Julia Alvarez

Born on March 27, 1950, in New York, Julia Alvarez is an American poet and author who continues to express her culture and identity through her work. Her parents are originally from the Dominican Republic, where she lived for the first 10 years of her life. 

Alvarez did not publish her first book until 1991. She started publishing poetry in the 1980s such as “Homecoming” and “The Woman I Kept to Myself,” and then expanded to writing novels. She expressed that she loves poetry for how intimate it is. Her book “In the Time of the Butterflies” was created into a movie in 2001 due to its immense popularity.

Alvarez has written multiple books about her family called “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.” The book was about her life in the Dominican Republic before she had to move back to the United States and her family’s struggles as immigrants. 

Alvarez and her family fled the Dominican Republic due to her parents’ involvement in a movement to overthrow Rafel Trujillo, the president at the time. 

Much of her writing is influenced by her life in the Dominican Republic and the United States. She states she started writing because “I consider this radical uprooting from my culture, my native language, my country, the reason I began writing.” She expresses her culture and identity in her writing. She used her personal experiences to create stories and educate people about the importance of her culture. She advocated for women writers, especially Latinas. Expressing feminist ideas and empowering women through her writing, Julia Alvarez has won multiple awards. She won the Pura Belpré Award for Writing and was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President Barack Obama in 2014.

Julia Alvarez has influenced and touched many people through her writing. She has recently retired from teaching at Middlebury College and still writes and advocates for women in writing at the age of 72. Alvarez has influenced many women with her writing and will continue to do so for years to come.

Citations:

About — julia alvarez. (n.d.). Julia Alavrez. https://www.juliaalvarez.com/about 

Castellanos, A. (2021, August 17). Culture in pose: Books and poems by julia alvarez. Homeschool Spanish Academy. https://www.spanish.academy/blog/culture-in-prose-books-and-poems-by-julia-alvarez/ 

Evans, A. (2018). About the author | MOVING FICTIONS. Moving Fictions. https://sites.udel.edu/movingfictions/the-books/in-the-time-of-the-butterflies/about-the-author/#:~:text=In%201991%2C%20at%20the%20age,her%20family%20faced%20as%20immigrants 

Julia alvarez. (2013). https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/julia-alvarez 

Julia alvarez biography. (2014). Chicago Public Library. https://www.chipublib.org/julia-alvarez-biography/