Post #1: Exploring the Garcia Girls

I find the front and back cover of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents very interesting. I admired the artsy feeling of the front cover with the photo of a girl's legs with patten-leather red shoes. It gives the illusion that the girl is dancing and this, combined with the sepia undertone of the picture, gives me a warm, happy feeling as I begin to read the book. However, as I turn to the back cover and begin to read the short summary of the novel, I realized that the plot of this story may not be as happy a tale as I had previously expected. The summary details the rough time the Garcia sisters had immigrating to New York from the Dominican Republic in the 1960s. I found this interesting as my own grandmother was an immigrant to this country around the same time. As I looked inside the book, I found a large, complicated family tree. I take Spanish in school, so I was able to recognize some of the short sentences or descriptions under names. Something else that I thought was interesting was that some of the names were called the "hair-and-nails" cousins. I found this intriguing because I had never heard this term or phrasing before. Lastly, I flipped to the first chapter (dated 1989-1972). The chapter opens with Yolanda Garcia narrating. It is very descriptive and spends the majority of the writing describing the atmosphere of the setting and throws in some occasional dialogue. Overall, this book does not seem so bad and I would probably give it a 7/10 for the first seven pages.