Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

¶ … Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and the Tortilla Curtain

The fictional protagonists of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and The Tortilla Curtain, coupled with real-life historical studies of immigrants such as the case studies of the immigrants from Farmingvile show that there is no universal Latin American experience of immigration in the United States. Individuals of different genders, class backgrounds, who come from different Latin American regions and who have different reasons for immigrating to the United States have completely different experiences of their new nation. The individuals who have answered economic or political freedom's 'call,' to different degrees, all experience struggles with their identities, and are all dwellers on the 'borders' of their new American identities -- but these borders may be psychological rather than physical, for some immigrants.

The Garcia girls come to the United States because of political reasons. They are forced to leave the Dominican Republic because their father got in trouble with the Dominican secret police for protesting the nation's ruling military dictatorship. In contrast, the immigrants of The Tortilla Curtain immigrate illegally, rather than with the help of the CIA like the Garcia girls. The immigrants from Mexico of The Tortilla Curtain do so to better their way of life, economically, rater than for political reasons, when they flee their nation to make their way to Southern California via Mexico.

The Garcia girls come from a privileged background. They had enjoyed many, if not more of the toys and luxuries of their American counterparts. True, they still have trouble fitting in, when they come to America. The sexual mores of their parent's generation in Latin America were profoundly different than that of the girl's American experiences. Because of her conservative upbringing, Carla in particular has trouble fitting into her American school settings because of her perceived prudishness. American boys harass her. Later, she is nearly molested a man in a car who can see her only as an over sexualized Latina. However, Yolanda begins to write in English to express her 'voice,' finding the more equitable conditions between men and women in the United States to suit her developing sense of a writer's self. T. Coraghessan Boyle, in contrast, shows the blatant and oppressive physical conditions of racism that immigrants face on a daily basis, in a more concentrated narrative format, but with more immediacy -- the Mexicans fleeing poverty experience some chance bits of goodness, but these acts of charity do not alleviate their distress, because of the illegal status. They cannot even go to the hospital when sick for fear of being discovered -- although, to be fair, America never really gives any of the Garcia girls a complete sense of a female identity and Latina 'self,' while the male immigrants of Boyle's tale find some identity in their roles as husbands and fathers.

The U.S. immigration policies of crossing borders are raised in Tortilla Curtain -- the poor Mexican workers are needed to sustain the U.S. economy, yet are treated like outcasts because they are deemed illegal. The close relationship between the United States and certain Latin American nations is highlighted, politically, as well in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, as the girls are caught in the crossfire of history. The father's political actions change the girl's social lives forever, and their identities as women forever.

The girls do not assimilate completely, even though they lose their accents -- they always remain betwixt and between America and the Dominican Republic in spirit, as they played with American toys as Latin American children, and date American men but in the guise of Latina women. And neither do Boyle's immigrants. Like all Americans, the illegal immigrant protagonist Candido worries about getting work to buy food, and whether his wife will be able to give birth in a hospital, but he lives under a cloud because of his illegal, transient 'border' status in legal terms, rather than in identity terms like the Garcia girls.