Here was a character who is a poet, who is supported and hailed by her mother, who writes in her second language-the one her mother does not speak but still celebrates. This moment in the novel offered a hand that kept me afloat for many years. It comes out when she speaks about writing it comes out when you finish one of her novels and realize she was always going to give you honesty, from beginning to end, because the work was guiding the work-you feel me?Īlvarez later affirmed in that talk, “Stories are power they can transform you and save you.” And I posit that not only writers but also readers need to surrender to a story, not just be reluctantly swept away, to also be willing to throw their arms up and fling themselves forward, because we do not always know the kind of saving we need until an image or a character resonates on the page and teaches us something about ourselves. She surrenders to the work, to the characters, to the truth of what needs to be said. Alvarez never loses sight of the thumping things that make us crave story, that provide an antidote to loneliness. People can master form and punchlines but neglect the heart of why we read. There are writers you meet who are all flash and bows, perfectly coifed but no substance I’m referring here to their craft. And one piece of writing advice she gave me that night struck me as so true to how she approaches writing: when I asked how she knew she wanted to write How the Garcí a Girls Lost Their Accents, she responded, “In writing, you have to surrender to the book.” I found myself wanting to take notes in the middle of our onstage conversation. They say don’t meet your heroes, but Alvarez in person shares so many qualities with Alvarez on the page: generous, tender, thoughtful. She writes elegantly, but her words have fangs. I imagine Alvarez found delight in the chorus of women chiming in on one another’s lives, in the sharp irony with which the vignettes play off one another, and in the sheer edginess of the writing. There is hurt here, but also joy, and a subversiveness that evokes deep triumph. And not only is there music to the language, but this novel also has serious comedic timing! And all while it grapples with some really difficult realities: what it was like to be in the first wave of Dominicans who emigrated to the US in the midst of a dictatorship, the taboo of discussing mental health in Hispanophone Caribbean culture, how sexuality is deployed and weaponized against women (to name a few of the many themes of this novel have been explored by readers for almost three decades). When I first read Alvarez, it was immediately apparent that her prose is informed by poetry. When I was a schoolteacher, I pressed the novel into the hands of students desperate to find language for some of their experiences, or simply to find delight outside of the canon of American whiteness. In interviews I’ve talked about her pursuit of a story’s truest path, which is seldom its easiest or most comfortable. On stages I’ve talked about her ability to make the strangest moments familiar. And in the many years that followed, I did. I fall into the latter camp of Julia’s fandom: I wanted to share her with everyone. Told in reverse chronological order, the novel is about the dynamics of loss-how each girl’s accent is slowly polished smooth, how each girl sheds an island version of herself. Here, I was introduced to the Julia Alvarez who had been compelled to get this particular story in the world before all others the one who debuted into literary stardom with an honest, unflinching narrative that captures the misery, messiness, and marvel of departing from a homeland and making yourself and your family anew. It took a few years before I would read it, but in high school I borrowed the novel from the library. The promise that these girls would share the secret of how they undid a part of themselves. In fact, at 13 years old, despite how voraciously I read, I had never seen any book centering Dominican characters at all.Īnd here I held How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. I had heard about the 31-year regime of Rafael Trujillo from my mother, who lived through it, but I’d never come across a novel depicting that period. The back jacket informed me that the book on my classroom shelf was about Dominicans who emigrated from the island during the dictatorship. The author’s name was one I recognized because one of her books had been recently adapted into a film. There, on the shelf of books that seemed less shelf than treasure chest, was a novel with a title that called out to me. I was in middle school, searching for a silent reading book in my classroom library. The first meeting was figurative: I met her through her writing. I’ve had the grand pleasure of meeting Julia Alvarez twice.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |