TY  - JOUR
TI  - Recovering from the void of exile in Julia Álvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
AB  - The present article explores the articulation of the trauma of exile in Dominican-American writer Julia Álvarez’s debut novel, How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991). In reverse chronology the loosely autobiographical novel presents a Latino immigrant family from Santo Domingo in their tragicomic quest of Americanization, or assimilation. Revolving around the issue of the loss of cultural heritage and familial legacy during this arduous process of acculturation, the text becomes a recollection of the Garcias to save more than three decades’ of memories from oblivion. According to James Holte, the ethnic immigrant bildungs narrative traditionally presents the transformation of the individual in four phases: (1) the childhood spent in the homeland, (2) the voyage taken from the mother country to the new world, (3) the experiences in the educational realm followed by those of the working life, (4) the final success of the individual in the adopted country and psychic contentment. However, Álvarez deviates from this scheme to present her reader a peculiar comingof- age tale. Such literary effort is projected through the protagonist, Yolanda, in her quest to negotiate with her dual identity via the theme of language acquisition and the loss of her accent. Emphasizing the role of language as the driving force in the complex process of subject formation, the present article offers a close reading of the selected passages from the novel to arrive at the conclusion that Gloria Anzaldúa’s notions of mestizaje (hybridity) and ‘border-dweller’ account for Yolanda’s dual identity.
AU  - YAY, IRFAN CENK
DO  - 10.29000/rumelide.997583
PY  - 2021
JO  - RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi
VL  - 0
IS  - 24
SN  - 2148-7782
SP  - 1160
EP  - 1172
DB  - TRDizin
UR  - http://search/yayin/detay/1118595
ER  -