Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American writer and poet, author of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent," a novel that some critics might say is autobiographical contrasted by Alvarez's opinion applies to any culture or background. This story chronicles the growing-up adventures the Garcia girls face when the family suddenly moves from the Dominican Republic to the United States. Julia Alvarez experiences a similar process: from childhood in the Dominican Republic, to immigrating to the United States, and finding her identity as an adult between two countries. Julia Alvarez was born in the 1950s in New York City, but when she was three months old her family moved to the Dominican Republic because her mother missed the island. This is the first difference between Alvarez and the Garcia Girls, as they were all born in the Dominican Republic. She is the second child of four children, the two oldest born in the United States and the two youngest born in the Dominican Republic. In her essay “An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic,” Alvarez states that her mother nicknamed the older one “Americanitas,” the Spanish word for little American girls, and the younger one “criollas,” meaning native to the island, in reference to the places where they were born (Alvarez). The Garcia girls also encounter a similar situation as their mother calls them all by "cuquita", which stops being a sweet name and becomes an unwanted word among the sisters. The Alvarezes lived in a compound in a respected neighborhood surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins ​​and grandparents, and were a very well-established family because they “benefited from the support of the people in power” during the revolution against the Haitians (“Julia Alvarez”) . In his novel,......middle of paper......immigrants who come to the United States seeking a fresh start to a new life.Works Cited.Alvarez, Julia. "An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic." American Scholar 56.1 (1987): 71. Premier of academic research. Network. April 14, 2014.Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia girls lost their accent. North Carolina: Algonquin, 1991. Print.Alvarez, Julia and Juanita Heredia. “Citizen of the World: Interview with Julia Alvarez.” Latin Self-Portraits: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers. Contemporary Literary Criticism 274 (2009). Literary Resource Center. Network. April 3, 2014. “Alvarez, Julia.” Literature Online biography (2004): n. page Network. 2 April 2014. “Episode 4: The new Latinos”. Latin Americans. prod. Jeff Beiber and Dalton Delan PBS, 2013. Web. April 8, 2014. “Julia Alvarez.” Hispanic heritage. Gale Cengage Learning. August 2, 2017. Web. April 11 2014.