How the Garcia girls lost their accents

by Julia Alvarez

a presentation by:

Koen CoonenSara Deckers

Bart De RidderStephanie Goovaerts

Gil Plaquet

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Subjects

• Résumé + Julia Alvarez

• e Dominican Republic

• e Trujillo era

• Immigration in the USA

• Latino culture

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Résumé + Julia Alvarez• Retrograde storyline

• Garcia and De La Torre families

• Trujillo

• Going to the United States

• “Losing the accents”

• Darker side of American society

•e author

• Dominican Republic

• Immigration

• PEN

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e Dominican RepublicGeography

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e Dominican RepublicBrief history : Tainos

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e Dominican RepublicSpanish rule

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e Dominican RepublicFrench rule

Toussaint Louverture vs. Napoleon Bonaparte7

e Dominican RepublicHaitian rule

•Ephemeral independance

• Jean-Pierre Boyer

• Cash crops

• Forage and sack

• Anti-Haitian movement

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e Dominican RepublicRestoration

• Voluntary colony

• War of restoration

• Ulysses S. Grant

• Anti-Haitian movement

• Ulises Heureaux

• Sugar industry

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e Dominican RepublicUS Intervention and occupation

• Theodore Roosevelt

• 50-year treaty

• Marine occupation

• Gavilleros

• Supervised elections

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Immigration and discrimination in the USARafaël Léonidas Trujillo

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e Trujillo era

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e Trujillo eraRomulo Brétancourt

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e Trujillo era ey are coffee-with-milk color and the khaki they wear is the same color as their skin, so they look all beige, which no one would ever pick as a favorite color. ey wear dark mirror glasses. What catches Yoyo’s eye are their holster belts and the shiny black bulge of their guns poking through.Now she knows guns are illegal. Only guardias in uniform can carry them, so either these men are criminals or some kind of secret police in plain clothes Mami has told her about who could be anywhere at anytime like guardian angels, except they don’t keep you from doing bad but wait to catch you doing it. (p.197-198)

First, Don Fabio calls them in. Special assignment: they are to report on this Garcia doctor’s comings and goings. Next thing Pupo knows Checo is driving the jeep right up to the Garcia house and doing this whole search number that is not following orders. Point is, though, that if something comes out of the search, their enterprise will be praised and they will be decorated and promoted. If nothing turns up and the family has connections, then back they go to the prison beat, cleaning interrogation rooms and watering down the cells the poor scared bastards dirty with their loss of self-control. (p.213)

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e Trujillo era

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e Trujillo era

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e Trujillo eraRamfis Trujillo

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Immigration and discrimination in the USAEllis Island

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Immigration and discrimination in the USAEllis Island

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Immigration and discrimination in the USAMexican Border

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Immigration and discrimination in the USAMexican Border

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Immigration and discrimination in the USAKu Klux Klan

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Latin and American culturee position of women and gender roles

•1960’s as a period of equal rights movements

• NOW• e Concerned Women for America• e National Women’s Political Caucus

•eir goals:• abortion reform• equal payment• …

• Different gender roles in Latin America as in the US

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Latin and American cultureFamily ties

• Compound

• Sense of community

• Family ideals: based on a sense of patriarchy

• Cousin marriages, extended clans and strict separation of tasks by gender

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Latin and American cultureVoodoo

• Practised in Haiti

• African slaves

• Pila, the laundry maid

• Chucha, the cook

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Latin and American culturee sixties and conservatism

•Liberalism in USA •Freedom and liberation• Drugs • Sex

•Conservatism in Latin America

• Class stratification

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