Julia Alvarez

Here is Julia side-by-side with her book.

So, as I said earlier, I am reading In The Time of The Butterflies by Julia Alvarez and I wanted to do a little background on her and the book before I did the final book review. So here is her biography which will be the first in a series of posts about the book. Stay tuned:
Julia was born in New York City(not the Dominican Republic as many,to her frustration, believe). At three months of age she and her family moved back to the great ol' Dominican Republic and there her family(mostly her dad) got involved underground with an organization that was secretly trying to overthrow the dictatorship of Trujillo. Alvarez stayed in the D.R. until 1960(she was ten at the time) when they fled back to the U.S.A after the plans to overthrow the dictator failed. She went back to New York (figures) and went to school which was challenging for numerous reasons such as she looked different, barely knew english, and was made fun of (at a catholic school!). Now, if you were to ask her what made her a writer she would say that it was the "watershed" experience of getting to the U.S. and getting called spic (a derrogatory term for Spanish-Americans) that caused her to get more secluded and write more often. Today, after receiving her masters degree from Middlebury College in 1975, she has written everything from novels to poems to biographies and is considered one of the most influential Latina writers. She is now the current writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. Next post: to the Dominican Republic!