Garcia Girls and Elizabeth WongThe Statue of Liberty is an American icon because it symbolizes the freedom, success and power of this nation. This image is what the United States represents to the outside world. Foreigners strive to settle in America because of its wealth and acceptance of all races and ethnicities. “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” tells the story of how Carlos Garcia, Laura Garcia and their four daughters left the Dominican Republic for the United States to escape a dictatorship and establish a new life in the thriving city of New York. Many unexpected cultural shocks await them in their new country. Although the girls have difficulty adapting at first, they quickly begin to assimilate and become Americanized. On the other hand, Elizabeth Wong's "The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl" illustrates the life of an Asian American girl having to embrace two completely different cultural identities. The Garcia family and Elizabeth Wong's family must deal with two opposing cultures without losing too much of their heritage. The book and essay are similar in that the characters in each story lose much of their original lore. However, they are different in that families move to the United States for distinct reasons, and the cultural preference of "The Struggle to Be an American Girl" is more obvious than that of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents ". The striking similarity in the writings is that all the characters lose their heritage over time. In "The Struggle to Be an American Girl", Elizabeth was forced to attend a Chinese school by her mother in order to maintain her Chinese heritage and become fluent in Chinese. However, she hated Chinese school and strongly preferred speaking English rather than Chinese. She...... middle of paper ......th Dominican Republic. Elizabeth is more innocent than the Garcia girls, because she never had to go through the assimilation issues that the Garcia girls have to go through. For example, Elizabeth never desperately needed to overcome a language barrier; his life can be made easy just by knowing English. Meanwhile, Carla is bullied at school because she speaks with an accent and is not fluent in English. The Garcia girls have to learn most of their English in school because Spanish is the primary language spoken at home. The Garcia girls and Elizabeth are heavily Americanized and lose much of their heritage in the end, but it is the Garcia girls who feel the negative impact of immigration on their lives. Elizabeth can be much more optimistic about the United States because she never had to go through the assimilation struggles that the Garcia girls went through..