By: Ashmar Mandou

Julia Alvarez is the epitome of the great American novelist. The tales of her beloved Dominican Republic and her immigrant experiences in such novels as, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and In the Name of Salomé have garnered the interest of critics around the globe who have lauded her as the ‘new voice in American literature.’ Yet, with nineteen books under her belt and all the accolades and praise she has received in the last two decades, nothing brings greater joy to Alvarez than to see elementary school students reading one of her books. “That is most rewarding to me,” said Alvarez in a delicate manner that keeps you alert so as not to miss her insightfulness. “I was in Denver just before I came here to Chicago and it was amazing and gratifying as a writer to see young students reading and expanding their imagination. I tell you those moments are the most fruitful to me as a writer because it shows you just how powerful a piece of literature can be. It crosses generations.”

It can be fairly easy to become transfixed in the author persona of Alvarez’s depictions of women’s experiences, the struggles of young people who are torn between cultures, or the sacrifice families make to encounter a possible future for their children in her novels, but once you are in the presence of Julia Alvarez, it is as if you are receiving a personal life lesson from a close family member. Her sweet disposition allows you to let down your hair and ask whatever question you have had stowed away in your mental catalogue over all these years. And although, Alvarez was in town last Thursday at the Macy’s on State Street to promote her latest memoir, Wedding in Haiti, in which it details her ventures to attend her friend Piti’s wedding in Haiti, a story that gives the reader a view of Haiti before and after the earthquake, our interview took a turn to books and what it means to be a Latino in this country. The next half hour became a life class with Julia Alvarez.

Affinity to Literature
I love reading. Reading creates community and you don’t have to be the same race, you don’t have to be the same age, you don’t have to even live in the same time period. You don’t even have to believe in the same thing because you think well, church does that. All these people come together from different parts of life, but they all believe in something, they all subscribe to this faith system. Reading is just you participate in the experience of being someone else. And when you’ve done that and read a book together, all the people who have read that book, it’s like you’ve shared being that other person. Reading makes community among other things.

Female Muse
First, I’m female. And you know, from working in a bicultural, bilingual environment, you know that Latino communities for all they say about machismo, which is a very real thing out there, proves we’re very strong women. It’s a very powerful, matriarchal society, entre la familia, entre la casa; the women are the deep roots. So I grew up with the men running the world outside, but the women were running the world I was experiencing at home, you know. My abuelita, my tias, my mother, I grew up in an all girl family with three sisters, so women and women’s experience was always very much a part of my life. However, when I stepped outside of the home and I was going to school before the women’s movement, before women’s studies and we read the literature that was being offered in our English and American Literature classes, they were usually by males, Anglo males, you know. I don’t totally run that down because I think when you read you can become the other and the experience of making that leap stretches your imagination and expands your sensibilities. So I got great training, but there were very few women writers, very few females that were role models and on top of that, Latino. I had great role models growing up and I had the support of my family. I was the first to receive a college education within my family. So in terms of women and role models, we need to get out there. And the way we do that is by going out there and following our own calling and proving that anything is possible.

Being Latino
You know there are all these reports and stories of what it means to be a ‘real’ Latino or Latina and I just think that starts to become dangerous. From any direction, whenever someone starts to say, you are not a real this, or you don’t do this, then I start thinking they are really narrowing down what it means to be you. If Latinos do that to each other, they are just doing what the gringos were doing to us many years ago. We are all different; we have different traditions depending on where we are coming from. Being Latino or Latina…it’s becoming truly a hybrid culture. I interviewed this Cuban girl in Miami while researching for my book, Once Upon a Quinceañera, and she chose to have a mariachi band play at her party. I was surprised because that is a Mexican tradition, so I asked her why. She simply said it was her tradition. The point is, we are sort of becoming this Pan-American culture and it’s a beautiful thing. We are taking aspects of each culture that we love and admire and making it our own. And if we don’t allow diversity, we are only hurting ourselves.

Philosophy on Life
I think a defining moment for me that I always say, is that it goes to show you that the most painful and most difficult moments of your life are also opportunities to recreate yourself. Our immigration to this country was really tough. We came here overnight, we were fleeing a dictatorship. We left everything behind, our family, our possessions, our culture, and our language. We didn’t come to a New York full of Dominicans or Mexicans, this was the 1960s. Papi couldn’t find a job, we didn’t have the right clothes, we were made fun of on the playground, we didn’t speak English, and I just thought this is the end of the world. And it was. It was the end of one world, but a new one was about to start. And I got very lucky; I had a teacher, a nun. And she got me reading, so I was learning English. Her encouragement and the process of slowly learning English, and paying attention to it became perfect training for becoming a writer. So I think that moment for me, says that when a world falls apart there’s a possibility of remaking yourself, like a rebirth.

Question submitted from Drexel School’s fifth grade class:

What is your favorite genre to read or to write in?
That’s a difficult question. It’s hard to pick just one genre and I’m getting to that age where I don’t want to choose [laughs]. I have to say that you can’t be a writer if you are not a reader. It’s like, which came first the chicken or the egg. Without being a reader you’re not a writer. As for favorite books, I have so many of them. I have to say one that surprised me was The Hunger Games. When I write in a different genre, I make sure I read in that genre. I read it and I couldn’t put it down. What a great book. That said, I think the important thing is I am always learning and growing as a reader.

Fan Ivette Castora Gonzalez: How do you know which story to tell?
Wow. I have started so many books, I would have triple the amount of books had I finished them. Sometimes I’ve spent half a year on it, researching it and the roots don’t go down deep enough. It has to be something that intrigues you and keeps you going and surprises you. I call it, a pebble in my shoe. You get an idea or something intrigues you and you want to find out more about it and so you find out more about it and maybe that ends. Or you find out more and more and then you want to write and if it keeps pulling you that is the only way I know, that you know that it’s a book. And it’s usually nothing that you figured out…it’s usually things that you don’t really quite understand. For me, that’s what really works.