Living objects seem to be more prominent symbol in, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. From a cat to guavas, they are more prominent in this story than any other story I have ever read. Leaving their home was a difficult thing to do for the young Garcia girls. They had been living the high life in the Dominican Republic. They got glimpses of the United States when they were in the Dominican Republic when their father brought them special gifts from the well-known store in New York, FAO Schwarz. " Papi was back with a wonderful surprise from New York-(257). The kitten is a symbol of the Garcia girls. Like the kitten, the girls were taken from their nurturer (the Dominican Republic), too early. "She meowed out goodbyes to her brothers and sisters as we crossed the yard" (286). They were not mature enough to live on their own. The girls were hurt emotionally by the change, just as her cat was injured when she threw him out the window into a new, sometimes scary environment. "I heard it land with a thud, saw it moments later, wobbling out from under the shadow of the house, meowing and stumbling forward. There was no sign of the mother cat" (288). The fact that Yolanda feels guilty for what she had done to the kitten, by not allowing him to grow gives a hint of what is going to come for the Garcia girls when they are in America. "There are still times I wake up at three o"clock in the morning and peer into the darkness" (290).
The kitten and drum go together hand and hand. The drum is where the kitten is stuffed, crammed, in order to hide from the mother. The playing of the drum with him in it covers up his cries. The drum symbolizes where the girls were stuffed, which was America. "I picked Schwarz up, and in one deft movement, plunked her down into the hollow of my drum, grabbing up my drumsticks in exchange, slapping the lid down, shifting the drum in front of me, and then as the mother cat jerked around and caught sight of me and then my drum, which was meowing furiously, I brought down a loud, distracting drum roll-(287).
