How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents has been exhilarating, and a necessary balance to the mainly male-centered works of Junot Diaz. In Alvarez's well-known novel, we see an immigrant narrative of a family forced to choose emigration because of the Trujillo regime's constant presence and attempts to kill the patriarch of the family, Don Carlos. Thus, like so much of immigrant literature, the focus of the novel is on identity and finding meaning in the 'new land.' However, the novel does more than explore the contours of Dominican-American identity. Issues of gender, race, color, language, patriarchy, and sexuality are relevant in all sections of the novel. Moreover, it's structured in an intriguing fashion: it moves backwards in time chronologically, thereby tracing the troubled lives of the four Garcia girls from their adult years in the United States back to their childhood in the Dominican Republic, a period where Trujillo's secret police sought and killed some of their relatives.

As in Junot Diaz's Brief Wondrous Life, the shadow of Trujillo and the unequal power distribution of his regime lurks behind the scenes, though Trujillo never appears as a character (except one allusion to his daughter being a neighbor of the family compound). Somehow, the dictator manages to exert an influence that begins to affect everyone's behavior, including the children (the harrowing scene where two secret police (guardias) show up at the house for Don Carlos is an excellent example). And, likewise, aspects of the patriarchal culture of the upper-class family the four girls descend from mirror that dictatorship: male heirs were favored, males were given more freedom, women were to abstain from sex until marriage, etc. In addition to the widespread misogyny and sexism that characterized Trujillo's regime (and many families of the Dominican Republic), Sofia's experience with an illegitimate cousin, Manuel, prove how women are subordinated in very real ways by a culture of machismo (cousin Mundin is another outstanding example of Dominican masculinity being cultivated in horribly sexist ways, since he plays the role of catalyst in the loss of innocence of his cousins, Yoyo and Sofia). Clearly, a female-centered narrative such as this novel provides a fascinating way to study the effects of gender and sexism on maintaining the dictatorship, as well as the conflicts the family faces in the US as the daughters mature and embrace their sexuality and 'liberation' in ways their parents do not support.

Issues of race, color, and xenophobia in the Dominican Republic and the US also shape the novel. The family faces racism in New York (being called spics by white children and adults), poverty (Don Carlos struggles to get his medical license and find work when the family first leaves the Dominican Republic after narrowly escaping capture by Trujillo's men), and alienation. Simultaneously, while becoming victims of US white racism (including from the more 'liberal' types like a college boyfriend of Yolanda's who assumes 'Latin' women are easy and whose parents believe the Dominican would be like a geography lesson for their boy, an intersectional example of racism and sexism), strict class and race boundaries within the Garcia family's elite background dictate a type of condescension and racism towards the servants and those of Haitian descent. Thus, as Dominican-Americans, regardless of color, face racism and xenophobia in the Diaspora, Dominicans in the Island perpetuate another form of oppression against each other and Dominicans of Haitian descent.

 For instance, Chucha, a Vodouizan survivor of them 1937 massacres ordered by Trujillo (again, Trujillo is omnipresent in this novel), taken in by the generous grandparents of the girls, is looked down upon by the servants in the household because of her 'blue-black' color and descent, as well as being a practitioner of Vodou (entitled 'voodoo' in Alvarez's novel). Despite loyally serving the family since 1937, she is looked down upon by other similarly lower-class, dark-skinned Dominicans (the skin color or hair texture of the servants makes it quite obvious they are Afro-Dominican, being described as 'black' like Nivea or Chucha, dark-brown like Haitian-descended Pila, and having kinky hair, like Gladys. In this case, one can see how classism, racism, colorism, and xenophobia influence the Dominican and Dominican-American self-conceptualized identity. Even in the Garcia family, Laura is constantly bringing up their Swedish descent, her pride in conquistador ancestors, and praising the light skin and blue eyes of one of the daughters. This slavish devotion to white skin and privilege obscures the racial complexity and need for unity among Dominicans, especially in a dictatorship that based so much of its power on demonization and 'de-Haitianization' of the border with Haiti.

Perhaps this is why the two servants of Haitian descent play such prominent role in the early experiences of the Garcia girls before leaving for New York. They are a constant reminder of the classism, colorism, sexism, xenophobia, and immigrant experience the Garcias will undergo in what Chucha refers to as a land of the unliving, white zombies. Indeed, Chucha even prays for the girls on their last day 'home,' showing them the very same statue or 'talisman-like' figure that appears to be crying, the very same 'paquet congo' and her Vodou faith that sustained her all these years, losing contact with her family in Haiti and barely escaping death at the hands of a Trujillo-sanctioned massacre. The irony of this must not be lost, since the Garcia family was perilously close to a similar end under the same dictator. Pila, on the other hand, introduces Yoyo, or, Yolanda, into the coal shed where her innocence and the beginning of her longing for 'home,' take shape. If Pila's story of losing her eye and Yoyo's fears of the black cat (which manifest in nightmares after she flings the kitten out the window and steals it from the shed) symbolize her longing for home, then these women of Haitian descent, like the Garcia girls in the US, will continually struggle with locating 'home,' their identity. In fact, to make things worse for Pila, she disappears after stealing from the Garcia family, only to be brought to justice swiftly because of what I presume to be vitiligo, which marks her like Cain, just as skin color and national origin mark the Garcias in New York.

Unfortunately, this novel would have been better off focusing entirely on Yolanda than the entire family. Maybe if published as separate but interconnected short stories, the novel's structure would have been less jarring, but this is certainly a powerful read. The prose is simple and direct, the metaphorical language accessible, and the character of Yolanda very strong. Due to a lack of similar development for the other sisters, one cannot help but disinterested in some parts of the novel, but the working backwards chronologically worked quite well. It allows one to see, as Diaz observed in his famous novel, how Trujillo lives on in the minds, hearts, and behavior of Dominicans in the Diaspora, with devastating results for women. Their horrendous experiences with abusive, sexist, and racist US men, in conjunction with the struggle of assimilation, language barriers, intra-family squabbles, and the plethora of issues plaguing the Dominican Republic, demonstrate how everyone in the family is capable of becoming a little 'Trujillo,' capable of acts of great malice and abuse of power.

Julia Alvarez's A Wedding in Haiti

I finally read Alvarez's A Wedding in Haiti and though it was endearing, full of detail on the personal life of Alvarez (as well as forms of Dominican 'whiteness' in Santiago), and well-intentioned, it was sad to see how dependent she was on foreign white writers for understanding Haiti's history (something she compares to a nightmare at one point and exaggerates the extent of a 'genocide' against the remaining whites in Haiti during the days of Dessalines). But her relationship with the Haitian worker Piti and his family (and that of his Eseline, his future wife, which inspires the first trip to Haiti taken by Alvarez, her husband, etc.) is useful for looking at symbiotic and positive relationships between Haitians and Dominicans, even if it began with Alvarez and her white American husband starting a coffee farm, inherently unequal power relations.

What I particularly enjoyed was some of the rather repetitive and silly human drama that comes with all couples or trips. Alvarez and her husband, Bill, fighting and arguing, especially on their second trip to Haiti after the earthquake, was actually humorous and provided a fully human portrait of herself and her companions. Moreover, she has a very compassionate take on Haiti post-earthquake, describing in sad detail the devastation of Port-au-Prince, her own guilt and fears (she's influenced by the media reports of large-scale violence and crime in Haiti), and the obvious social inequality. Unfortunately, Alvarez lacks a more critical lens that sees beyond the benign intentions of missionaries, aid workers, and NGOs as a contributor to dependency and the inability of the Haitian state to develop accountability.

She does get to see rural Haiti (Moustique and other small villages and towns, for instance), go to Le Cap, visits Port-au-Prince (including spending a night in Petionville with a wealthy son of an American and a Tuareg woman from Niger, Adam), gets a personal tour of the capital from a Haitian police officer assigned at the Dominican consulate, experiences Haiti while driving across the country (from Santiago in the DR to all over the Haitian countryside (for the wedding, one in which Piti and Eseline are chastized for premarital relations!). It's an interesting book for sure, and certainly speaks to the possibility for people of different cultures, races, and languages to communicate, as Alvarez did with Eseline, her mother, her own parents deteriorating due to age and Alzheimer's, and Haitian people she encounters, such as one woman she shares an extra portion of pineapple (or was it mango?) with. Like I said previously, it's an endearing book written with simple prose that is immediately accessible and likely a reflection of some of the Dominican goodwill and interest in less combative or hostile relations with the sibling on the other side of the island. Who knows, maybe I'll finally read How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a novel given to me by a friend.

This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Diaz's This Is How You Lose Her was entertaining, occasionally quite funny, and at times, moving. But his style is still the same and grows a little monotonous. Sprinklings of Spanish phrases common to Dominican-American Spanish in an Ebonics-inflected prose is unique to Diaz, but it does seem to get old after a while...Nevertheless, I enjoyed the short stories and continue to think very highly of Diaz's writing capabilities, although I definitely prefer his novels. Thus, I wait eagerly for his next novel, an excerpt of which was published in The New Yorker, "Monstro." However, This Is How You Lose Her does add more to our knowledge of Yunior, whose past we have not learned more about since Drown. 

Junot Diaz's Drown

The fact that I 

am writing to you

in English

already falsifies what I

wanted to tell you.

My subject:

how to explain to you that I don't belong to English

though I belong nowhere else

Gustavo Perez Firmat

Drown, Junot Diaz's collection of short stories published in the 1990s, about a decade before his The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is an interesting early sample of his writing style. Fusing humor, tales of the Dominican homeland and diaspora in the New York/New Jersey area, and introducing Yunior, the narrator in Oscar Wao, Diaz's work reveals a great writer in development. Several of the short stories revolve around Yunior and his family in the campo, in la Capital, and in New Jersey, as well as addressing issues of immigration, race, and assimilation for the Dominican diaspora.

Diaz also introduces No Face, a character who appears twice in Oscar Wao, though only a child in the short stories here who survives verbal and physical harassment from children in the campo. No Face, if I remember correctly, is a villain whose appearance in the novel foreshadows doom for Oscar and his mother, Belicia. The mongoose also appears in one of the short stories here, just as it does when it saves the life of Oscar and his mother, who would have died in the sugar-cane fields without the 'sly mongoose.'

It's also interesting to see how Yunior's youth compares to college-aged Yunior and postcollege Yunior in Oscar Wao. In the novel, Yunior behaves much like his brother Rafa, which is in accordance with typical and expected Dominican male bravado, misogyny, and violent machismo. Yunior clearly picked this up from his brother Rafa and his father, who cheated on his mother with a Puerto Rican woman in Jersey and was not above using violence with his wife and children. The young Yunior was a dark-skinned, innocent child subjected to abuse from his brother, mother, and father, and he internalizes this in the way he interacts with Oscar and his sister, Lola, in Oscar Wao.

One day I shall revisit these short stories and Oscar Wao. Perhaps I'll write some long boring essay that nobody will care to read. Anyway, any fan of Diaz should check out these short stories. One in particular, "How to Date a Browngirl..." is quite hilarious.