3. Group C---nhatala27

In my book “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” By Julia Alvarez, the first section focuses on the girls' adult lives and their return to the Dominican Republic, while the second section looks back to when they were younger and had just moved to New York. The first part showed more of them dealing with struggles at work and in marriage. While the second shows the girls struggling to fit in socially, in this part of the book, they struggle with a lot of bullying. And in the last part, it talks about their lives before they moved out of the Dominican Republic and how they will never be able to go back to that life. In my book “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” By Julia Alvarez, the main character, Yolanda, returns to the Dominican Republic as an adult expecting to be welcomed and feel at home. Instead, she feels like she feels like she is just an outsider. In the end, Yolanda realizes that her life has changed and that she can’t go back to the Dominican Republic that she once knew; she created a new life for herself in New York. She is better off in the end once she stops trying to go back to a home that no longer exists; she becomes much happier with herself and life. A quote I found that shows this would be “My grandmother grew so old she could not remember who she was. I went away to school. I read books. You understand I am collapsing all the time now so that it fits in what’s left in the hollow of my story?” (Alvarez, 289)

 In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, one of the main protagonists is Lola, Oscar’s sister. The book gives stories from her life to help explain the behavior of her character and one of them is about the time she ran away from home to be with an older boy. She does this with the expectation that she’ll have a better life with her boyfriend, but it ends up being worse than her life at home. Out of stubbornness though, she refuses to return until she’s ambushed by her mother and dragged back home. “It was the stupidest thing I ever did. I was miserable… But of course I wouldn’t admit it. I had run away, so I was happy” (Díaz 64).

In my book “the tyrant’s daughter” by J.C carelson, my main character, Laila, is taken from her home in the mid-west by an American CIA agent and put into the U.S under certain conditions, She experiences a school dance, the short dresses, sparkling jewelry and done up hair and makeup,  she joins the dance and its a situation she isn’t used to, she freezes up.

But she soon loosens up and continues to “dance” 

“It takes me several long, breathless moments to realize its my frozen stance thats making me suffer–my ridged shoulders and planed feet. I need to stop resisting, i tell myself. I need to move with the crowd” 

-J.C. Carlson The tyrants daughter

The book The Sun is also a Star by Nicola Yoon is about two teenagers in New York City named Natasha Kingsley and Daniel Bae. Natasha is a practical, science loving girl whose family is being deported back to Jamaica. She doesn’t believe in fate or love–she believes in facts and logic. Natasha is spending her last day in New York trying to find a way to stop her family’s transportation. Daniel is a Korean American boy whose parents immigrated from South Korea. His parents want hom to become a doctor, but Daniel secretly wants to be a poet. Natasha is trying to save her family, Daniel has an important college interview that could decide his future. Natasha and Daniel meet by chance in New York City. Daniel instantly feels a connection and believes it’s fate. Natasha doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but Daniel challenges her to spend the day together to see if he can make her fall in love with him using science. The character Natasha Kingsley knows she is different from the people around her because of the way she thinks about life and love, which is completely different from her peers. While Daniel believes in fate and destiny, Natasha has her roots in science and facts. As the day goes on, Natasha and Daniel spend more time together, visiting different places around the city and having deep conversations about their lives, families, and beliefs. Even though Natasha is determined to stay logical and not get emotionally attached, she slowly begins to feel something for Daniel. Daniel, on the other hand, becomes even more convinced that their meeting is not just a coincidence but something meant to happen. Natasha continues her mission to stop her family's deportation, holding onto the hope that something will change. At the same time, Daniel struggles with the pressure from his parents and begins to question whether he should follow his own dreams instead of the chosen path from his parents. Natasha finally reveals that her family is being deported that night to Daniel, and it creates tension between the two, as Daniel feels hurt that she didn’t tell him sooner, and Natasha is overwhelmed by the reality of her situation. Their time together begins to change both of them. Natasha starts to question whether love and fate could be real, while Daniel begins to confront the pressures his parents have placed on him and what he truly wants for his future. They form a strong, emotional bond. As Natasha’s deportation becomes unavoidable, the hope that things could work out starts to fade. Daniel, who has been trying to prove that love can change fate, realizes that he can’t fix everything. Despite their quick connection, they’re forced to face the reality of Natasha having to return to Jamaica with her family. At the airport, their goodbye is painful and unresolved. Both of them are changed by the experience of meeting each other. Natasha, who didn’t believe in love, had felt it for the first time. Daniel, who believed love could solve anything, learns that life is more complicated than that. After Natasha leaves, Daniel struggles to move on but eventually begins to accept what happened. He chooses to pursue writing and poetry instead of following the path that his parents had planned, showing how Natasha influenced him to be more true to himself. By the end of the book, further into the future by a few years, Natasha and Daniel meet again in New York City by chance. For Daniel, he believes in fate and that love can overcome obstacles. He expects that if he and Natasha are meant to be, things will somehow work out in the end. However, even though their connection is real, he can’t stop Natasha’s deportation, “What I care about is you, and I'm sure that love is enough to overcome all the bullshit. And it is bullshit. All the handwringing. All the talk about cultures clashing or preserving cultures and what will happen to the kids. All of it is one hundred percent pure, unadulterated bullshit, and I just refuse to care." (Yoon 318). Love isn’t enough to change the system or timing, and Daniel is forced to let go of the idea that everything happens for a perfect reason. He learns to accept reality, even when it's painful. He chooses his own path, instead of just following expectations. For Natasha, she believes in science, not fate or love. She expects her day to be spent trying to stop their family’s deportation. However, she meets Daniel and ends up falling in love with him over the course of a single day, something she didn’t think was possible. By the end, she is deported, and she begins to accept that love is real, and she becomes more open to emotions and uncertainty. Even though the two of them separate, they both grow as characters. Natasha becomes more open to emotion, and Daniel becomes more grounded and self-aware, leaving them better off for the future. In the TedTalk "What's missing from the American immigrant narrative, Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez says she admired people like the "superimmigrant" narrative because it encouraged her, “I grew up admiring superimmigrants, because their existence fueled jmy dreams and it gave me hope.” (Gutierrez). This quote reflects the idea that hope and dreams can inspire people to overcome challenges. However, dreams and hopes cannot be soley relied upon. Daniels experience with Natasha shows him that love cannot stop ber deportation or erase the struggles her family face, similar to the idea of the "superimmigrant" that suggests that success is often portrayed as achievable through effort and hope alone, ignoring the barriers some people will face.

gparlin

in your book you mention that your character Yolanda felt out of place after moving, and this was interesting because my character Oscar never talks about feeling out of place in his new home after moving to the Dominican Republic, and I think this is because even when he was younger he always felt out of place because he isn't very sociable so he didn't notice a change when he moved.

dodonnell

in your book you talk about how Oscars sister runs away from home because she thinks her life would change for the better. this reminds of Oscar because when he was moving to university he thought his wife would get much better and he would talk to girls and get friends but when he arrives nothing changes and he stays inside his shell, and later regrets not trying to talk to others while he was their.

iraftice 

I found it interesting that in your story that Laila comes from the Mid-west into America and begins to fit in because in my book I notice the opposite happens, when Oscar moves from new jersey to the Dominican Republic the quality of live is a lot worse he doesn't fit in like usual and instead of getting used to it he struggles and struggles until he eventually dies