Toni Morrison and Julia Alvarez were both nominated for prestigious writing awards. Morrison was up for the Nobel Prize in Literature and Alvarez was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; however, only Morrison ultimately received the Nobel Prize in Literature. This distinction in writing accolades serves to illustrate the difference in styles between the two authors. While both Toni Morrison and Julia Alvarez strive to achieve literary excellence, Morrison eclipses Alvarez at leaving a positive impression on the reader. The effect of each author’s technique and the differences between the two are evident in a comparison between Morrison’s Sula and Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents.
In Sula and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents the authors deal with similar subjects. The protagonists in both books are women in a male-dominated society. Each book focuses on the women’s journey from childhood to adulthood and on their connection to one another. The similarities continue in the women’s ethnicities: all the main characters are minorities. In part, the books deal with how these women of color cope within a culture where Caucasians have more power. A greater part of the books, however, asserts the power and tragedy in a being a woman.
On the surface, the plot structure and prose of the books also share many parallels. Time is a key element in Sula and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; each book is divided into segments of time. Alvarez divides her book into three time periods and every chapter in Morrison’s tale is named after a year. The prose in each book is also similar in its poetic rhythms and imagery. Morrison, for example, uses the figurative language often used in poetry to describe a day this way: “It had a sheen, a glimmering of green, rain-soaked Saturday nights (lit by the excitement of newly installed streetlights); of lemon-yellow afternoons bright with iced drinks and splashes of daffodils” (94). Alvarez, likewise, uses figures of speech to describe Yolanda’s love interest when she writes, “Let him rip of his white shirt, push back the two halves of his chest like Superman prying open a door and let the first woman out. Eve is lovely, a valentine hairline, white gossamer panties” (69). Both authors also use short sentences and sentence fragments common to poetry.
Whiles these similarities seem significant, it is often the small disparities that make one piece of writing great and another mediocre. Such is the case with Morrison and Alvarez. The first noteworthy difference between the works is the scope. Sula, as the title suggests, is a novel with more focus. There are only two main characters -- Nel and Sula-- the book focuses on. Morrison is conservative in what she chooses to include in the book, so each scene is important to the understanding of the work as a whole. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, as the title suggests, has a far broader scope. It not only deals with the four Garcia sisters, but it also includes many side adventures that bog down the conflict and intensity of the work. Soon, the individuality of each girl becomes fuzzy and it is difficult to tell one from the other. Alvarez’s pace meanders, but Morrison’s walks a straighter path.
The second major difference surrounds the characters the authors create and what the characters do. Morrison employs well-defined characters that stick in the reader’s mind: crazy Shadrack with his National Suicide Day parade, feisty Eva missing one leg (after an accident she might have caused herself for the insurance money), and loose Hannah who sleeps with anyone willing. Those are just the supporting characters. The cast in Sula has a spirited life. And death. There is a murder by fire and at least four other fatalities. The Garcia girls, on the other hand, are not as exciting: Carla is a psychologist, Sandra has been institutionalized, Yolanda wants to be a writer, and Sofia eloped with a German. Although Alvarez often changes point of view from third-person to first-person, there is little to give most of the characters a life of his or her own. Furthermore, there is little meaningful conflict: no murders, just a few “off-screen” betrayals, and one threatening -- but absent -- dictator.
Another aspect of why Sula is a more enjoyable piece of literature than How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is that Alvarez’s style is too melodramatic. When Yolanda, who has also been checked into a psychiatric hospital, asks her shrink what love is “the skin on her neck prickles and reddens. She has developed a random allergy to certain words….her lips swell, her skin itches, her eyes water with allergic reaction tears” (82). Here Yolanda has developed an allergic reaction to the word “love.” Such hackneyed description and characterization crosses a line, stepping out of literature and into common romance novel territory. Morrison’s Sula stays away from sugary notions or reactions to love, death, and many other human sentiments. Her story shows these emotions and situations, but it does not deign to propose that the side effect of a broken heart is as petty as an allergic reaction.
For these reasons and more, Toni Morrison was able to add the Nobel Prize in Literature to her Pulitzer and her National Book Critics Circle Award. Though both Morrison and Alvarez tackled shared topics, themes, and genders, after comparing Sula to How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Morrison’s literary style has proven to be more masterful.
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