De cómo las muchachas García perdieron el acento
Description
Cuando las hermanas García —Carla, Sandra, Yolanda y Sofía— y sus padres huyen de la República Dominicana buscando refugio de la persecución política, encuentran un nuevo hogar en los Estados Unidos. Pero el Nueva York de los años sesenta es marcadamente diferente de la vida privilegiada, aunque conflictiva, que han dejado atrás. Bajo la presión de asimilarse a una nueva cultura, las muchachas García se alisan el pelo, abandonan la lengua española y se encuentran con muchachos sin una chaperona. Pero por más que intentan distanciarse de su isla natal, las hermanas no logran desprender el mundo antiguo del nuevo. Lo que las hermanas han perdido para siempre —y lo que logran encontrar— se revela en esta novela magistral de una de las novelistas más celebradas de nuestros tiempos.ENGLISH DESCRIPTION"Poignant . . . Powerful . . . Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory." —The New York Times Book ReviewAcclaimed writer Julia Alvarez’s beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home—and not at home—in America.
More Details
Alvarez, Julia Author
Berrido, Rosie Narrator
Gomez, Laura Narrator
Guhl, Mercedes translator
9781428157118
9781501916090
Table of Contents
From the Book - Primera edicíon Vintage Español.
Excerpt
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Published Reviews
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this volume, containing 18 short stories, ten previously published in The New Yorker, Allen skewers the issues and concerns of the day. He satirizes the obsession for placing our children in the "right" schools ("The Rejection"). He underlines our propensity to purchase just about anything on eBay ("Glory Hallelujah, Sold!"). He ponders the property rights of kids and their summer camp projects ("Calisthenics," "Poison Ivy," "Final Cut"). He praises the little-known diet advice of Friedrich Nietzsche ("Thus Ate Zarathustra"). In short, Allen takes the slightly ridiculous from everyday life, gives it a twist and a tweak, and creates satire, irony, and laugh-out-loud humor. [PW 6/01/07]. (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent)Alvarez, Julia[A new translation of ] Alvarez's first novel, [which] tells the story (in reverse chronological order) of four sisters and their family, as they become Americanized after fleeing the Dominican Republic in the 1960s. A family of privilege in the police state they leave, the Garcías experience understandable readjustment problems in the United States, particularly their old world patriarch father. The sisters fare better but grow up conscious, like all immigrants, of living in two worlds. Alvarez is a gifted, evocative storyteller of promise. [LJ 5/01/1991] (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.