"How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Avarez and "Something to Declare" by Julia Avarez

Julia Alvarez develops the character of Yolanda Garcia in some different and similar ways in her two books How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and its sequel Yo . The reasons for the differences in the two characterizations of Yolanda is that there is almost no continuity concerning her character in the two books--meaning that all the specific details of Yolanda's life given to the reader in the first book are different (not continued nor elaborated upon) in the sequel. It was almost like reading about two different characters that just happened to have the same family and happen to have immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. For example, in the first book Yolanda goes to graduate school, becomes a teacher, and only shows interest in writing poetry. She also marries a man named John after having fallen in love with a young man named Rudy in college. …