Julia Alvarez
(b. 1950)

Julia Alvarez, like many other writers, explores the question of identity. For the essayist, poet, and novelist, this question has always been complicated by her bicultural roots. Born in the United States, raised in the Dominican Republic, and then resident in the United States since the age of ten, Alvarez has spent much of her life moving between two countries and two languages.

Julia Alvarez was born on March 27, 1950, in New York City, where her father was in the United States studying medicine. Soon afterwards, her parents were eager to return to the Dominican Republic. The news from the island was that the oppressive regime headed by Rafael Trujillo was changing for the better. The Alvarez family returned just months after Julia was born. They had not been back long before it was clear that Trujillo's promises of reform were empty. The government continued to rely on secret police, torture, and assassinations to cling to power.

The warmth and love she felt from her extended family mark Julia Alvarez's memories of her childhood in the Dominican Republic. Life there was a parade of sisters, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Soon after her tenth birthday, however, Alvarez was pulled from this loving cocoon. Rumors had reached Trujillo of plots against his life. Because Dr. Alvarez was active in the Dominican underground, he was immediately suspected. The family escaped to the United States and settled in New York City.

As a young girl in the Dominican Republic, Alvarez had felt comparatively American. Once she was back in the United States, however, she was quickly made aware of her foreignness. Children in school called her names and teased her about her inadequate English. Alvarez found a refuge in reading and writing.

After graduating from high school, Alvarez studied at Middlebury College in Vermont and then enrolled in a creative writing program at Syracuse University. After earning her master's degree, she taught writing at various schools and colleges. Some of her poems appeared in small magazines and journals. She first won wide acclaim with How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, a series of fifteen interwoven stories that focus on four sisters from the Dominican Republic adjusting to life in the United States.

Alvarez based her next novel, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), on the true story of the Mirabal sisters, who were murdered by Trujillo's agents in 1960 for opposing the regime. This book was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Award in fiction.

In her next novel, ¡Yo! (1997), Alvarez returned to the story of the four sisters in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. This work's favorable reception strengthened Alvarez's reputation as an emerging voice in contemporary literature. This reputation has been further enhanced by the recent publication of another collection of poetry, The Other Side/El Otro Lado (1995), and a collection of essays, Something to Declare (1998). Alvarez's success has made it possible for her to concentrate solely on her writing. She lives in Middlebury, Vermont, with her husband Bill Eichner and is currently at work on a new novel.

The Dominican Republic shares (with Haiti) the large island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. According to some estimates, almost 15 percent of the Dominican population lives outside the Dominican Republic. This scattering of the Dominican people is referred to as the "Dominican Diaspora." Most of the emigrants settle in the United States. They come in search of work, which is hard to find in their native land, where the unemployment rate often reaches 30 percent.

Many Dominican exiles have settled within sight of the George Washington Bridge in a New York City neighborhood called Washington Heights. As with many other ethnic groups in United States history, new Dominican arrivals have been met by family members and friends who have come before them. These close associations help the new settlers in their transition from one country to another. They may have left home, but the island is never far from the thoughts of most "Dom-Yorks."

Although Alvarez and her family left the Dominican Republic for New York, they are somewhat atypical of the Dominican Diaspora. The Alvarez family fled the country for political rather than economic reasons, and, although the family was not wealthy, they were members of the Dominican professional class. Unlike more recent Dominican immigrants, the Alvarez family settled in a section of New York where there were few other Dominicans. Despite these differences, Alvarez, as one of only a few published Dominican authors writing in English, has been able to reach a wide audience with stories that were at one time little known outside Dominican communities.

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