Hating the Self in the “Other” or How Yolanda Learns to See Her Own Kind in Juha Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

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Intcrtcxa, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1999 Hating the Self in the “Other or How Yolanda Learns to See Her Own KindinJuliaAlvarez’sHowtheGfircUGtrls Lost Their Accents Ibis Gomez-Vega NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY JuliaAlvarez’sHowtheGarciaGirlsLostTheirAccents{\99\) with the return of Yolanda Garcia, at the age of thirty nine, toi s homeinSantoDomingoaftermanyyearsinexile.Thistinie,° notsosureshe’llbegoingback”{GarciaGirls?)totheUnitedta shekeepsherdecisiontostayasecret.Yolandaadmitsthat“sheas felt at home in the States, never” (12), an admission that reader of the sense of displacement she feels. The experience or cing ^ exile in the United States has had aserious impact on the way Yo^ ^ingo. about other Dominicans and herself when she returns to ^ >gg AlthoughshereturnstoreclaimherDominicanculture^ Yolanda does not know how to react to her own people. Intellectu^ ^VTiat knowsthatshehaslostsomethingduringherlifeinaforwgn^L shedoesnotknowisthatshehasbeentooinfluencedbyjjgjjjjniintoNorthAmericansocietytofitwithinthemoreconservative canculture.Shehasbecomean“other,”anoutsiderwhohasleame Dominicansand,byextension,herselfthroughthedistortinglens foreign upbringing. Yolanda’s return to Santo Domingo after many years f which UnitedStatesplacesherinaninterestingphilosophicalconmcto sheseemstobeunaware.Beginningwithherproblemswian^g, both in the United States and in Santo Domingo, and culmmaung inability to identify with the working class dominicanos'f/hom ters, Yolanda reveals herself as aWestern-identified dominant^su jec ^^ fronted with her own “third world” people as the oppresse oer. irony of her situation is that, during her years of growing '^P ^ „ , exilewithintheUnitedStates,Yolandaleamstofeellike^o whenshereturnstothecountryofherbirth,thecountryfromwhichse originallyexiled,Yolandabeginstorecognizeotherdommtcanos^dit- ,but t o s e e of exile in the w a s ferent from herself. , InSantoDomingo,theGarciadelaTorrefamilymembersproudly tracetheirlineagebacktotheConquistadores.Theyarepeoplebornto wealthandprivilegelongbeforeTrujillo’sreign.Althoughtheyliveinthe 8 5 INTERTEXTS 8 6 Island within the “third world,” their lives are separate from the lives of the ordinary working class Dominican. They live in “compounds,” large states enclosed by high walls that keep out the rest of society. They also live sur¬ rounded by other members of their immediate family because one brother’s compound is built immediately adjacent to another’s. The children, there¬ fore, grow up surrounded by their cousins, uncles, and aunts, aproximity made possible by the family wealth. When the family gets together at any one house, the “driveway looks like aMercedes Benz car lot” (129). In Santo Domingo, thus, the Garcia family isolates itself from the common, working class Dominican through the buffer provided by their wealth. They live aprivileged life within an impoverished world and inevitably fancythemselvesabetterclassofpeoplethanworkingclassdominicanos. In spite of their wealth, male members of the Garcia family join aplot to overthrow Rafael Leonida Trujillo, the president of the Dominican Re¬ public from 1930 to 1961. When the plot fails, they are forced to leave their homeland for the uncertainty of life in exile. In the United States, however, the Garcia family “didn’t feel [they] had the best the United States had to offer” (107). Like most immigrants, they had to struggle, and duringtheirfirstfewyearsofexilethey had only second-hand stuff, rental houses in one red-neck Catholic neigh¬ borhood after another, clothes at Round Robin, ablack and white TV afflictedwithwavylines.Coopedupinthoselitdesuburbanhouses,the ruleswereasstrictasforIslandgirls,buttherewasnoislandtomakeup thedifference.(107) For the Garcia girls, life in the United States means that they must lower their expectations. Not only do they lose their well-defined place within Dominicansocietybuttheyalsomustbegintoseethemselvesas“aliens” whohavenoplaceatallwithintheirnewcountry. BecauseAe family runs to NewYork with their bare essentials, they be^ntheirimmigrantlivesatasociallevelmuchlowerthantheoneto whichtheywereborninSantoDomingo.Insteadofthefamilycompound, theymustliveincrowdedapartmentbuildingswheretheAngloneighbors, whoareusuallypeopleofalowersocialclassthanthefamilyhadpreviously held in their own country, resent the Garcias’s presence and complain about them. The old woman in the apartment below, who had ahelmet of beauty par¬ lorbluehair,hadbeencomplainingtothesupersincethedaythefamily moved in afew months ago. The Garcias should be evicted. Their food smelled. They spoke too loudly and not in English. The kids sounded like aherd of wild burros. The Puerto Rican super, Alfredo, came to their door almost daily. Could Mrs. Garcia turn the radio down? Could Mrs. Garcia maybe keep the girls more in line? The neighbors downstairs had beenawakenedbytheclatteroftheshoesonthefloor.(170) L 8 7 Alvarez—Hating the Self in the “Other’ FortheGardafamily,espedallytheGardagirls,exilemeanssodaldisplace¬ ment as well as the loss of the homeland. For the first time in their lives, they findthemselvesfacedwithcomplainingneighborswhomakethemfeelout of place and leave them unable to act out their lives in the privacy of th^ ownhome.Insteadoftheprotectionofferedbyprivatefduilycompounds where the girls’ behavior is celebrated by aunts and cousins, the Garcia ^s mustlearntofacetheoutsideworldofcomplainingneighbors,aworldthat is hostile to them for no apparent reason. UnknowntoYolandaandhersisters,lifeintheUnitedStatesplunges them into the unfamiliar role of the colonized subject; in their new coimtry , they have...