Yolanda and her Language
Everyone uses language to communicate with one another. Throughout the book How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alverez, Yolanda Garcia struggles with language, her own name and her love for words. After migrating from the Dominican Republic to the United States with her mother, father and 3 sisters, Yolanda has problems knowing what language she should speak and when, what her true name is and lastly, how to express herself through her poetry. The beginning of the book introduces us to Yolanda and her family in their native land, the Dominican Republic. During a family conversation Yolanda says something to her aunts, but converses with them in English. ... This time, however, Yolanda is not sure she’ll be going back. ... ” (page 7) This shows that even in everyday conversation with her own family, she is struggling with what language she needs to speak. Another example of when Yolanda is challenged about her language is when she tells the reader the time she was at a party and she met a poet that was arguing the fact “…that in the midst of some profound emotion, one would revert to one’s mother tongue. He put Yolanda through a series of situations.