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Julia AlvarezA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Julia Alvarez is one of the most famous Dominican American authors. She is mostly known for her fiction, but also for her work in other genres, which include memoir as well as poetry. Another famous Dominican American author is Junot Díaz, the author of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007) and This is How You Lose Her (2012). Both Díaz and Alvarez write about the concepts of home from the perspective of immigrant families.
When Alvarez’s Homecoming was published in 1984, Pedro Mir was the Poet Laureate of the Dominican Republic. Like Alvarez’s family, he was critical of the dictator Trujillo and forced into exile. Mir writes in Spanish, but his book Poemas de buen amor y a veces de fantasía (Poems of good love and sometimes fantasy) (1969) has been translated into English.
Alvarez paved the way for contemporary Dominican American poets, such as Elizabeth Acevedo, author of The Poet X (2018). Both women lived in New York City, but Acevedo was born after Homecoming was published. Acevedo was named the 2022 Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation.
By Julia Alvarez
Before We Were Free
Julia Alvarez
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Julia Alvarez
How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay
Julia Alvarez
In the Name of Salome
Julia Alvarez
In the Time of the Butterflies
Julia Alvarez
Once Upon a Quinceanera
Julia Alvarez
Return to Sender
Julia Alvarez
Something to Declare: Essays
Julia Alvarez
The Cemetery of Untold Stories
Julia Alvarez
The Daughter of Invention
Julia Alvarez