Magill's Survey of American Literature, Volume 1Steven G. Kellman This revised edition of Magill's Survey of American Literature, originally published in 1991, with a 1994 supplement updates essays and adds many newones, covering 340 writers at the heart of literary studies. Magill's Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition offers profiles of major U.S. and Canadian writers accompanied by analyses of their significant works in fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction. |
About the author (2006)
Julia Alvarez Born: New York, New York March 27, 1950 Alvarez has earned an eminent position among contemporary minority writers for her depiction of the immigrant experience.Biography Julia Alvarez was born on March 27, 1950, in New York. Her family returned to the Dominican Republic, where Alvarez spent the first ten years of her life in comfort, surrounded by an extended family. Alvarez's grandfather, a cultural attaché to the United Nations, and her uncles, educated at Ivy League colleges, maintained their ties with the United States. Along with her sisters, Alvarez attended the American schools; in her words, she had an "American childhood" on the island. From 1930 to 1961, the Dominican Republic was under the ruthless dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, a tyrant who had maintained his hold on power by unprecedented repression. As Trujillo's thirst for absolute control bred further corruption, Alvarez's father became involved in anti-Trujillo activities. Alvarez's idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end when a plot to remove the dictator from power was unearthed. With the looming possibility of Dr. Alvarez's arrest, the family left for the United States. Life in Queens, New York, offered a stark contrast to the family's earlier lifestyle. Her "American childhood" had not prepared the ten-year-old Julia for the realities of American life. She missed her friends and cousins and yearned to be accepted in school, but her accented English set her apart from others. In desperation, Alvarez turned to books and eventually writing, which became a substitute for her island home and initiated her future career. Alvarez and her sisters were educated in Catholic boarding schools. Alvarez attended Connecticut College initially. To keep the girls in touch with their culture, the parents sent them to spend their summers in the Dominican Republic. These stays made Alvarez aware of the double standard applied to the sexes and of the treatment of the poor, uneducated underclass. It was difficult for Alvarez to reconcile her American feminism with Dominican patriarchy, but it reinforced her decision to continue her college education. Winning the Benjamin T. Marshall Poetry Prize in 1968-1969 further encouraged her to pursue a literary career. She transferred to Middlebury College, Vermont, and in 1971 earned her B.A. summa cum laude. She earned her M.F.A. in 1975 from Syracuse University. After serving as a poet-in-schools, teaching in schools, colleges, and universities, in 1988, ALvarez accepted a position at her alma mater, Middlebury College. Though she had published two collections of poetry in the 1980's, it was her first novel, How the Garciá Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), that brought her critical acclaim. The book received the 1991 Josephine Miles Award from PEN Oakland for excellence in multicultural literature and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association in 1992. Alvarez had always been fascinated by the courage of the Marabel sisters, who were murdered for opposing the regime in Dominican Republic. Her second novel, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), chronicles the lives of these four sisters. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995. Two more novels, ¡Yo! (1997) and In the Name of Salomé (2000), followed. Three collections of poetry--The Other Side/El otro lado (1995), Seven Trees (1998), and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004)--and a collection of essays, Something to Declare (1998), also came out during this period. Alvarez has also authored three books for children: The Secret Footprints (2000), How Tía Lola Came to Stay (2001), and Before We Were Free (2002). To devote more time to her writing and pursuing her other interests, Alvarez gave up her tenured professorship in 1998 but maintains her connection with Middlebury College. She and her husband, Bill Eichner, an eye surgeon, are involved in many humanitarian activities.Analysis Alienation and disorientation in a new country, complexities of family relationships, the place of women in Latino culture, and the politics of class and power in the Dominican Republic are dominant themes in Alvarez's works. Her personal experiences form the core of her creative endeavors in her poetry as well as fiction. In her first novel, How the Garciá Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez draws upon her own experiences to capture the turbulent lives of the Garciá sisters as they navigate the years of adolescence in the new land. In the process, Alvarez touches upon several of her dominant themes. Speaking with an accent, the four girls—Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, and Sofia—are considered outsiders by their peers. Sometimes rejection comes in the garb of stereotyping, as Yolanda realizes in "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story." To complicate matters, the parents impose the island code on their daughters. They hold firm that training the girls to be subservient to men and guarding their chastity is the right way of preparing them for life. All around, the mainstream American culture tempts the girls with the vision of freedom and romance. Disorientation, resulting from conflicting expectations, no doubt, accounts for the anorexia of Sandi, nervous breakdown of Yolanda, and the outright rebellion of Sofia. The tyranny of parental authoritarianism can be seen in "Daughter of Invention." When Yolanda is assigned to give a speech on the Teacher's Day, she writes in her authentic voice, only to be told by her infuriated father that the speech was boastful and showed disrespect to teachers. He tears the pages to shreds. The incident remains a painful reminder to Yolanda of her powerlessness as a daughter. Disorientation, however, is not the province of the young alone. The older generation is lost, too, in the new land. In the absence of the old familiar environment, common language, and clearly defined roles for men and women, the parents also falter in coping with unpredictable situations. In "Floor Show," at the family dinner with Dr. Fanning, the man responsible for helping the family emigrate, the father betrays his uncertainty and awkwardness in dealing with the inebriated Mrs. Fanning. The macho culture in Dominican society encourages men to overlook one another's transgressions yet guard their women's purity zealously. This attitude is revealed in "A Regular Revolution." When Sofia is sent to live on the island with her relatives, she is transformed into a "Spanish-American Princess." She dresses like her fashion-conscious cousins and behaves like them in her relationship with a "nice" young man. Appalled by Sophie's subservience and her suitor's dictatorial manner, the sisters decide to rescue her by conspiring to get the lovers caught without a chaperone. Alienation and complexity of family relationships lie at the heart of ¡Yo!, a sequel to the first novel. The work has been a called "the portrait of an artist," for it focuses on Yolanda after the publication of her first novel. In addition to humorous episodes reflecting the family's reaction to becoming characters in her work, her preoccupation with class and power in Dominican Republic gets a fuller treatment here. Her denunciation of the continuing exploitation of the underclass in Dominican society scandalizes her family and friends. Interspersed among the chapters are the issues of cultural differences, the risks involved in pursuing a life of creative imagination, and the lure of the old world that stands in the way of true assimilation. In the Time of the Butterflies and In the Name of Salomé, Alvarez experiments with historical fiction. Both novels are set in the Dominican Republic. In the Time of the Butterflies memorializes the lives of the Marabel sisters, popularly known as Las Mariposas (the Butterflies). In the Name of Salomé celebrates the life of Salomé Urena, a well-known political poet in the Dominican Republic. She employs the technique of using Camila, the daughter and editor of her mother's papers, to present a panoramic view of political and moral issues of the period from mid-1990's to the late twentieth century. The book allows Alvarez to explore political and social issues affecting the lives of women in the Caribbean region. Alvarez's experimentation with plot and point of view in fiction often poses a problem for readers. How the Garciá Girls Lost Their Accents seems more like a collage of interconnected episodes than a novel with a traditional plot. Alvarez's handling of chronology of events in How the Garciá Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Name of the Butterflies is also challenging. However, Alvarez's later fictional works reveal more effective structures. She excels in the use of multiple points of view, an effective means of developing a complex character, though excessive shifts can sometimes overwhelm the readers. The strength of Alvarez lies in her exploration of the themes of displacement and the painful process of cultural assimilation common to all immigrants. A widening of her sphere is discernible in the shift from personal to larger historical issues. She succeeds in engaging readers in the lives of her characters. Her historical novels, in particular, serve as excellent introductions to the cultural history of Dominican Republic.How the Garciá Girls Lost Their Accents First published: 1991 Type of work: Novel Conflict between cultures of homeland and the new country leaves its mark on each Garciá girl.How the Garciá Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez's first novel, has an episodic plot covering a time span of thirty-three years, from 1956 to 1989, revolving around the Garciá family—the parents and their four daughters, Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, and Sofia. Set against a backdrop of the political upheavals in the Dominican Republic and in the turbulent years of the 1960's in the United States, the narrative focuses on the struggles of the Garciá family to make sense of the practices and expectations in the New World 0977184706\Joe Wiederholt inspired and guided the development of The WriteTrac when he was a patient undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer. Peggy Wiederholt is Joe's wife and a co-author of the book.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Magill's Survey of American Literature, Volume 1 Magill's Survey of American Literature, Frank Northen Magill |
| Editor | Steven G. Kellman |
| Contributor | Frank Northen Magill |
| Edition | 2, illustrated, revised |
| Publisher | Salem Press, 2006 |
| ISBN | 1587652854, 9781587652851 |
| Length | 494 pages |
| Subjects | › Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures Literary Criticism / Books & Reading |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |