Julia Alvarez - Influence On Latin American Literature

Influence On Latin American Literature

Alvarez is regarded as one of the most critically and commercially successful Latina writers of her time. As Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez observes, Alvarez is part of a movement of Latina writers that also includes Sandra Cisneros and Cristina García, all of whom weave together themes of the experience of straddling the borders and cultures of Latin America and the United States. Coonrod Martínez suggests that a subsequent generation of Dominican-American writers, such as Angie Cruz, Loida Maritza Pérez, Nelly Rosario, and Junot Díaz, have been inspired by Alvarez's success.

Alvarez admits "the bad part of being a 'Latina Writer' is that people want to make me into a spokesperson. There is no spokesperson! There are many realities, different shades and classes".

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is the first novel by a Dominican-American woman to receive widespread acclaim and attention in the United States. The book portrays ethnic identity as problematic on several levels. Alvarez challenges commonly held assumptions of multiculturalism as strictly positive. She views much of immigrant identity as greatly affected by ethnic, gendered, and class conflict. According to critic Ellen McCracken, "Transgression and incestuous overtones may not be the usual fare of the mainstream's desirable multicultural commodity, but Alvarez's deployment of such narrative tactics foregrounds the centrality of the struggle against abuse of patriarchal power in this Dominican American's early contribution to the new Latina narrative of the 1990s."

Regarding the women's movement in writing, Alvarez explains, "definitely, still, there is a glass ceiling in terms of female novelists. If we have a female character, she might be engaging in something monumental but she's also changing the diapers and doing the cooking, still doing things which get it called a woman's novel. You know, a man's novel is universal; a woman's novel is for women."

Alvarez claims that her aim is not simply to write for women, but to also deal with universal themes that illustrate a more general interconnectedness. She explains, "What I try to do with my writing is to move out into those other selves, other worlds. To become more and more of us." As an illustration of this point, Alvarez writes in English about issues in the Dominican Republic, using a combination of both English and Spanish. Alvarez feels empowered by the notion of populations and cultures around the world mixing, and because of this identifies as a "Citizen of the World".