Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez

[afterannabel.livejournal.com]

3) Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez

I have mixed feelings about this book. My biggest complaint was that I was often frustrated by Alvarez's use of Spanish words and idioms, of which she rarely provided translation. I took Spanish on and off in high school and college, and some words' meanings are intuitive (familia) or obvious from the context, so that was helpful. But it made me stumble many times throughout the book. I really liked the fact that Alvarez dug deeper and explored how young Latina women in America struggle with incorporating both cultures into their lives in meaningful ways, without compromising themselves.

Comments

[kmd.livejournal.com]

I was often frustrated by Alvarez's use of Spanish words and idioms, of which she rarely provided translation.

It takes English-only speakers work, then, to connect to Alvarez's work.

That doesn't seem like a bad thing. Seems like central to the point of this community, no?

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the same thing -- if I ran across that, in a book, not knowing anything else about the book or the author, I would assume that a monolingual-English audience was not the target audience for the book, and that if I wanted to read & understand, I would need to keep a dictionary at hand or Babelfish open.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[afterannabel.livejournal.com]

I circled phrases and words I didn't know as I read the book and afterwards looked them all up. There were only two or three that I couldn't find easily through Google. I should have mentioned that in the original post, and that my biggest complaint was still a very minor frustration.