Reference Reviews

Doug’s Student Reference Room

Julia Alvarez: Novelist and Poet. Clarissa Aykroyd. 104 p. Farmington Hills, MI: Lucent Books, 2008. ISBN 13: 978-1-4205-0022-6; ISBN 10: 1:4205-0022-8. $32.45.

In her introduction to this biography, Aykroyd describes Julia Alvarez’s life in dualities: not knowing English as an immigrant to the U.S. made her pay more attention to each word, “great training for a writer.” Her struggle for an identity became a theme in many of her books, which in turn helped form her identity. The first chapter reviews Alvarez’s childhood as the daughter of a prominent Dominican doctor living under the brutal dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Subsequent chapters recount the family’s escape to New York, Alvarez’s early focus on education and her passion for writing, the influence of writers and mentors, and Alvarez’s longstanding concerns with the welfare of people in her native country. Aykroyd deftly simplifies the complicated story of Alvarez’s life for a young audience and connects the writer’s themes with the formative events of her life in a way that will draw readers to Alvarez’s work. Highly recommended for middle and high school libraries.
—Doug Achterman