Julia Alvarez is a 68 year old poet and novelist. She was born in New York but her parents moved back to Dominican Republic when she was a child. She was raised in Dominican Republic, but in 1960 her family returned to New York. Julia Alvarez had to learn English and embrace a new culture which became a hassle for her.  Most of her poems are about her experience of fitting in both American and Dominican culture. She is most known for ‘How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents’, in which she discusses the struggles her family had to face after migrating to United states from Dominican Republic. The novel has fifteen stories mentioning the lives of her four sister sisters and her parents. Another novel she is very known for was the ‘Time of Butterflies’. The novel was published in English in 1994 and in Spanish in 2001, it described the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (Dominican politician). Julia Alvarez continued to write more famous poems and novels relating to her homeland. She received many grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Foundation. Alvarez wrote outstanding multicultural literatures expressing her feelings on immigration reminiscing her childhood.

citations

https://www.biography.com/people/julia-alvarez

https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/julia-alvarez

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/julia-alvarez