How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

As a child, Yolanda tried to be an individual apart from her three sisters. “Each of the four girls had the same party dress, school clothes, underwear, toothbrush, bedspread, nightgown, plastic cup, towel, brush and comb set as the other three...” (p. 41). Yolanda and her sisters didn’t like this method but Yolanda was the only one that rebelled against it. She wanted to express herself compared to having everything the same as her sisters. “My mother disapproved. It was high time I got over my rebelling stage and started acting like a young lady senorita.” (p. 228). Yolanda’s grandmother bought an American cowgirl outfit for her from New York City and her moth

er didn’t agree with it and thought of her as some type of “tomboy.” Yolanda felt her mother was insecure and frightened. She felt that someday one of the four girls was going to go there own way and not know what to do with all the freedom and individuality they are allowed to express. The color coding system was “just easier” and “saved time” for their mother. Throughout the story, “Yoyo” refers back to the different ways she tries to be an individual and the overall conclusion of how she thinks it effected her as an adult.

Each one of the four girls ended up with an individual life and grew up to be four different people. Even though, Yoyo feels that the color-coding and the way her mother brought her up effected the rest of her life predominately, she found her own life and ended up being happy with herself and her surroundings. While she was a child, she struggled to find her individuality, while when she moved to the states she tried to fit in with everyone else. Now, she fits in with everyone else enough to be excepted and still shows her own sense of individuality through what she wears, how she speaks, and what she does in her daily life.

As an adult, Yolanda finally reached a happy balance between fitting in with the people she wanted to, while being herself and feeling comfortable. “ The eldest, a child psychologist, admonished the mother in an autobiographical paper, ‘I Was There Too,’

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