And because there is a listener, there is community, and there's a sense that you are connecting with a reader at those deepest levels of the self, and therefore maybe liberating them. I always think of that line from Dylan Thomas: "I sang in my chains like the sea." There's something about singing that, even if you're feeling chained, even if you're feeling oppressed, the song in itself is a liberation. It doesn't have to be about something big or important, but those little things you keep to yourself - selves that you keep to yourself - and give us language to understand them.ĭid you find freedom in speaking to those selves, in the process of writing those poems?įor me, maybe because I am a writer, naming is a kind of liberation. I wanted to touch on those moments where there's a little enlightenment or a little awareness. I'm trying to understand and give word to feelings that are yet to be brought into language. I feel like poems are where I am meeting up against the silence. Where did the inspiration for The Woman I Kept to Myself, your third poetry collection, come from?Įvery time I want to touch bottom in myself, I return to poetry. You're most famous for your novels - especially How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - but you started out as a poet. In a way, it's a very Code Switch-y collection - an acknowledgement that you're never all of yourself all of the time, and that so many of us exist perpetually in gray areas. But as a young girl, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and an aspiring writer, she said there were versions of herself that she wasn't always allowed to share, because they weren't acceptable to her family and surrounding community.įor Code Switch's summer book series on freedom, I spoke to Alvarez about her 2004 poetry collection, The Woman I Kept to Myself, in which she explores all her different selves - the little girl who recites poetry to herself every night, the sister who fears her family's reproach, the seasoned professor who prides herself on helping her students - and how she uncovered them with writing. Today, Alvarez is an award-winning author, most known for her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Growing up, there were a lot of pieces of Julia Alvarez that felt like they didn't fit together the way they were supposed to. Next up, a conversation with the writer and poet Julia Alvarez. In our last installment, we talked to author Ross Gay about the importance of celebrating joy. This summer on Code Switch, we're talking to some of our favorite authors about books that taught us about the different dimensions of freedom. A meticulous examination of self-evolution, Alvarez's assured collection reveals that change can take us across borders so slowly that only on reaching the other side can we see the distances we've come.The Woman I Kept To Myself, by Julia Alvarez The speaker may claim ``There is nothing left to cry for,/ nothing left but the story/ of our family's grand adventure/ from one language to another,'' but this poetry resonates precisely because that story embodies larger questions about self-identity. She ends with the title poem ``The Other Side/El Otro Lado,'' a long, multipart narrative recounting her return to her homeland as a woman transformed-translated-by the years she has lived in America from native to guest. Alvarez begins with ``Bilingual Sestina,'' a meditation on leaving her native Dominican Republic for an alien land and strange language. Tracing a lyrical journey through the landscape of immigrant life, these direct, reflective and often sensuous poems are grouped into five sections which, like the points of a star, indicate a circle. Widely known for her novels, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, Latina author Alvarez claims her authority as a poet with this collection.
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