For the past two years, it has been a personal goal of mine to study abroad, specifically in the United States. A couple of months ago, for the first time, I began to have doubts about this. My classmates and I were assigned to read "A Daughter of Invention", which is an excerpt from Julia Alvarez's book "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents". The text talks about a Latin family forced to move to New York because of the existing dictatorship in their country. The main character in the story narrates this transition from one culture to the next, and the hardships the siblings in particular had to endure in their quest to fit in and become equal members of the American society. .
I was immediately interested in the story, especially because the family discussed in the story was Dominican, and I found that my values were not unlike those of the characters. Fueled by this new doubt growing in me, I read the book. The family in the story captivated me, and their development in the American culture resulted even more fascinating. The four sisters the book describes were forced to adapt to a completely different culture and way of life and were subjected to discrimination numerous times due to their ethnic background. .
This journey the four Dominican girls went through and the rejection they were forced to undertake made me reconsider the only thing I thought I was sure I wanted. When I pondered about life as a student in the United States, I envisioned myself in a cultural metropolis where I enjoyed a healthy educational and social environment. It had never occurred to me that I could come to be a target of discrimination. .
Amidst my doubts, I found comfort in several factors. The first one is that the book is set several decades ago. Since then, racism has diminished and Hispanics have gotten to achieve certain equality. A second factor is that, whether it be by technology or globalization, I am exposed to the North American way of life and have developed a sort of biculturalism.
