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(Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books: 1997)
I've been asked if this novel is a sequel to How The García Girls Lost Their Accents. Not at all. The García family and their immigration to the USA were the focus of the first novel. In this novel, the character of Yolanda serves as a sort of catalyst to bring forth stories from friends, family members, strangers who have a score to settle with her. In the course of telling their stories, these characters often reveal more about their own yos ("I" in Spanish) than about Yo.
Director Julia Solomonoff's sassy & funny movie based on the chapter titled, "The Suitor," aired on PBS in September 2005. Visit GiganticPictures.com for more on the film.
see also: Penguin Book Club Reading Guide
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(Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1994)
In 1960, a few months after my family fled the dictatorship of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the three Mirabal sisters were brutally murdered. Founders of the underground, las Mariposas (the Butterflies, their code name) had inspired resistance cells throughout the country. (My father had joined one of these cells, which was cracked by the SIM, the secret police, in the summer of 1960 -- the reason we were forced to flee.) This novel tells the Mirabal story through the lens of fiction. Needless to say, this book is one I felt compelled to write. The day of the murder of the Mirabal sisters, November 25th, has been declared by the United Nations, International Day Against Violence Against Women. I'd love it if we began a tradition of wearing a butterfly on that day!
NEA Podcast: Julia Alvarez speaks about writing In the Time of the Butterflies.
see also: Penguin Book Club Reading Guide
& The Big Read guides & radio show
further reading: "Historiographic Metafiction in In the Time of the Butterflies," Dr. Isabel Zakrzewski Brown, in South Atlantic Review, Volume 64, Number 2, Spring 1999 |
see this book on Amazon.com:
hardcover *
paperback
en español:
hardcover *
paperback
or you may be able to get an autographed copy at
Middlebury College Bookstore
or Vermont Book Shop
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(Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1991)
The four García sisters come to this country as young girls with their immigrant parents. Suddenly, they are swept up in the freewheeling American culture of the 60s (then, the 70s and 80s) with its dizzying choices and challenges. Somehow, they have to try to straddle this life with their Island/Latino culture as represented by Mami and Papi. What is lost, what is gained when a family leaves an old world to come to a new one?
see also: Penguin Book Club Reading Guide
|
see this book on Amazon.com:
hardcover *
paperback
audio CD
en español: paperback
or you may be able to get an autographed copy at
Middlebury College Bookstore
or Vermont Book Shop
|
