Friday, January 27, 2012
Blog Post #1
"Simply wonderful." (Los Angeles Times) By just looking at the cover of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez you can already get the sense of a cultural background and a culture clash as one of the big motifs in the book. By the front cover, I can make a guess that the girls love to dance and that is something they lose themselves in when bored in the new world. I can already make some relations to the book, The Bonesetters Daughter because the characters, like LuLing, have to adjust to a new world when they already have customs to their native culture. It is going to be a hard time for them and around the time of the Civil Rights, they will feel persecuted for many things and have to live at a lower standard due to the vicious, racist Americans. Living in the Dominican Republic, they seemed to have many privileges growing up based on the family tree. Having some relation to the Conquistadores, they must come from wealth and power due to their ancestors. While growing up, they experienced many things that came to their advantage such as: having maids that adore them, getting manicures and relaxing, and a loving family. When they move to the US, they endure hardships and have to come up from many obstacles and troubles. After reading the first chapter alone, it is already captivating in that it shows the difference between the two worlds. She dreams of coming back to her native land and gets caught up in a risky situation. She runs into two military soldiers, and they approach her with machetes, but they just wanted to ask her if she needed help. Already, she is running into some difficulties such that Yolanda can't even remember how to speak Spanish anymore. I predict that when she returns to the US, she is going to dream of her home and her extended family living in their royalty-like lives.
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I really like the idea you presented about there being a culture clash, because clearly they are looking to leave their culture behind. You connection with The Bonesettes Daughter was perfect too, you backed it up really well and now i completely agree with your statement. After reading the first few chapters, what kind of character will you predict Yolanda to be? Also do you like the writer's style so far? Its different then books we've read so far so i look forward to hearing your opinion. Overall great first entry!
ReplyDeleteOne Final topic I forgot to bring up is your personal connection. Being born in Korea you can connect well with the Garcia girls assimilating in the new world. Was it challenging for you?
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how you immeditaley connected this novel to the Bonesetters Daughter. In making my pre-reading judgements i simply made infrences based on the context clues provided to me by the outer workings of the novel. It didnt even occur to me that i perhaps i could draw up some similarites to other novels we have read. I think you made a good point in pointing out the change in lifestyles that the characters will go through, as this seems to be a continual theme in the core novels we read in class.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with this book involving culture as a motif. I like how you compared the sisters to Lu ling because they both had to adjust to the new world they lived in. Like what I commented on Tommy's page, I think that this is going to be a great book since the Los Angelas time saisd it was "simply wonderful". The sisters are deffinitely going to have some problems in this book because of there race and the time period. I also like Tommy's question on what challenges you encountered living in a "new world", since you were born in Korea.
ReplyDeleteThis book definitely can have a motif of culture. Culture seems to re appear a lot in the core novels that were supposed to read for school. Like Bonesetters daughter revolved around culture. Luling being from China. I also see how you can connect it to Bonesetters Daughter. Because as I said earlier, culture is prominent in both books. But culture is prominent is a lot of books. Even things fall apart from sophomore year revolves around culture and to Kill a Mockingbird has a lot of culture in it. I thought this was really strong and good first entry. I look forward to reading more about your opinions. Especially regarding how she resembles culture throughout the book.
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