Language as Homeland: The Writings of Julia Alvarez
Third Floor, Levis Faculty Center
919 West Illinois Street
Urbana
Julia Alvarez was born in the Dominican Republic and came to the United States when she was ten years old. Her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, traces her family history,their flight from the dictator Trujillo and their often difficult, sometimes comic adjustments to life in America. Her subsequent novels (In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!) explore the political history of the Dominican Republic and the travails of a writer's life. She has also written two books of poetry. She has received a PEN Oakland Award for works that present a multicultural viewpoint and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award in fiction in 1995.
"I am always that immigrant," Ms. Alvare says of her journey between two homelands and two languages. Her fiction and poetry address important questions of culture, identity, and creativity. She is a writer of compelling vision, who possesses the natural storyteller's gift for what delights and moves us. Ms. Alvarez was a faculty member in the UIUC Department of English from 1985 to 1988.
Cosponsored by: School of Art and Design, Department of English, Creative Writing Program and Robert J. Carr Visiting Author Fund, Department of History, Department of Journalism, Department of Political Science, Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, Campus Honors Program, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, LAS/Humanities Council, Latina/o Studies Program, Women's Studies Program, La Casa Cultural Latina
Author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and ¡Yo!