Kittens in the Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, and the Search for Identity in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Abstract

The search for an ever-elusive home is a thread that runs throughout much literature by authorswho have immigrated to the United States. Dominican authors are particularly susceptible to thissearch for a home because “for many Dominicans, home is synonymous with political and/oreconomic repression and is all too often a point of departure on a journey of survival” (Bonilla200). This “journey of survival” is a direct reference to the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas TrujilloMolina, who controlled the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. The pain and trauma that Trujilloinflicted upon virtually everyone associated with the Dominican Republic during this era is stillheartbreakingly apparent, and perhaps nowhere is that trauma more thoroughly illustrated than inthe literature of Julia Alvarez. Alvarez is a prime example of an author who utilizes narrative in aclear attempt to come to grips with lingering traumatic memories. After her father’s role in anattempt to overthrow the dictator is revealed, Alvarez’s family is forced to flee the DominicanRepublic as political exiles, and a sense of displacement has haunted her since. Because boththe Dominican Republic and the United States are extraordinary racially charged, concepts ofhome and identity are inextricably bound to race relations in much of Alvarez’s art. Usingtheoretical concepts drawn from the fields of trauma studies and Black cultural studies, this essayexamines Alvarez’s debut novel in order to illustrate the myriad ways in which culture, politics,and race converge and speak through each other, largely in the form of traumas that canirreparably alter one’s sense of home, voice, and identity.

Keywords

• Race Relations
• Traumatic Memory
• Identity