Source: Julia-Alvarez, LaBloga, Wikimedia
Although she was born in the United States in 1950, Julia Alvarez spent the first ten years of her life in the Dominican Republic. When her family returned to New York, she was the only immigrant in her fourth grade class.
In this short excerpt from her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez captures the fear and the wonder of a young immigrant girl who has never seen snow before. Read the excerpt that follows to see what the narrator Yolanda remembers about her kind, “grandmotherly” teacher, Sister Zoe, who helped her adjust to her new life.
I have used two different colors to mark different sets of words Yolanda learns in Sister Zoe’s class. Highlighting can be used to categorize different kinds of information in a text. The words highlighted in yellow are words that Yolanda would see and use as a new citizen in the United States. The words highlighted in pink are the new words Yolanda is learning related to the threat of bombs.
Source: New York City Blizzard 1010, Sarah_Ackerman, Flickr
Snow
By Julia Alvarez
Our first year in New York we rented a small apartment with a Catholic school nearby, taught by the Sisters of Charity, hefty women in long black gowns and bonnets that made them look peculiar, like dolls in mourning. I liked them a lot, especially my grandmotherly fourth-grade teacher, Sister Zoe. I had a lovely name, she said, and she had me teach the whole class how to pronounce it. Yo-lan-da. As the only immigrant in my class, I was put in a special seat in the first row by the window, apart from the other children, so that Sister Zoe could tutor me without disturbing them. Slowly, she enunciated the new words I was to repeat: laundromat, cornflakes, subway, snow.
Soon I picked up enough English to understand holocaust was in the air. Sister Zoe explained to a wide-eyed classroom what was happening in Cuba. Russian missiles were being assembled, trained supposedly on New York City. President Kennedy, looking worried too, was on the television at home, explaining we might have to go to war against the Communists. At school, we had air-raid drills: An ominous bell would go off and we’d file into the hall, fall to the floor, cover our heads with our coats, and imagine our hair falling out, the bones in our arms going soft. At home, Mami and my sisters and I said a rosary for world peace. I heard new vocabulary: nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout, bomb shelter. Sister Zoe explained how it would happen. She drew a picture of a mushroom on the blackboard and dotted a flurry of chalk marks for the dusty fallout that would kill us all.
The months grew cold, November, December. It was dark when I got up in the morning, frosty when I followed my breath to school. One morning, as I sat at my desk daydreaming out the window, I saw dots in the air like the ones Sister Zoe had drawn—random at first, then lots and lots. I shrieked, “Bomb! Bomb!” Sister Zoe jerked around, her full black skirt ballooning as she hurried to my side. A few girls began to cry.
But then Sister Zoe’s shocked look faded. “Why, Yolanda dear, that’s snow!” She laughed, “Snow.”
“Snow,” I repeated. I looked out the window warily. All my life I had heard about the white crystals that fell out of American skies in the winter. From my desk I watched the fine powder dust the sidewalk and parked cars below. Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.
I used pink and yellow highlighting to distinguish between the two kinds of words Yolanda learns in Sister Zoe’s class. Next, you will choose a third color to highlight details Alvarez includes to show Sister Zoe’s kindness toward her student.
For example, Alvarez describes Sister Zoe as “grandmotherly,” an adjective that conveys warmth and kindness since most children regard their grandmothers fondly. Because a grandmother is an older person, she (and, therefore, Sister Zoe) might also be associated with wisdom gained from experience.
Another piece of information that Alvarez selects for inclusion is that Sister Zoe seats Yolanda in a “special” place “in the first row” so that she can tutor her.
What other words does Alvarez choose that convey to the reader how kind Sister Zoe is to Yolanda? For the next exercise, click on these words to highlight them in green. Remember to highlight sparingly, clicking only on the most essential words and phrases. You should find nine instances to highlight.
Snow
By Julia Alvarez
Our first year in New York we rented a small apartment with a Catholic school nearby, taught by the Sisters of Charity, hefty women in long black gowns and bonnets that made them look peculiar, like dolls in mourning. I liked them a lot, especially my grandmotherly fourth-grade teacher, Sister Zoe. I had a lovely name, she said, and she had me teach the whole class how to pronounce it. Yo-lan-da. As the only immigrant in my class, I was put in a special seat in the first row by the window, apart from the other children, so that Sister Zoe could tutor me without disturbing them. Slowly, she enunciated the new words I was to repeat: laundromat, cornflakes, subway, snow.
Soon I picked up enough English to understand holocaust was in the air. Sister Zoe explained to a wide-eyed classroom what was happening in Cuba. Russian missiles were being assembled, trained supposedly on New York City. President Kennedy, looking worried too, was on the television at home, explaining we might have to go to war against the Communists. At school, we had air-raid drills: An ominous bell would go off and we’d file into the hall, fall to the floor, cover our heads with our coats, and imagine our hair falling out, the bones in our arms going soft. At home, Mami and my sisters and I said a rosary for world peace. I heard new vocabulary: nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout, bomb shelter. Sister Zoe explained how it would happen. She drew a picture of a mushroom on the blackboard and dotted a flurry of chalk marks for the dusty fallout that would kill us all.
The months grew cold, November, December. It was dark when I got up in the morning, frosty when I followed my breath to school. One morning, as I sat at my desk daydreaming out the window, I saw dots in the air like the ones Sister Zoe had drawn—random at first, then lots and lots. I shrieked, “Bomb! Bomb!” Sister Zoe jerked around, her full black skirt ballooning as she hurried to my side. A few girls began to cry.
But then Sister Zoe’s shocked look faded. “Why, Yolanda dear, that’s snow!” She laughed, “Snow.”
“Snow,” I repeated. I looked out the window warily. All my life I had heard about the white crystals that fell out of American skies in the winter. From my desk I watched the fine powder dust the sidewalk and parked cars below. Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.
Remember, the purpose of annotation is to increase your interaction (or conversation) with the material you are reading or studying. You should not only read the material, but also DO something with it. In this section, you are learning to read using highlighters, actively marking the text in a story. In the next section, you will add marginal notations to your highlighting of “Snow.”