Maximum Occupancy

My latest obsession is trying to be like the cool kids by talking about books on TikTok since the majority of my interactions is with a toddler. I need to be part of a community that is older and not so tyrannical and demanding. Also I want it to be able to speak and write and think.

I am picking the lingo up. I am getting hip with it, and one of the terms I am swilling around in contemplation is mood reader. Is that how I go about life? I used to think I was like Matilda but what if my self diagnosis is inaccurate and ignoring a real phenomena out there that I am a part of?

I think that after reading How the García Girls Lost Their Accents I realized that mood reader is a more apt term for how I move from book to book. Although it is known for being the first novel of Julia Alvarez, I only just “discovered” her writings last year and read out of sequence - I read the sequel to this novel first. As clueless as I am/was, I enjoyed that and this first story concerning a family of mostly girls escaping a political regime intent on stamping out their father and his views in the Dominican Republic. I learned something while exposing myself to a talented writer of domestic fiction.

Although I started out of order, it does not seem that absurd since her writing has a flow. Even when revealing the characters and their setting, it leads the reader to a growing sense of familiarity. Her first novel makes uses of going backwards to tell the journey this family makes when they immigrate to the United States. So reading the novel Yo first, about one of the older girls the fictional writer and poet Yolanda García, matches the method Julia Alvarez deploys in her first novel.

Going forwards, backwards, or jumping around in time, it is not a decision meant to mask the writer’s inadequacies, Julia Alvarez is a gifted storyteller. Her narrative style seems effortless and cinematic, when I read her words I have the ability to envision the places and the people, their movements through the pages. Altogether you can see the story she is trying to capture about this family. Yet if each chapter was taken as an individual read, they would come off as a full short story. Both novels tell a cohesive story even if they jump from perspective to different moments in time.

These are for the most part, entertaining tales of one family - their legends and defining events that make up their collective history . Each person is flawed, brilliant, fucked up, strong, perpetrator of an -ism, and victim of an -ism. Alvarez is able to say a lot through this family and you can see the commentary she is making even in class, race, beauty, xenophobia, and sexism.

I made a note of page 197 in my copy, since the section about the father and the annoying dad jokes/games he would play felt so tangible even if this was never my experience. It helps to show the complexity of their interactions when it comes to the retelling of his actions and reactions with his daughters. I also made a note of the saddest story, the chapter that was about Carla’s American surprise. This clear example of classism in the Dominican Republic, like the dad joke scene, are paragraph long novellas of scenes we should all be close to since they are not too unique to life and thus so believable.

There are trigger warnings, this book covers a range of traumas that they have survived: minor and major, of their own making and not. But the overall tone is not one of despair so much as this is the life they are living. I love this work for the writer and the stories that she tells, for being able to write about the different lives from the Dominican so that way people like me can have a peek. I recommend you read it and also embrace whatever method you have to picking your reads.