Publisher's Synopsis
Cuando las hermanas Garcìa -Carla, Sandra, Yolanda y Sofìa- y sus padres huyen de la República Dominicana buscando refugio de la persecución polìtica, encuentran un nuevo hogar en los Estados Unidos. Pero el Nueva York de los años sesenta es marcadamente diferente de la vida privilegiada, aunque conflictiva, que han dejado atrás.
Bajo la presión de asimilarse a una nueva cultura, las muchachas Garcìa se alisan el pelo, abandonan la lengua española y se encuentran con muchachos sin una chaperona. Pero por más que intentan distanciarse de su isla natal, las hermanas no logran desprender el mundo antiguo del nuevo.
Lo que las hermanas han perdido para siempre -y lo que logran encontrar- se revela en esta novela magistral de una de las novelistas más celebradas de nuestros tiempos.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
"Poignant . . . Powerful . . . Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory." -The New York Times Book Review
Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The Garcìa sisters-Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofìa-and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father's role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home-and not at home-in America.
