It's in Reverse Chronological Order.

While reading the first part of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, it was hard to distinguish: who was talking, who were they talking about, and sometimes, what they were talking about. I was just reading and reading until I got something, and believe it or not, I did.

This book has many cultural, traditional, and religious based ideas. Many of the problems that go on during the book, has a reason behind it based on what I said before. Such as, marriage, work, and children. For example, Sofia, also known as Fifi, ran away to a man. She actually did not marry that man. She just had sex with him. She found another man, named Otto, Fifi asked for his hand in marriage, and he said, yes. And that was that. They got married, had children, and lived happily ever after... not. Her dad is mad. Like mad, mad. He is not talking to us own daughter. This happened because she got married without her dad's permission and untraditionally, unethically, and uncommonly. This creates anger in the family and gives a bad appearance to the parents of the daughter who ran off, got married, and has children.

As a result, this shows there is a close bond between the family and the values of self-respect.

What I have learned throughout this novel is that there are many things the girls know that the dad does not know, and he is slowly catching up. For example, when he saw Fifi's love letters. This shows that "papi" will try to figure out other hidden secrets about his children. Also, I think we are going to find out other things he has done as well. In the beginning of the novel, they do not change talk a lot about the dad, not in similar depth as the other four girls. I feel he has deep dirty secret. Like, raping Yolanda. In the fourth vignette, Rudy was touching her, and she reacted impulsively…sounds like something bad happened during her childhood.

For my essay, I want to analyze the differences between the four girls and the parents. The different traditional values changed when the girls were in America. How, when going to America, people change and seeing how the traditions and cultural values slowly eliminate.