Something to declare / Julia Alvarez.
1999
PS3551.L845 Z47 1999 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
Something to declare / Julia Alvarez.
Author
Alvarez, Julia.
ISBN
9780452280670 (pbk.)
0452280672 (pbk.)
0452280672 (pbk.)
Imprint
New York : Plume, 1999.
Language
English
Description
xiv, 300 p. ; 21 cm.
Call Number
PS3551.L845 Z47 1999
Dewey Decimal Classification
814.54
Summary
In 24 autobiographical essays, the author presents her Dominican childhood, her family's immigration to the United States, her college years, writing, marriages, & return trips to her homeland. In her first book of nonfiction, Julia Alvarez takes us behind the scenes and shares the lessons she's learned on her way to becoming an internationally acclaimed novelist. In 1960, when Alvarez was ten years old, her family fled the Dominican Republic. Her father participated in a failed coup attempt against the dictator Rafael Trujillo, and exile to the United States was the only way to save his life. The family settled in New York City, where Dr. Alvarez set up a medical practice in the Bronx while his wife and four daughters set about the business of assimilation--a lifelong struggle. Loss of her native land, language, culture, and extended family formed the thematic basis for two of Julia Alvarez's three best-selling novels--How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and its sequel, Yo! Her father's revolutionary ties inspired In, The Time Of The Butterflies, her historical novel about one of Trujillo's most infamous atrocities. Something To Declare offers an extraordinary collection of essays that deal with the two big issues of Alvarez's life--growing up with one foot in each culture and writing. The twelve essays that make up "Customs," the first of two parts, examine the specific effects of exile on this writer. The essays are personal--how her maternal grandfather passed along his love of the arts, how the nuclear family-in-exile snuggled down every year to watch the Miss America contest from the parental bed, how Julia feared her family might disown her upon publication of her first novel. In the second half, "Declarations," are twelve essays about writing that range from confession of Alvarez's means of supporting her writing habit to the gritty details of her actual process. Every one of these essays is warm, open, honest, and generous. Something To Declare will appeal not only to her many fans, but to students of writing at all levels.
Note
Orignially published: Chapel Hill, NC : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998.
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Table of Contents
Something to declare to my readers
Part one: Customs
Grandfather's blessing
Our papers
My English
My second opera
I want to be Miss America
El Doctor
La Gringuita
Picky eater
Briefly, a gardener
Imagining motherhood
A Genetics of justice
Family matters
Part two: Declarations
First muse
Of maids and other muses
So much depends
Dona Aida, with your permission
Have typewriter, will travel
A Vermont writer from the Dominican Republic
Chasing the butterflies
Goodbye, Ms. Chips
In the name of the novel
Ten of my writing commandments
Grounds for fiction
Writing matters.
Part one: Customs
Grandfather's blessing
Our papers
My English
My second opera
I want to be Miss America
El Doctor
La Gringuita
Picky eater
Briefly, a gardener
Imagining motherhood
A Genetics of justice
Family matters
Part two: Declarations
First muse
Of maids and other muses
So much depends
Dona Aida, with your permission
Have typewriter, will travel
A Vermont writer from the Dominican Republic
Chasing the butterflies
Goodbye, Ms. Chips
In the name of the novel
Ten of my writing commandments
Grounds for fiction
Writing matters.