Uprooted and Planted

I am not going to lie, I read this book before this term started, and I am not going to lie, I fell asleep re-reading it last night.

I enjoyed this book the first time I read it, and I am enjoying it the second time around as well. Alvarez's words are fluid, but also strong. For me, this is my favorite work so far. I like that it is both fragmented and connected at the same time, with each sister's experiences and amount of adaptation and assimilation being different though their core-experiences remain inter-twined.

Alvarez's reverse chronological order also makes sense to me. It is as if each character speaks to their situation now, and then looks back and reminisces to their past in relation to who they are now and how their past molded and influenced them. This almost makes you think, in these snips of narration, what made Sandra-Yolanda-Sofia-Carla act the way they do in this passage?

I find a profoundly large gap between what I see as the "north-American" importance of family and the Latin-American one. I grew up in the US, and yes I love my family, and I also respect my elders. My three siblings and I do talk, we keep in touch, and we joke and share memories, but I still feel that this is to such a minor extent compared to the Garcia girls. "We took turns being the wildest.First one, then another of us would confess our sins on vacation nights after the parents went to bed, and we had double-checked the hall" (85). The closeness of family and their importance through good and bad times really astounded me and left me in awe. It made me pine for my own family being like that.

Perhaps, however, the sisters were so close because they were uprooted,imported, and planted into foreign soil. I guess I would also stick with those and to those who had something in common with me, who understood me and the way I acted. And in many cases, this would be your family. It really makes me wonder...

if I would have moved to another country at a young age, would my siblings and I be any closer than we are today? Or is it just "the culture" I was raised in?