How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

I think that "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" effectively portrayed the internal struggles of a Latin American family trying to assimilate into the US. As we discussed in class, the girls as well as the parents desperately try to fit into the American culture. It is definitely a difficult situation on both sides. The parents want for their children to adapt American culture, but not too much so that they would forget their Spanish heritage. What is considered to be just the right amount of adaptation anyways?

The Garcia family moving to the US all together only caused family conflict and tension. The root of family problems within the family began when they had no choice but to leave the Dominican Republic. In the girls' childhood, they lived a privileged life with maids and an abundance of gifts. However I think that as the girls grew older they grew further apart from each other and from their parents. The necessity for the girls to integrate into American life left them unable to relate to their parents' traditional perspectives. For example, Sofia's departure from her family was due to her father's inability to cope with her sexual expressiveness, causing a serious rift in her family. One point mentioned in class was how could two out of the four Garcia girls be put into mental institutions if the parents had not done anything wrong? I think that having two Garcia girls institutionalized demonstrated just how much the family had drifted apart. The girls being put into institutions demonstrate how their parents were unable to relate and reach out to their daughters emotionally in a time of need. It seems that if a family has been divided culturally, there is no solution to mend it and the gap between the parents and their children will only grow wider with time.