Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.
Alvarez rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and ¡Yo! (1997). Her p...
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Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.
Alvarez rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and ¡Yo! (1997). Her publications as a poet include The Housekeeping Book (1984) and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004), and as an essayist the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare (1998). Many commentators regard her to be one of the most significant Latina writers, and she has achieved critical and commercial success on an international scale.
Many of Alvarez's works are influenced by her own personal experience as a Dominican in United States, and focus heavily on issues of assimilation and identity. Her diverse cultural upbringing as both a...
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