Julia Alvarez writes about family relationships, espe-
cially between sisters, and the impact of multiple cul-
tures on education, ideas, and identity. Her work in-
troduced the voice of the Dominican population
that migrated to the East Coast of the United States
in the mid-twentieth century, primarily through the
culture of Dominican elites.How the García Girls
Lost Their Accentswas published in 1991 and won the
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Book Award in the
same year. The novel explores how the García sisters
try to assimilate to American life after their family
was forced to move from the Dominican Republic
because of its disapproval of Rafael Trujillo’s re-
gime.
Three years later, in 1994, Alvarez produced a
strong follow-up to her first novel withIn the Time of
Butterflies. This novel again examines sister relation-
ships through the lives of the Mirabal sisters, who
were known in the Dominican Republic as “Las
Mariposas,” or “The Butterflies.” The Mirabal sisters
were involved with a subversive faction that opposed
Trujillo and were jailed and murdered for their
guerrilla activities. The murders and Trujillo’s dicta-
torship have influenced this and other writing by
Alvarez. The fictionalized account of the real-life
events was made into a film of the same name, which
stars Salma Hayek as Minerva. Hayek won an Alma
Award for her portrayal, and the novel became an
American Library Association Notable Book the
same year it was published.
The second half of the decade continued to be a
prolific one for Alvarez. She returned to her first
love—poetry—and published three volumes of
work.Homecoming: New and Collected Poems(1996)
was a new version of an earlier work published in
1984, andThe Other Side/El otro lado(1995) andSeven
Trees(1998) were new. She also found time to pub-
lish a collection of essays, titledSomething to Declare
(1998), and a new novel titled¡Yo!(1997) revisits the
extended García family through stories that are told
about sister Yolanda from different perspectives.
During this decade, Alvarez was a writer-in-
residence and professor at Middlebury College in
Vermont. She was given tenure in 1991 and made
full professor in 1996.Impact Julia Alvarez has influenced teachers,
scholars, the film industry, and the populations of
the United States and the Dominican Republic. Do-
minican Americans on the East Coast of the United
States were seen, but their history was unknown by
the majority of the U.S. population until Alvarez’s
work was published. Her examination of women’s
roles in Latin America and the United States contin-
ues to be widely studied among literary scholars.Further Reading
Johnson, Kelli Lyon.Julia Alvarez: Writing a New Place
on the Map. Albuquerque: University of New Mex-
ico Press, 2005.
Sirias, Silvio.Julia Alvarez: A Critical Companion. West-
port, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Stanley, Deborah A., and Ira Mark Milne, eds.Novels
for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criti-
cism on Commonly Studied Novels.Vol. 9. Farming-
ton Hills, Mich.: Gale Group, 2000.
Grisel Y. AcostaSee also Chick lit; Demographics of the United
States; Film in the United States; Immigration to the
United States; Independent films; Latin America;
Latinos; Literature in the United States; National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA); Poetry; Publishing;
Women’s rights.The Nineties in America Alvarez, Julia 31
Julia Alvarez.(Algonquin Books)