “The Drum.” The reader can find out that the focus of the vignette would be on Yolanda because it is written underneath the title but the vignette does not start out focused on Yolanda and is writing in first-person perspective.
It was a drum Mamita brought back from a trip to New York, a magnificent drum, its sides bright red, criss-crossed by gold wire held down by gold button heads, its top and bottom white. [...] "Ah," I sighed, for in the hollow at the center, two drumsticks were stored. (pg. 275).
Here, it is easy to see that the first paragraph if the vignette practically has no connection with Yolanda, who is supposedly the focus of the vignette. The paragraph mainly describes about the drum and only refers to Yolanda through the usage of the word “I.” In addition, the use of that “I” does not even identify who is talking because the only character that is introduced in Mamita. This causes confusion because it leads to no clear or concise understanding of who the character is and what the character’s relationship is with the other characters or objects that may be or are also introduced. Therefore, I think that the author’s style of writing leads to the surfacing of some confusion which in turn leads to the novel’s weakness.
The weaknesses of the book basically consists of what I mentioned above because I believe the weakness derives for the confusion that takes place due to the author’s unique style of writing. The most confusing aspects of this book seem to reside within the vignettes and the organization because of the three reasons mentioned above: the reversed storyline organization, inconsistent character viewpoints, and unclear character descriptions and events. In addition, there seems to be no connections between the order in which the vignettes appears except for the knowledge that what happens towards the end of the book happened before what took place in the beginning of the book. The story jumps around and there does not seem to be a pattern that derives from the incidents. Although I understand that the author may have written this novel because she might be relating back to her life, trying to make the book seem more realistic by connecting it the way an individual’s memories might surface – out of nowhere and without a pattern – makes the comprehension of the storyline challenging. Therefore, I think that the weaknesses of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents derive from the unusual writing style that the author uses throughout her essay.
I think the only book that I have read that has a similar genre to How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents may be The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The most obvious reason why these two books are similar is because of the novel’s structure through the use of vignettes and because of the focus on mainly one character. Although one relates to Latin American culture and the other relates to the Dominican Republic, both characters essentially show growth. Esperanza, the main character in The House on Mango Street, is shown to be restricted by her community but eventually leaves the town she lives in. This is similar to Yolanda because Yolanda is at first restricted to what she can and cannot do by her parents but as she began to lose touch with her native culture and adapt the American culture, she gains a sense of freedom. In short, a common theme that both novel touch upon is a character’s life being restricted in some way at the beginning but soon gains freedom as the character learns more about society and the world. Although similar, these two books are also very different from one another because The House on Mango Street can symbolize oppression while How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents can symbolize change.
No comments:
Post a Comment