Friday, January 27, 2012
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.
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I really found your analysis of the cover interesting; I must have a differently designed book cover because my book does not have the photo of a girl's legs with patten-leather red shoes. It will be interesting to see how the two differnt covers might connect to the book or if one has more relevance compared to the other one.I like how you added that detail about your own grandmother to the book also. It is a good text to self comparrisson. I agree that the first few pages of the first chapter have a lot of detail which may be unncecessary. I just hope it doesn't make the novel boring. i still cannot give a definite answer regarding to how I feel about this book.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you Kait, i noticed that the girl on the front cover was dancing and it gave a happy feeling. I got sense of nothing but positivity coming from the front cover because nothing seemed that it would notify the reader of something bad that might happen. Then, when i turned to the back and read through the things the girls are going to have to go through, adapting to another country, society, and overall life society. This felt like an exact opposite, message wise. It described how they had to abandon their home land because of a ruthless dictator. I could relate what they're going to through in connection to my family as well, because my parents had a rough transition adapting to life in America, opposed to living in Syria where i am from. Hopefully things get easier for them as they embark on this difficult transition in their lives.
ReplyDeleteI must admit that I just thought that the cover with the girl dancing was intriguing, but I did not think anything of it. I agree with you that the girls have an easy life now; however, will soon disrupted when their lives are turned up side down. I also believe that the Garcia Family Tree is very large and hard to understand from my point of view. I disagree with you Kaitlin about giving the first seven pages a seven out of ten because I thought it at least deserved an eight or nine out of ten. I thought that it was a very interesting first pages and it caught my eye. You related this book to your own experiences, so I was wondering if you will try to relate to what is going to happen to your family and the Garcia girls throughout the whole book?
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