The New York Times Book Review has praised Julia Alvarez's fiction as "powerful...beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant where the past is not yet a memory and the future remains an anxious dream." These same qualities characterize her poetry--from the "Making Up the Past" poems, which explore a life of exile as lived by a young girl, to "the Joe Poems," a series of wonderfully sensual and funny love poems celebrating a middle-aged romance. The collection culminates in the twenty one-part title poem about the poet's return to her native Dominican Republic and the internal conflict and ultimate affirmation that journey occasioned. Bold innovation and invention, the interplay of sound and sense, and the rhythm of two languages all characterize Julia Alvarez's art in transforming precious memory into unforgettable poetry.

The Garcias-Dr. Carlos (Papi), his wife Laura (Mami), and their four daughters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia-belong to the uppermost echelon of Spanish Caribbean society, descended from the conquistadores. Their family compound adjoins the "palacio" of the dictator's daughter. So when Dr. Garcia's part in a coup attempt is discovered, the family must flee.
They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Dominican Republic. Papi has to find new patients in the Bronx. Mami, far from the compound and the family retainers, must find herself. Meanwhile, the girls try to "lose" themselves-by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating being caught between the old world and the new, trying to live up to their father's version of honor while accommodating the expectations of their American boyfriends. Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's brilliant and buoyant first novel sets the Garcia girls free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home-and not at home-in America.

Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters - Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia - arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind. What they have lost - and what they find - is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premier novelists of our time.

Just as it is a feature of the immigrant experience to always look back, the novel begins with thirty-nine-year-old Yolanda's return to the island and moves magically backward in time to the final days before the exile that is to transform the sisters' lives. Along the way we witness their headlong plunge into the American mainstream. Although the girls try to distance themselves from their island life by ironing their hair, forgetting their Spanish, and meeting boys unchaperoned, they remain forever caught between the old world and the new. With bright humor and rare insight, Julia Alvarez vividly evokes the tensions and joys of belonging to two distinct cultures in a novel that is utterly authentic and full of irrepressible spirit.

It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everyone knows of Las Mariposas - "The Butterflies." Now, three decades later, Julia Alvarez, also a daughter of the Dominican Republic and long haunted by these sisters, immerses us in a tangled and dangerous moment in Hispanic Caribbean history to tell their story in the only way it can truly be understood - through fiction. In this brilliantly characterized novel, the voices of all four sisters - Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa, and Dede - speak across the decades, to tell their own stories - from hair ribbons to gunrunning to prison torture - and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. The Butterflies were extraordinary women. Minerva, once the object of the dictator's desire, had dared to publicly slap his face. Devout Patria found her calling to the uprising through the church. Alluring - and vain - Maria Teresa joined in pursuit of romance. Only Dede, the practical one, the most diligent in her duty to family and tradition, kept apart. And only she survived to see that their names were remembered. Now, through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez's imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again. And Dede joins them as a heroine of equal courage.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695) was a feminist and a woman ahead of her time. She was very much a public intellectual and her contemporaries called her "the Tenth Muse" and "the Phoenix of Mexico", names that continue to resonate. This self-taught intellectual rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age. The volume includes Sor Juana's best-known works, including "First Dream", which showcases her prodigious intellect and range and "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz", her epistolary feminist defence of a woman's right to study and to write. Thirty other works are also included.

Sor Juana (1651 1695) was a fiery feminist and a woman ahead of her time. Like Simone de Beauvoir, she was very much a public intellectual. Her contemporaries called her "the Tenth Muse" and "the Phoenix of Mexico," names that continue to resonate. An illegitimate child, self-taught intellectual, and court favorite, she rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age.

This volume includes Sor Juana's best-known works: "First Dream," her longest poem and the one that showcases her prodigious intellect and range, and "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz," her epistolary feminist defense evocative of Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson of a woman's right to study and to write. Thirty other works playful ballads, extraordinary sonnets, intimate poems of love, and a selection from an allegorical play with a distinctive New World flavor are also included."

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a "phenomenal, indispensable" (USA Today) exploration of the Latina "sweet fifteen" celebration, by the bestselling author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. The quinceanera, a celebration of a Latina girl's fifteenth birthday, has become a uniquely American trend. This lavish party with ball gowns, multi-tiered cakes, limousines, and extravagant meals is often as costly as a prom or a wedding. But many Latina girls feel entitled to this rite of passage, marking a girl's entrance into womanhood, and expect no expense to be spared, even in working-class families. Acclaimed author Julia Alvarez explores the history and cultural significance of the "quince" in the United States, and the consequences of treating teens like princesses. Through her observations of a quince in Queens, interviews with other quince girls, and the memories of her own experience as a young immigrant, Alvarez presents a thoughtful and entertaining portrait of a rapidly growing multicultural phenomenon, and passionately emphasizes the importance of celebrating Latina womanhood.

After Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, his family is forced to hire migrant Mexican workers to help save their Vermont farm from foreclosure. Tyler isn't sure what to make of these workers. Are they undocumented? And what about the three daughters, particularly Mari, the oldest, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but also increasingly connected her American life. Her family lives in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities and sent back to the poverty they left behind in Mexico. Can Tyler and Mari find a way to be friends despite their differences?
In a novel full of hope, but no easy answers, Julia Alvarez weaves a beautiful and timely story that will stay with readers long after they finish it.

"From the Hardcover edition."

"Un libro importante...emocionalmente sobrecogedor. Alvarez nos hace un regalo cargado de rara generosidad y coraje."-The San Diego Union-Tribune In 1960 in the Dominican Republic, four young women from a pious Catholic family were assassinated after visiting their husbands who had been jailed as suspected rebel leaders. The Mirabal sisters became mythical figures in their country, where they are known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies). Three decades later, Alvarez brings the Mirabal sisters back to life in an extraordinary novel. Ellas eran las cuatro hermanas Mirabal-simbolos de una esperanza desafiante en un pais ensombrecido por la dictadura y la desesperacion. Sacrificaron sus vidas, seguras, y confortables, en nombre de la libertad. Ellas eran "las Mariposas," y en esta novela extraordinaria, Patria, Minerva, Maria Teresa, y Dede nos cuentan, a traves de las decadas, sus propias historias. Desde anecdotas sobre lazos para el pelo y secretos enamoramientos al contrabando de armas y las torturas en la carcel. Con ellas aprendemos los horrores cotidianos de la vida bajo el dictador dominicano Trujillo. A traves del arte y la magia de la aclamada e imaginativa novelista Julia Alvarez, la dramatica y vibrante vida de estas martirizadas mariposas toma forma en una historia calida, brillante y desgarradora en la que se nos muestra el incalculable coste humando derivado de la opresion politica. "Un regalo de amor sinfonico y esplendido...un magnifico tesoro para todas las culturas y todos los tiempos...una novela que celebra la corriente de vida que fluye entre las mujeres, conectandolas y dandolas coraje para luchar por la justicia y la resistencia, y corazones para amar y perdonar libremente...Julia Alvarez es una escritora asombrosa."-St. Petersburg Times "Maravilloso...una narracion enriquecedora...entrelaza habilmente la realidad y la ficcion hasta alcanzar un sobrecogedor climax."-Newsweek "Una novela con un tremendo poder... un libro bello y valiente."-West Coast Review of Books

Cuando las hermanas Garcia --Carla, Sandra, Yolanda y Sofia-- y sus padres huyen de la Republica Dominicana buscando refugio de la persecucion politica, encuentran un nuevo hogar en los Estados Unidos. Pero el Nueva York de los anos sesenta es marcadamente diferente de la vida privilegiada, aunque conflictiva, que han dejado atras. Bajo la presion de asimilarse a una nueva cultura, las muchachas Garcia se alisan el pelo, abandonan la lengua espanola y se encuentran con muchachos sin una chaperona. Pero por mas que intentan distanciarse de su isla natal, las hermanas no logran desprender el mundo antiguo del nuevo.
Lo que las hermanas han perdido para siempre --y lo que logran encontrar-- se revela en esta novela magistral de una de las novelistas mas celebradas de nuestros tiempos.

In a story that travels beyond borders and between families, acclaimed Dominican novelist and poet Julia Alvarez reflects on the joys and burdens of love for her parents, for her husband, and for a young Haitian boy known as Piti. In this intimate true account of a promise kept, Alvarez takes us on a journey into experiences that challenge our way of thinking about history and how it can be reimagined when people from two countries traditional enemies and strangers become friends. "

The works of this award-winning poet and novelist are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: those of the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood. They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life. In these seventy-five autobiographical poems, Alvarez 's clear voice sings out in every line. Here, in the middle of her life, she looks back as a way of understanding and celebrating the woman she has become.

Offers insights on Latino Caribbean writers born or raised in the United States who are at the vanguard of a literary movement that has captured both critical and popular interest.

In this groundbreaking study, William Luis analyzes the most salient and representative narrative and poetic works of the newest literary movement to emerge in Spanish American and U.S. literatures. The book is divided into three sections, each focused on representative Puerto Rican American, Cuban American, and Dominican American authors. Luis traces the writers' origins and influences from the nineteenth century to the present, focusing especially on the contemporary works of Oscar Hijuelos, Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia, and Piri Thomas, among others. While engaging in close readings of the texts, Luis places them in a broader social, historical, political, and racial perspective to expose the tension between text and context.

As a group, Latino Caribbeans write an ethnic literature in English that is born of their struggle to forge an identity separate from both the influences of their parents' culture and those of the United States. For these writers, their parents' country of origin is a distant memory. They have developed a culture of resistance and a language that mediates between their parents' identity and the culture that they themselves live in.

Latino Caribbeans are engaged in a metaphorical dance with Anglo Americans as the dominant culture. Just as that dance represents a coming together of separate influences to make a unique art form, so do both Hispanic and North American cultures combine to bring a new literature into being. This new body of literature helps us to understand not only the adjustments Latino Caribbean cultures have had to make within the larger U.S. environment but also how the dominant culture has been affected by their presence.

Long before her award winning novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez was writing poetry that gave a distinctive voice to the Latina woman-and helped give to American letters a vibrant new literary form. Homecoming, was Alvarez's first published collection of poetry, a work of great subtlety and power in which the young poet returned to her old-world childhood in the Dominican Republic. Now this revised and expanded edition adds thirteen new poems. These more recent writings are still deeply autobiographical in nature, but written with the edgier, more knowing tone of a woman who has seen, and survived, more of life. Wonderfully lucid and engaging, toned with deep emotionality and a wry observation of life, the poems of Julia Alvarez stand next to her fiction to both delight us and give us lessons in living and loving.

Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republica in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.