Title: Something to declare
Description: In her first book of nonfiction, Julia Alvarez offers two dozen personal essays about the two major (and interlocking) issues of her life - growing up with one foot in each of two cultures, and writing.

In 1960, when Alvarez was ten years old, her father's participation in a failed coup attempt against Rafael Trujillo, the repressive dictator of the Dominican Republic, resulted in the family's self-imposed exile to New York City, where Dr. Alvarez set up a medical practice in the Bronx while his wife and four daughters set about the serious business of assimilation. That uprooting formed the thematic basis for two of Julia Alvarez's novels.

Her father's revolutionary ties inspired the third, the story of one of Trujillo's most infamous atrocities. Something to Declare is about the influences those experiences have had on her work, and about the practical lessons she's learned on her way to becoming the internationally acclaimed writer she now is.
Subjects: 20th century, Authorship, Dominican Americans, Dominican Americans in literature, History, In literature, Intellectual life, United States, Women and literature, Essays, Dominicans (dominican republic), united states, American literature, hispanic american authors, Essays (single author), American literature (collections), 20th century
Places: Dominican Republic, United States
People: Julia Alvarez
Time periods: 20th century