But the move back to New York was not a single event. Moving to the United States at the age of 10 so that her family, particularly her resisting father, could escape from the Dictator Trujillo, the young Julia was stunned to discover this new concept of being something called a minority, and yet she was also released-somewhat-from the confines and risks of her previous life. Living in the context of a large and well-regarded family network provided her with a kind of status and identity, which of course offered her a kind of privilege, but this came with expectations that could be smothering. Although Julia Alvarez was born in New York City, she grew up in the Dominican Republic, surrounded by family and servants who knew her and her family well. Even when she moves from her autobiography-based poetry to historical fiction, the conflicts within her central characters continue to bear this prevailing theme out, and even the quickest outline of her life can suggest why. This overall theme derives largely from her own life. All three poetry collections, as it happens, touch upon this idea in their titles: the first, For a quick instance, the mere fact that she gave her second book of poetry the bilingual title ofĮxpresses her need to reflect that straddling. If a reader were forced to pick a predominant theme in Julia Alvarez's writings, it would most likely be that of feeling torn between two nations, two languages, two cultures-and the many crises in identity that such a straddling can trigger. She divides her time between Vermont and the Dominican Republic where she visits relatives and Alta Gracia, the shade grown coffee farm and literacy center she started with her husband, Bill Eichner, cookbook author and ophthalmologist. Her recentĮarned the 2010 American Library Association's Pura Belpré Author Award, which honors a Latina or Latina writer and illustrator 'whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience' in children's literature. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. Has been named finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, while Alvarez herself was selected in 2008 by the USA State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs as one of 15 most prominent Hispanic-Americans in the arts. Her nonfiction study of Latina coming of age rituals in In 1995 she received the Jessica Nobel-Maxwell Poetry Prize from theĪmerican Poetry Review. More impressive, the awards come to her work, no matter the genre she publishes.

In addition to her books serving as texts in One Read programs or in school curriculums, Alvarez has been awarded many honors, including an NEA fellowship and a Josephine Miles/PEN award. Details on these, including the specifics of translations, speaking engagements, journal publications, awards and many other activities are updated regularly on her website, To date, she has brought out six novels, seven books for young readers (from picture books to young adult fiction), two works of nonfiction, and three full-length books of poetry. ( Que escribo lo que siento de verdad.) ( The WomanĪ prolific author, Alvarez has published considerably more since trading her tenured professorship for the position Writer-in-Residence at Middlebury College. I'm writing down the truth of what I feel. She writes for the most part in English, but her formative years until the age of ten were spent in the Dominican Republic, so Spanish holds for her the deep emotional tie of the mother tongue, or as she puts it in 'In English,' 'It's puzzling then that I write in English,/as if I have to step back from myself/to be able to say what I'm feeling.' She concludes, Ulia Alvarez, as a bilingual writer, brings what we might call a built-in counterpoint to the tradition of English poetry.

Julia alvarez poems