A Book Written in Unique Methods Filled With Deep Meanings

Questions 1 and 4

After reading “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, my overall thought of this book is that it was quite an interesting read. In a quick summary, the book was about a girl named Yolanda and her three sisters learning to adapt to the American Life Style over their previous life in the Dominican Republic. In a sense, I feel like this transition between the two different lifestyles symbolize changes in innocence. This book also might sound simple at first, but it is one of the most complicated books I have ever read because of the uniqueness of the writing methods that Alvarez uses throughout the book in order to hide her true purpose.

One way how she formats her book that really catches my eyes is the fact that she written this book in reverse chronological order, and this means that this book is not in order from when Yolanda and her sisters were still living the life in the Dominican Republic to when they arrive to America. Instead, the order of these events are opposite. This made the reading confusing to read because it made it hard to follow the sequence in the book. As I continue to read the book without giving up, I begin to realize the purpose Alvarez writing this book in reverse chronological order in the first place.

At first, I thought that as the Garcia girls get older, the story would tend to get more intense, but this was not the case. Instead, the intense moments tend to happen more when they are young. This allow me to foreshadow throughout each parts of the book that it was going to get more intense as the reverse chronological order of the book progresses. The reason why I think Alvarez made it more intense when the Garcia Girls were younger was because she wanted to emphasize the fact to the readers that when people are young, their sense of feeling is much more sensitive to experiences that they go through. A little kid don't have much experiences in life so each new experience that a little kid goes through would leave him a bigger mark than a person that has already have deal with tons of experiences in their past. This ties deeply into innocence because when a person is young, our innocence is still there but as we grow older and receive more experiences in life, that sense of innocence slowly begins to disappear. What this means is that innocent people tends to feel more intense when certain moments happen to them. This shows that when the Garcia Girls are older, nothing really intensify them anymore because they had already lost their innocence in America.

Another unique way that Alvarez formats her book that I think is really interesting is that she separated significant events in the book into vignettes. Whenever I read a book with vignettes in it, my first reaction is that right away I would think to myself this book is going to have a seep meaning embedded into it. I see vignettes as puzzle pieces and reading a book with vignettes gives me a mission in which I want to do my best to put the pieces together in order to fully understand the true meaning behind the whole book.

Also, the word choices that Alvarez uses to write this book is really interesting too. At times, her writing even sound like poetry: “A breeze blows the white curtains in on either side of her, two ghostly arms embracing her. A room tycoon...” (Page 69) This type of poetic language grabs my attention making me feel like I want to read more. I thought this was appealing because I never read a book with this type of writing before.

The ending of the book really stood out for me: "You understand I am collapsing all time now so that it fits in what's left in the hollow of my story?" (Page 281) The reason why I thought this part of her ending was interesting is that it blended into the whole list of significant events in the book that she mentions in the end. I realizes that each each piece of the story about her life is like a puzzle piece, and by having the reader read the book in reverse chronological order is like she is purposely scrambling the puzzle pieces to make us put each pieces together in the right place one by one to the very end of the book. She wants us to look back at every significant event she talked about and making us solve the mystery of how a person can lose their very own "accent".

In a way though, when Julia Alvarez was writing this book, I feel like she was trying to solve her own story which is why she started out when she was older to when she younger. Since, the recent memories of ourselves is the strongest, it is only common sense for a person to write about the recent memories first and then slowly developing to older memories. This is like when someone loses something, they have to trace back their step to find what they have lost. This is exactly what Alvarez is doing, by putting the book in reverse chronicle order, she is trying to trace back her step in order to truly let the reader know how the Garcia Girls lost their accent.

Also, I feel like the black cat in the third part of the book plays an important role of Yolanda losing her accent. In my perspective, the intensity of how Alvarez describe the experience that she had with the cat and the nightmare that she kept on getting until she reaches the United States shows two things. One, the intensity show how sensitive a kid's innocence is compared to an adult. Two, it shows the real difference between the life of America and the Dominican Republic of how everything starts to change when her family arrived starting with losing the nightmare of the cat.

In conclusion, this book is really unique. I found this book a little boring here and there because of the type of genre that this book is categorizes in ,but I'm glad that I stuck to it to the very end. This book shows me a whole different side of analyzing a book because unlike other books,it made me realizes that there are books out there that can only be understand when a person have read the entire book. The true meaning of the author's intention of writing this book and how the different fragments within each of the vignettes in the book fitted together like a strange puzzle. This is one of those books that really makes a person think. Since this book is not only spitted into vignettes but also written in reverse chronological order, I would only recommend this book to people that really like to think really deeply into a material of a book.

My Thoughts After Finishing "How the Garcia Lost Their Accents"

After finishing "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez, I thought it was quite an interesting read because of the fact that Alvarez was able to keep the flavor of the book to the very end. The "flavor" that I'm talking about is how unique this book was. One thing that made this book so unique was the way how Alvarez ended it. The part of her ending that really stood out for me was the following: "You understand I am collapsing all time now so that it fits in what's left in the hollow of my story?" (Page 281) The reason why I thought this part of her ending was interesting is that it blended into the whole summary of significant events in the book that she mentioned in the end. It made me realized that each piece of the story about her life is like a puzzle piece, and by making the reader read the book in reverse chronicle order is like she is purposely scrambling the puzzle pieces to make us put all of the pieces together in the right place at the very end. She wants us to look back at every significant event she talked about and making us solve the mystery of how a person can lose their very own "accent".

In a way though, when Julia Alvarez was writing this book, I feel like she was trying to solve her own story which is why she started out when she was older to when she younger. Since, the recent memories of ourselves is the strongest, it is only common sense for a person to write about the recent memories first and then slowly developing to older memories. This is like when someone loses something, they have to trace back their step to find what they have lost. This is exactly what Alvarez is doing, by putting the book in reverse chronicle order, she is trying to trace back her step in order to truly let the reader know how the Garcia Girls lost their accent.

Also, I feel like the black cat in the third part of the book plays an important role of Yolanda losing her accent. In my perspective, the intensity of how Alvarez describe the experience that she had with the cat and the nightmare that she kept on getting until she reaches the United States shows two things. One, the intensity show how sensitive a kid's innocence is compared to an adult. Two, it shows the real difference between the life of America and the Dominican Republic of how everything starts to change when her family arrived starting with losing the nightmare of the cat.

In conclusion, this was book was very unique. I did find this book boring here and there because of the genre ,but after finally finishing it I'm glad that I stuck to it and was able to finish it. This book showed me a whole different side of analyzing a book because unlike other books, a person have to read this whole entire book first until they can fully understand the true meaning of the author's intention of writing this book and how the different fragments within each of the vignettes in the book fitted together like a strange puzzle.

Response to "After A Sicky Week"

This is something interesting that I found in Grizzell's blog post that I wanted to talk about:

I'm so tired, i needed to catch up with everybody else since i did not go to school for a whole week.-I am just out of brain juice, this is why i hate missing school because i do not get to learn new things and i have to catch with everybody else also doing the missed work with the current work. I am just about to quit, but no i have to stay.

From my own personal experience, I know how hard it is to catch up work after missing a day or couple of days of school. There was a time when I got really sick during my years in middle school. I remember I was out for a couple of days, and when I came back to school there was so much content in each classes that I missed and I had to make up. This made me had to rushed and complete everything quickly in order to reach the place where my classmates were at. I also had to schedule a day with my teachers to make up for the tests that I missed when I was gone. All of these things caused me to feel really stressful, and it made me realize how important it is to not miss a day in school.

In a way, I realize that this was nothing compared to what Grizzell probably had to go through. She missed a week of “ASTI” and I remember hearing that when you miss a day of ASTI is like missing a couple of days from a normal high school. So even though I had to go through a moment of stress when I was in middle school, I don't really have the right to say that I know how Grizzell feel. I never missed a day of ASTI which is good thing because I have no idea what I would do if I had to experience the moment of stress that I had back in middle school but 10 times more since it is ASTI. I think that I would be so stressed that it might just kill me. I really respect grizzell for not giving up and how she continued to work hard to make up for all the work that she missed. I hope that she feels a lot better now, and to continue to work hard in ASTI.

My Insight on the Second Part of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents"

After finishing the second paper clip part of “How the Garcia Girls Lose Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, I realize that this part of the book was more intense than the first part. This bring me to the conclusion that as the story goes on, the intensity of the book increases. This book is in reverse chronological order from when the characters in the book were older to when the they were younger. I thought at first that as the Garcia girls get older, the story would tend to get more intense, but this was not the case. Instead, the intense moments tend to happen more when they were young. This allow me to foreshadow that the third part of the book is going to be more intense than the first and second part of the book.

The reason why think Julia Alvarez made it more intense as the Garcia Girls are younger because she want to emphasize the fact that when people are young, our sense of feeling is more more sensitive to things that are around us because when we are young we don't really have much experience in life. As we grow up, we get more and more experiences in life which means things won't cause as much intensity towards us anymore. Our experiences in life is enough for people to get over anything that seems intense. In way, I feel like this ties into innocence. When we are young, our innocence is still there but as we grow older and receive more experiences in life, that sense of innocence begins to disappear. People that are innocence tends to feel more intense when certain moments happen to them which shows that when the Garcia Girls are older, nothing really intensify them anymore because of the fact that they had lost their innocence in America. Also, I feel like this book is mainly about how the Garcia girls is losing their "roots" and how they are becoming more closer to being a American because the American culture and their culture is so different. As they continue to live in America, they begin to slip away from their roots.

Response to "Grant Mehserle Verdict"

This is something interesting that I found in Jackson's blog post that I would like to talk about:

I believe that this shows the legal system of the United States and how it is operated. A police officer can get away with anything. No matter what, they always have an excuse because they have the law on their side. This is why so many people are upset over the case. They see this connection too and are angered by it. That is why tonight, there are going to be numerous protests, all because of this unjust case verdict.

This is a regard to the Grant Mehserle case which has finally come to a close today. The outcome was completely unfair; Mehserle was charged with only two years in prison for involuntary manslaughter when it was clearly showed in a video that he did it on purpose. I agree with Jackson completely on this matter of how the legal system of United States is really bias and unfair. The legal system is corrupted and it is because of all the bias that is filled within the human heart in our modern society. Although there are many people out there in the world that are good, there are always people out there that are bad too. People are not perfect which make their system not perfect, but I have fate that people can actually make the system better than how it is today.

What I saw happening today was not the type of legal system that I would want for this country, what I truly want for a ideal legal system is that it is well structured that give equality to every person in this world; no matter which race or gender. This also ties into justice, and the true meaning of justice. Many lawyers in the world today lost the meaning of what true justice is, and all they cared about is winning a case for the money and power status. This is one of biggest reason why I hate lawyers so much, and ironically I hope to be a lawyer myself someday. When I do become a lawyer, I will not fall in the category of lawyers that I despise so much but instead i'm willing to become one that can make this legal system of our country a better one for all.

Vincent's First Impression of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents"

When I first started reading “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, my first impression of the book was that it was really confusing. There were sections of the book that didn't really make sense because the author tends to change names for each character every time she had the chance and she would skip around a lot without warning the reader ahead of time. Mr. Sutherland told us that the author of this book is doing this on purpose and we should just stick to it, and eventually the reading will start to unravel itself until it make complete sense. As I finished the first section of this book, I feel like he was right.

This book is separated into vignettes, and I thought this was interesting for the author to do that because it reminded me of a book that I read last year called “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. In my opinion, I really like books that is structure in vignettes because usually when books have vignettes in them, it means that book has a deep meaning within them. I believe each vignette symbolizes a small piece of a jigsaw puzzle connecting to one another to make a bigger picture in the end. Whenever I begin to start reading an vignette within this book, things start to become confusing, but as I continue to hold onto the book without giving up like Mr.Sutherland told us to do, the reading did become easier to understand.

The way how Alvarez wrote this book is really interesting too. At times, her writing actually sound like poetry: “A breeze blows the white curtains in on either side of her, two ghostly arms embracing her. A room tycoon...” (Page 69) This type of poetic language grabs my attention making me feel like I want to read more. I thought this was appealing because I never read a book with this type of writing before. She also describe each of the characters' story within their respective vignette marvelously by giving fantastic details for each one. Overall, although it seems a bit confusing at times, this book is actually quite an interesting read so far.