"I consider this radical uprooting from my culture, my native language, my country, the reason I began writing" Alvarez says of herself in the detailed biography she provides on the first of these two Middlebury College sites. On the second site she lists a comprehensive bibliography of her essays, articles, poetry and fiction.

The Politics of Fiction
http://www.fronteramag.com/issue5/Alvarez/

"I wonder about the future of the book, but I have faith in the future of narrative. It seems to be something that we need to do to understand who we are," permits Alvarez in the midst of her own narrative with interviewer Marny Requa. This lengthy interview covers many subjects but focuses on multi-cultural issues and Alvarez's love of writing.

Emory University—Julia Alvarez
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Alvarez.html

This Emory University web site includes Alvarez's biography, links to other Alvarez sites and lists of the major themes in her writing, her published works, and works about her. Located at the bottom of the page is a link to Emory's Post-Colonial Studies web site, a great resource for students studying other post-colonialists.

BIOGRAPHY
Julia Alvarez (b. 1950) was born in New York City, but until she was ten she lived in the Dominican Republic. Her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), concerns Dominican immigrants living in Manhattan. Issues of women, assimilation, and Dominican politics also arise in In the Time of Butterflies (1994), Yo! (1996), and her books of poetry, Homecoming (1984, revised 1996) and The Other Side/El Otro Lado (1995).

Alvarez has said that a writer's aims are "to feed the great sea of the greatest things that have been written and the things that have been most meaningful. And I think the best work is going to last, and the other stuff will fall to the wayside. But the stuff that falls to the wayside can even be a way to get to where that great work is going, because these other minor works can help a writer, or create a culture that helps a writer to understand something in a way that then becomes a classic."

In addition to fiction and poetry, Alvarez also writes criticism and teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont.