Julia Alvarez

"A literature professor tries to rediscover who she is after the sudden death of her husband, even as a series of family and political jolts force her to ask what we owe those in crisis in our families, biological or otherwise"-- Antonia Vega has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening...

"Poignant . . . Powerful . . . Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory." -The New York Times Book Review Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The García sisters-Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía-and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father's role in an attempt...

"Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters...

Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic. But Alma begs off joining him: the publisher is breathing down her neck. She promises to work hard and...

From the internationally acclaimed author of the bestselling novels In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents comes a rich and revealing work of nonfiction capturing the life and mind of an artist as she knits together the dual themes of coming to America and becoming a writer. The twenty-four confessional, evocative essays that make up Something to Declare are divided into two parts. "Customs" includes Alvarez's...

"Original and illuminating."-The New York Times Book Review In her most ambitious work since In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez tells the story of a woman whose poetry inspired one Caribbean revolution and of her daughter whose dedication to teaching strengthened another. Camila Henriquez Urena is about to retire from her longtime job teaching Spanish at Vassar College. Only now as she sorts through family papers does she begin to know...

In a story that travels beyond borders and between families, acclaimed Dominican novelist and poet Julia Alvarez reflects on the joys and burdens of love, for her parents, for her husband, and for a young Haitian boy known as Piti. In this intimate true account of a promise kept, Alvarez takes us on a journey into experiences that challenge our way of thinking about history and how it can be reimagined when people from two countries, traditional enemies...

Ellas eran las cuatro hermanas Mirabal-simbolos de una esperanza desafiante en un pais ensombrecido por la dictadura y la desesperacion. Sacrificaron sus vidas, seguras, y confortables, en nombre de la libertad. Ellas eran "las Mariposas," y en esta novela extraordinaria, Patria, Minerva, Maria Teresa, y Dede nos cuentan, a traves de las decadas, sus propias historias. Desde anecdotas sobre lazos para el pelo y secretos enamoramientos al contrabando...

Although ten-year-old Miguel is at first embarrassed by his colorful aunt, Tia Lola, when she comes to Vermont from the Dominican Republic to stay with his mother, his sister, and him after his parents' divorce, he learns to love her. Moving to Vermont after his parents split, Miguel has plenty to worry about. Tia Lola, his quirky, "carismatica, " and maybe magical aunt makes his life even more unpredictable when she arrives from the Dominican Republic...