She regularly visits the Dominican Republic, and even owns a coffee bean farm with her husband, Bill Eichner. Prior to writing novels, she held numerous teaching positions which she left in order to devote her time to her craft. The novel was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award in 1994.Ĭurrently, Alvarez serves as a judge for various literary awards and travels the country to provide educational lectures. Although the novel portrays a real situation that occurred in history, Alvarez wrote In the Time of the Butterflies as a fictional story in order to spread awareness of the Mirabal sisters’ journey. Three of the four sisters were assassinated during the last days of the Trujillo regime. In the novel, it portrays the lives of the Mirabal sisters: Dedé, Maria Terese, Patria, and Minerva.

In the Time of the Butterflies was published in 1994. Also, she writes about the cultural role of women in society. Other works of literature written by Alvarez focus on the conflicts and benefits of life as a Dominican-American. This is a story about her life in the Dominican Republic and the struggles her family faced as immigrants. In 1991, at the age of 41 years old, Alvarez published her first book: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.

Soon after, she began teaching college writing courses. It was during this time in the early 1960s that they went back to New York City.Īlvarez obtained an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and a master’s in creative writing in 1975 from Syracuse University. Four months before the Mirabal sisters were assassinated by Trujillo’s regime, Alvarez and her family left the Dominican Republic. Her father’s plans were exposed and their family was threatened. When she was ten years old, her father became involved with an underground plot to overthrow the dictator, Rafael Trujillo, who maintained control of the country for 31 years. She was born in New York City but spent the early years of her life in the Dominican Republic with her family. Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American author, best known for her novel, In the Time of Butterflies.

A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers.

Internal Migration and Internally Displaced Peoples.

In the time of the butterflies book it