Part 1 First Impression

The beginning of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez was not particularly interesting to me. I have two main reasons which have made me conclude to this answer.

Firstly, the story is written in reverse chronological. This was extremely confusing to me. I did not understand any of the events in the story because nothing was explained. When you first being the story, you are introduced to multiple characters and multiple situations without any introduction into the story; I was forced to comprehend and guess throughout the story and how this relates to many of the main ideas introduced into the story. I feel that a story should always be told in chronological order because the reader can understand the story properly then. 

The way the story is narrated was also an extremely confusing factor throughout the whole book too. With each point of view being told, I was forced to guess who was narrating the story. I constantly confused Yolanda and Sofia in the narrative, sometimes reading whole pages mixing up the narrators. If the narrators were defined throughout the story, I would not feel the confusion I feel now while reading. 

Despite these negativities, I also think they bring about a main positive factor to the book. 

With each story that is told, a complex network is formed, connecting the sister’s stories together. Although this network is complex and confusing, it makes you think about the story and big idea’s, which can also be called level three questions. This confusion helps me realize what the big idea of each story is and how, when they are connected together, create a bigger idea. I feel that this complexity of the story is/will greatly help me with my comprehension skills throughout english class. 

I am actually looking forward to the second part of the book. The book has gradually grabbed my attention. This book is difficult to comprehend, but because of this, I can gain from it. I feel that I will learn to analyze and comprehend the book much more easily after the second part.