Julia Alvarez Quotes

Yolanda, nicknamed Yo in Spanish, misunderstood Joe in English, doubled and pronounced like the toy, Yoyo - or when forced to select from a rack of personalized keychains, Joey.

And you might not know this, Little Book, but I always cry when people laugh at me.

Americanah; Ayad Akhtar, American Dervish; Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Teju Cole, Open City; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Nell Freudenberger, The Newlyweds; Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban and King of Cuba; Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker.

She said no as sweetly as if it were yes. "Nooooh," the word opening her mouth, soft and ripe and ready for him to bite into it.

He had forced her to say her least favorite word in the world. She would never ever forgive him for that.

There is no end to what can be said about the world.

Because he accused her of eating her own head by thinking so much about what people said. Because he believed in the Real World, more than words, more than he believed in her.

In the beginning, we were in love. Yo smiles. That was a good beginning. He came to my door. I opened it.

I love you,' John said, rejoicing, tricked by the barks and the howls. But Yolanda was afraid. Once they got started on words, there was no telling what they could say.

Do you love me, Joe? Do you?' he pleaded. He wanted words back, nothing else would do. Yo complied. 'I love you too.

She recognizes the unmistakable signs of a flashback: a woman at a window, a woman with a past, with memory and desire and wreckage in her heart. She will let herself have them today. She can't help herself anyway.