Julia Alvarez
(1950– )
When Julia Alvarez graduated from high school, her doting family gave her a typewriter and predicted that one day her name would be known throughout the United States. Alvarez must have laughed to herself; after all, many of her classmates couldn’t even pronounce her name. Nevertheless, her family’s prediction has come true: Alvarez is an award-winning and best-selling poet and novelist.
Born in New York City, Julia Alvarez spent her childhood in the Dominican Republic, surrounded by family, tropical fruits, and politics. When she was ten years old, her family entered into a secret plot to overthrow Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo Molina. Just before her father was to be arrested, an American agent tipped the family off, and they escaped to the United States.
Though the young Alvarez had always dreamed of returning to the United States, she felt out of place at first. Later, she realized that, despite the difficulties, her experiences as an immigrant had deepened her perceptions. As a writer, she would find that her ability to shift perspectives was one of her greatest strengths.
After college, Alvarez taught poetry in schools and worked on her own writing. Her first book, a volume of poetry appropriately titled Homecoming, appeared in 1984. She went on to win the American Academy of Poetry Prize. Her novels How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and ¡Yo! (1997) focus on the charged and dangerous lives of political dissidents and the small, daily conflicts faced by immigrant families.
