New Releases by Julia Alvarez

Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free.

MILLY KAUFMAN IS an ordinary American teenager living in Vermont—until she meets Pablo, a new student at her high school. His exotic accent, strange fashion sense, and intense interest in Milly force her to confront her identity as an adopted child from Pablo’s native country. As their relationship grows, Milly decides to undertake a courageous journey to her homeland and along the way discovers the story of her birth is intertwined with the story of a country recovering from a brutal history. Beautifully written by reknowned author Julia Alvarez, Finding Miracles examines the emotional complexity of familial relationships and the miracles of everyday life.

El 25 de noviembre de 1960 se encontraron, al pie de un risco en la costa dominicana, los cuerpos sin vida de tres muchachas. Según la versión oficial, se trataba de un accidente, y ningún diario publicó la verdad - las tres hermanas Mirabal, conocidas como las mariposas, luchaban contra el violento régimen dictatorial del general Trujillo, y una cuarta hermana, Dedé, seguía con vida. Tres décadas después, Dedé narra la apasionante historia de su lucha; las represalias que cayeron sobre su familia cuando Minerva rechazó en público el acoso sexual de Trujillo, cómo Patria se unió al movimiento opositor desde la Iglesia y el camino que llevó a María Teresa del amor a la revolución.

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 García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies The quinceañera, 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.

Milly es una adolescente estadounidense común y corriente hasta que un estudiante nuevo llamado Pablo llega a su escuela secundaria. Milly enfrenta su identidad de niña adoptada del país natal de Pablo, y decide emprender un viaje lleno de valentía de regreso a este país.

Publisher description

Alma, una novelista, está sufriendo del síndrome de la página en blanco y sigue retrasada con su nueva novela. Sin embargo, su novela se desvía aún más cuando descubre la historia de un idealista, Francisco Xavier Balmis, quien en 1803 emprendió una campaña para vacunar a las poblaciones de las colonias españolas en América contra la viruela. Para hacer esto, Balmis necesitaba \"portadores\" vivos de la vacuna. De mayor interés para Alma fue Isabel Sendales y Gómez, rectora de La Casa de Expósitos, a quien se le pide seleccionar a veintidós muchachos huérfanos para ser portadores y luego los acompaña en el viaje. Su valor inspira a Alma a escribir una novela muy distinta a la que tenía planeada originalmente. Una novela dentro de otra, este libro enfrenta a la ambición y al altruismo y, en el proceso, cuenta las historias radiantes de dos mujeres valientes. --Desde la descripción de la editorial.

Those who practice "the miraculous art of stitching words into a web" have "not merely the right but the duty to protest and dissent."Edward Morrow On February 16, 2003, eleven contemporary poets held a reading in Manchester, Vermont, called "A Poetry Reading in Honor of the Right to Protest as a Patriotic and Historical Tradition." The reading was sponsored by the Northshire Bookstore and drew a crowd of more than six hundred people. Cry Out: Poets Protest the War gathers together the poems read by the participants, many original poems and others poems by such renowned poets as Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, and Walt Whitman. Among the poets present at the reading were Julia Alvarez, Donald Hall, Jamaica Kincaid, Galway Kinnell, William O''Daly, Grace Paley, Jay Parini, and Ruth Stone. Celebrating poetry''s vital and historic role as a means of peaceful protest, these poems remind us, as Jay Parini observed, that although it might take time, "the language of poetry seeps through." And that this language has the potential to redirect the fate of nations.

A delightfully entertaining story of family and culture from acclaimed author Julia Alvarez. Moving to Vermont after his parents split, Miguel has plenty to worry about! Tía Lola, his quirky, carismática, and maybe magical aunt makes his life even more unpredictable when she arrives from the Dominican Republic to help out his Mami. Like her stories for adults, Julia Alvarez’s first middle-grade book sparkles with magic as it illuminates a child’s experiences living in two cultures.

Es el verano de 1960 y Camila Henríquez Urena, profesora de español jubilándose de la Universidad de Vassar, está empacando sus últimas pertenencias antes de mudarse de su apartamento en Poughkeepsie, Nueva York para unirse a la revolución de Fidel Castro en Cuba. Camila es hija de Salomé Urena, la famosa poetisa dominicana de finales del siglo diecinueve que instigaba revolución con sus apasionados versos, se casó con un presidente y luchó por educar a las niñas de su querida isla. Para Camila su llamado a la revolución es parte de su herencia. Pero Camila también ha heredado la confusión y el dolor del exilio y tiene sólo dos baúles llenos de papeles y efectos personales para iluminar el corazón y la vida de una madre que nunca llegó a conocer de verdad — y así también descubrir su propio ser naciente.

With lyric simplicity, A Cafecito Story tells the complex tale of a social beverage that bridges nations and unites people in trade, in words, in birds, and in love.".

Although ten-year-old Miguel is at first embarrassed by his colorful great aunt, Tia Lola, when she comes to Vermont from the Dominican Republic to stay with his mother, his sister, and him after his parents'' divorce, he learns to love her.

Het leven van de drie zusters Mirabal die zich verzetten tegen de dictatuur van generaal Trujillo op de Dominicaanse Republiek en dit met de dood moeten bekopen.

"Original and illuminating."—The New York Times Book Review In her most ambitious work since In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez tells the story of a woman whose poetry inspired one Caribbean revolution and of her daughter whose dedication to teaching strengthened another. Camila Henriquez Urena is about to retire from her longtime job teaching Spanish at Vassar College. Only now as she sorts through family papers does she begin to know the woman behind the legend of her mother, the revered Salome Urena, who died when Camila was three. In stark contrast to Salome, who became the Dominican Republic''s national poet at the age of seventeen, Camila has spent most of her life trying not to offend anybody. Her mother dedicated her life to educating young women to give them voice in their turbulent new nation; Camila has spent her life quietly and anonymously teaching the Spanish pluperfect to upper-class American girls with no notion of revolution, no knowledge of Salome Urena. Now, in 1960, Camila must choose a final destination for herself. Where will she spend the rest of her days? News of the revolution in Cuba mirrors her own internal upheaval. In the process of deciding her future, Camila uncovers the truth of her mother''s tragic personal life and, finally, finds a place for her own passion and commitment. Julia Alvarez has won a large and devoted audience by brilliantly illuminating the history of modern Caribbean America through the personal stories of its people. As a Latina, as a poet and novelist, and as a university professor, Julia Alvarez brings her own experience to this exquisite story. Julia Alvarez’s new novel, Afterlife, is available now.

A story based on Dominican folklore, about the ciguapas, a tribe of beautiful underwater people whose feet are attached backwards, with their toes pointing in the direction from which they have come.

“Julia Alvarez has suitcases full of history (public and private), trunks full of insights into what it means to be a Latina in the United States, bags full of literary wisdom.” —Los Angeles Times From the internationally acclaimed author of the bestselling novels In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents comes a rich and revealing work of nonfiction capturing the life and mind of an artist as she knits together the dual themes of coming to America and becoming a writer. The twenty-four confessional, evocative essays that make up Something to Declare are divided into two parts. “Customs” includes Alvarez’s memories of her family’s life in the Dominican Republic, fleeing from Trujillo’s dictatorship, and arriving in America when she was ten years old. She examines the effects of exile--surviving the shock of New York City life; yearning to fit in; training her tongue (and her mind) to speak English; and watching the Miss America pageant for clues about American-style beauty. The second half, “Declarations,” celebrates her passion for words and the writing life. She lets us watch as she struggles with her art--searching for a subject for her next novel, confronting her characters, facing her family’s anger when she invades their privacy, reflecting on the writers who influenced her, and continually honing her craft. The winner of the National Medal of Arts for her extraordinary storytelling, Julia Alvarez here offers essays that are an inspiring gift to readers and writers everywhere. “This beautiful collection of essays . . . traces a process of personal reconciliation with insight, humor, and quiet power.” —San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle “Reading Julia Alvarez’s new collection of essays is like curling up with a glass of wine in one hand and the phone in the other, listening to a bighearted, wisecracking friend share the hard-earned wisdom about family, identity, and the art of writing.” —People Julia Alvarez’s new novel, Afterlife, is available now.

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.

Een jong doktersgezin met vier dochters verhuist van de Dominicaanse Republiek naar New York.

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.

The New York Times Book Review has praised Julia Alvarez''s fiction as "powerful...beautifullycaptures the threshold experience of the new immigrant where the past is not yet a memory and the futureremains 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 wonderfullysensual and funny love poems celebrating a middle-aged romance. The collection culminates in the twentyone-part title poem about the poet''s return to her native Dominican Republic and the internal conflict andultimate 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 intounforgettable poetry.