American · b. 1950
Julia Alvarez is a Dominican American author celebrated for fiction and poetry that illuminate Dominican history and the immigrant experience, best known for How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies.
Julia Alvarez was born in New York but spent her early childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her family fled the Trujillo dictatorship for the United States when she was ten. That history of exile and dual identity runs throughout her work.
Her debut novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), drew on the immigrant experience, while In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) gave moving voice to the Mirabal sisters, real-life martyrs of the resistance to Trujillo. Across novels, poetry, essays, and acclaimed books for young readers, Alvarez has explored Dominican history, womanhood, family, and the experience of living between cultures.
A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Alvarez is recognized as one of the foremost Latina voices in American letters, admired for her warmth, her storytelling, and her commitment to bearing witness.
by Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez's acclaimed novel of the Mirabal sisters, who resisted the Dominican dictator Trujillo and were murdered in 1960. Told in their four distinct voices, it transforms real-life martyrs into vivid, fallible women, and bears witness to courage, sisterhood, and the human cost of tyranny.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Disclosure: Amazon links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.