ABSTRACT
Three months after Julia Alvarez was born in New York City on March 27, 1950, she returned to the Dominican Republic with her parents and toddler-aged sister. Her father, a medical doctor named Eduardo Alvarez Perello, and her mother, Julia Tavares Espaillat, a homemaker who had grown up as part of Santo Domingo’s elite upper class, welcomed two more daughters during the next decade while living on the island. Once back in the Dominican Republic, the Alvarez family relocated to the Tavares family compound in the capital city of Santo Domingo. A historic colonial city with buildings that date back to the early 1500s, Santo Domingo boasts a sprawling coastline overlooking the Caribbean Sea and is the most populous city in the Caribbean. Alvarez spent the first ten years of her life enjoying the comforts of life amongst her close-knit family in one of the capital’s wealthiest neighborhoods; she was consistently surrounded by extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles, and domestic servants. In Alvarez’s early years, she predominantly spoke and heard Spanish, but her family started to become a “bilingual family” (Alvarez, Something to Declare 21) when the four Alvarez sisters enrolled in the capital’s private international school, the Carol Morgan School, which provided instruction in English. From a young age, Alvarez showed an interest in writing and literature. She exchanged quotes of great writers—both Dominican and American—with her father and was encouraged by her grandfather, who was also known for his love of reciting poetry and verse, to pursue writing. He responded to Alvarez as a young girl when she expressed her desire to write “lots and lots of poems” with affirming, encouraging words: “A poet, yes. Now you are talking” (Something to Declare, 11).
