Julia Alvarez: 1950—: Author Biography - From Latina To "gringa", Student, Itinerant Poet, And Teacher, Poet And Author
poetry
Dominican author Julia Alvarez has given voice to the themes of displacement, alienation, and search for identity in her poetry and fiction. Thrown into a foreign language and culture as a child, Alvarez found refuge in books and writing. She discovered through words she could build her own worlds that both revealed and transcended the meaning of her life. Alvarez became a nationally acclaimed author in 1991 at the age of 41 with the publication of her first novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accent. Her writings include four novels, two collections of poetry, a book of essays, and two children's stories.
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Although Alvarez was born in New York City on March 27, 1950, soon after her birth her parents returned to their native home of the Dominican Republic, where her father, a doctor, ran a local hospital. The second of four sisters, she was reared close to her mother's family, amidst a slew of cousins, aunts, uncles, and maids. When Alvarez was ten years old, her father became actively involve…
In 1967 Alvarez enrolled at Connecticut College. "I grew up in that generation of women thinking I would keep house. Especially with my Latino background, I wasn't even expected to go to college," she told Publishers Weekly. "I had never been raised to have a public voice." Yet the appeal of writing outweighed her cultural and family heritage, and under the tutel…
In 1984 Alvarez published her first collection of poetry, Homecoming, featuring a 33-sonnet sequence entitled "33." The poem, which fills nearly have the book, is exercise in self-examination carried out by Alvarez, who at the age of 33, found herself confronting middle age with no permanent home, no family of her own, and no specific career plan. The poems in Homecoming often focus …
After In the Name of Salomé, Alvarez's next two literary efforts were children's books. In 2000 she published The Secret Footprints, which was geared for children from ages four to seven and based on a traditional Dominican fable. In 2001 Alvarez published How Tia Lola Came to Stay. Written for children from ages 9 to 12, the book tells the story of nine-year-old Miguel, who s…
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