Diane Tincher
Literature 4333
Dr. Craig White
April 21, 2001

Yolanda Garcia and the Immigrant Experience

Julia Alvarez develops the character of Yolanda Garcia in some different and similar ways in her two books How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and its sequel !Yo!. The reasons for the differences in the two characterizations of Yolanda is that there is almost no continuity concerning her character in the two books—meaning that all the specific details of Yolanda’s life given to the reader in the first book are different (not continued nor elaborated upon) in the sequel. It was almost like reading about two different characters that just happened to have the same family and happen to have immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. For example, in the first book Yolanda goes to graduate school, becomes a teacher, and only shows interest in writing poetry. She also marries a man named John after having fallen in love with a young man named Rudy in college. In the second book Yolanda does not go to graduate school, in fact, she almost does not get her bachelor’s degree because she elopes with a young man named Darryl Dubois. She does become a teacher, but she publishes mainly prose-short stories and novels-not poetry. Whereas, the similarity in the two different characterizations of Yolanda is that she is definitely assimilated to American culture, yet her Old World values and lifestyle also influence her.

In both books it is clear that Yolanda has successfully assimilated to American culture. Unlike her parents-first generation immigrants-who never gain a complete mastery of the English language, Yolanda masters the language and excels in school. In the second book, one of her college professors has the following experience with her as a student:

In this passage it is obvious that not only does Yolanda exceed her professor’s expectations of what an immigrant student can accomplish, but that she has definitely mastered the English language to a much higher degree than the vast majority of native-born Americans have. Julia Alvarez talks about her troubles and insecurities while learning English, which is typical of the immigrant experience:

While it is clear from this passage that she had some trouble learning English, it is also clear that she has a great mastery of the language and she communicates brilliantly through it. Her use of figurative language in this passage-comparing the Spanish words that slip into her English as illegal immigrants crossing the border-shows her inventive and creative use of the English language.

Yolanda is also characterized as being assimilated to the American culture because she embraces some of America’s values and rejects some of the values of the Old World. In the first book, one example of Yolanda embracing one of America’s values occurs when she reads Walt Whitman, who is a poet that epitomizes many of America’s values, especially the importance of the individual: "I celebrate myself and sing myself. . . .He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. The poet’s words shocked and thrilled her. . . . When Yoyo was done [writing a speech inspired by/plagiarizing Whitman’s poem], she read over her words, and her eyes filled. She finally sounded like herself in English" (142-43). In this passage Yolanda has embraced the idea that the individual is the most important and to be celebrated, and she has gained self-confidence in herself as a writer—in the English language. A critic makes the following comment about Yolanda’s attempt to make a speech for school: "What she comes up with after a terrible struggle is founded on her belief in American democracy and freedom of speech, and her accidental browsing of Walt Whitman. . . . But the speech shocks her father who still lives in fear of the SIM and who is afraid to speak of ‘revolt’ out loud" (Barak). Therefore, Yolanda’s father, who cannot get past the horrors of the past, has not assimilated to America’s system of values as his daughter has. What is so ironic is that in the long run he probably did Yolanda a favor when he tore up her speech because as the critic points out: "It [the speech that Yolanda’s mother writes] is a wild success and Yolanda is praised highly for it. Although this experience is in many ways a defeat for both Yolanda and her mother, it does teach them the lesson of conformity that is so important to living peacefully in America. Yolanda learns to fit in, to do the expected" (Barak). Therefore, Yolanda learns that while Americans have these ideals, such as free speech, it is best not to practice them in many situations. Ultimately, the father’s conservatism and rejection of some American values is the way to succeed. Regardless, Yolanda has been able to move past the terrors that she lived through on the island and embrace the freedoms of America much more than her parents, especially her father, can.

The main and most important value of the Old World that Yolanda rejects is the traditional gender role of women. In the first book, when Fifi gets serious about this guy, Manuel Gustavo, in the Dominican Republic, Yolanda and her sisters become very concerned because they do not want their youngest sister married to a male chauvinist. At one point the girls start up a conversation with him:

Yolanda and her sisters have given up trying to get the men to change their chauvinist ways. They just feel very fortunate that they live in a country where women have some semblance of equality. This quote is sickening because the women that are still on the island do not want the equality that the Garcia girls want to fight for on their behalf. However, if one never fights publicly nothing ever changes. Alvarez makes the following comment about women, gender roles, and immigration:

Alvarez is all but saying that she would never have been able to be much more than a wife and a mother if she had not come to the United States where women obviously have much more freedom. Alvarez expands on this idea in an interview:

This quote, while expanding on how little freedom women have in the Dominican Republic versus the United States, also raises another very important issue. While Alvarez and Yolanda have largely assimilated to American culture, the values and traditions of the Old World still influence their lives significantly. What Alvarez is saying in the above quoted passage is that she has benefited greatly because she lives in the United States, however, there is always a part of her that believes that what she is doing is not right because she is not following the same traditional gender roles that her female kin, who live in the Old World, do.

In the second book, Yolanda shows that the values of the Old World still hold quite a bit of influence over her when her biological clock starts ticking and she starts regretting that she never had a baby. Sandi and Yolanda were the two remaining sisters that did not have children, but after Sandi finally has a child Yolanda starts to wonder if she did the wrong thing in deciding not to have children. Her mother tells her father that: "Maybe Sandi’s new baby stirred things up. She’s been telling Doug [her third husband who has a teenaged daughter] that women in the Bible who never had babies were said to have a curse on them" (294). Yolanda herself tells her father: "I’ve just started to wonder, you know, did I go down the wrong road? Did I make a big mistake?" (295). At this point in her life Yolanda has made a successful career for herself as a writer, therefore, it is a shame that she is now doubting herself and losing self-confidence. However, much earlier in the book in the chapter that is narrated by a cousin-Lucinda-that lives in the Dominican Republic, the Old World value that is haunting Yolanda is voiced: "And looking at her, in her late thirties knocking around the world without a husband, house, or children, I think, you are the haunted one who ended up living your life mostly on paper" (53). Lucinda, is reacting to the fact that Yolanda has always felt somewhat guilty for her success in America while she has so many cousins who are in the Old World and never had the opportunities that she had. From Lucinda’s, and the rest of her Old World relatives, point of view the fact that Yolanda has never had children makes her life a failure.

It is interesting to note that this episode in Yolanda’s life comes straight from Alvarez’s life. One critic makes the following comment that sheds some interesting light on Alvarez’s development of Yolanda as a character: "It is also probable that Yolanda functions as Alvarez’s alter ego" (Barak). Since an alter ego is defined as someone who is just like another person or a person who represents a part of another person, it can be argued that Yolanda is the character most closely related to/representative of Alvarez because they are both the writers in their families. Alvarez makes the following comments about this episode of regret over not having children:

From these comments that Alvarez made it is clear that, while she has assimilated to the American/feminist idea that it is all right for women to remain childless, the Old World traditional gender roles that say that women are not women if they do not have children have a significant impact on Yolanda. Therefore, both Yolanda and Alvarez have to come to terms with the fact that their destinies did not include having children, as Yolanda’s father tells her at the very end of the last chapter of !Yo!:

The father, in his wisdom, realizes that what his daughter has accomplished as a writer—she is chronicling their family’s story so that future generations do not completely lose touch with their ties to the Dominican Republic/Old World—is much more important then anything that she could have accomplished as a mother. He realizes that it was her destiny to be the bridge between the Old and New Worlds for future generations, through her writing.

Alvarez characterizes Yolanda as assimilated to American culture by having her master the use of the English language, adopt/embrace America’s ideas and values, and reject the Dominican Republic’s traditional gender role for women. Yet, Alvarez also shows that Yolanda never loses touch with her Old World roots and that its traditional values still have a significant impact on her. Yolanda must continually reconnect with her Old World roots to fulfill her destiny of passing on her family’s heritage/story to future generations.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. New York: Plume, 1991.

- - - . !Yo!. New York: Plume, 1997.

Secondary Sources

Alvarez, Julia. Something to Declare: Essays. New York: Plume, 1998.