Conversations with Authors - Julia Alvarez
Sunday, May 24th • 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT
Julia Alvarez
in conversation with Jaquira Díaz
Gracias to all of you who participated in Sunday's conversation with Jaquira Díaz and with me.
I am sorry we didn’t get to see you or hear your voices, but I’d like to think that both of us felt your energy and cariño and presence. Also, to all who submitted questions, gracias. I hope we covered most of them or the most important.
My abuelito used to say, only eat until you’re 95% full. I used to think, That’s crazy, as I wolfed it down. I think what he meant is—perspective that comes with growing older—one should always leave a little emptiness for other things to fill.
I want it to mean that what we didn’t get to together will be an enticement to all of you to visit with us again inside the covers of books! Both these, which we mentioned, as well as the two we were celebrating tonight: Jaquira’s Ordinary Girls and my Afterlife:
- The Arabian Nights (Leather-bound Classics)
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- Selected Poems: Pablo Neruda
- A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert
- Death in Summer by William Trevor
- Our Souls at Night (Vintage Contemporaries) by Kent Haruf
- The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
- Cantoras: A Novel by Carolina De Robertis
- The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
- Little Women (Vintage Classics) by Jane Austin
Take care of yourselves, keep reading and loving each other through these difficult and dark and wrenchingly tender times.
—Julia
And also, a note from Jaquira
Thank you all for joining us from your homes, for reading, for supporting our work, and especially for supporting indie bookstores like Book Passage, which are such important community spaces for all of us.
It means so much to be able to celebrate the release of Julia’s latest novel, Afterlife, alongside Ordinary Girls. I hope you also have a chance to discover these as well:
- In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
- When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir by Esmeralda Santiago
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
Muchos abrazos!
~Jaquira
Below, please find links to purchase all of the books recommended by Julia and Jaquira, as well as a selection of their own books.
One of the Must-Read Books of 2019 According to O: The Oprah Magazine * Time * Bustle * Electric Literature * Publishers Weekly * The Millions * The Week * Good Housekeeping
“There is more life packed on each page of Ordinary Girls than some lives hold in a lifetime.” —Julia Alvarez
In thi
A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020
A Most-Anticipated Book of the Year: O, The Oprah Magazine * The New York Times * The Washington Post *Vogue * Bustle * BuzzFeed * Ms.
No library's complete without the classics! This new, enhanced leather-bound edition collects the beloved tales of Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton.
They are ancient stories, but they still enchant our imaginations today: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "Sinbad the Sailor," "Aladdin," and more.
Ralph Waldo Emerson issued a call for a great poet to capture and immortalize the unique American experience. In 1855, an answer came with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
The winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, Pablo Neruda is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the twentieth century. This bilingual edition makes available a major selection of his poems, both in the original Spanish and impressively rendered into English by his most enduring translator, the poet Ben Belitt (Robert Creeley)."
"A Simple Heart moved me to tears."—Russell Baker
William Trevor's Last Stories is forthcoming from Viking.
A New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book
From the winner of the 1999 David Cohen British Literature Prize comes an unforgettably chilling novel, written with the compassion and artistry that define Trevor's fiction.
A Best Book of the Year
The Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Denver Post
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction
National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
In defiance of the brutal military government that took power in Uruguay in the 1970s, and under which homosexuality is a dangerous transgression, five women miraculously find one another—and, together, an isolated cape that they claim as their own.
This new, enhanced leather-bound edition includes all the completed novels of beloved author Jane Austen.
Jane Austen’s stories of clever women, elusive love, and social mores have struck a chord with millions of fans who consider her work compelling, heartwarming, and essential.
A Vintage Classics edition of Louisa May Alcott's beloved and influential story of the March sisters, which is once again a major motion picture.
25th Anniversary Edition
"A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” --St.$16.95ISBN: 9781565129757Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Algonquin Books - January 12th, 2010"Poignant . . . Powerful . . . Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory." —The New York Times Book Review
Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez’s beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures.$16.99ISBN: 9780306814525Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Da Capo Press - February 28th, 2006One of "The Best Memoirs of a Generation" (Oprah's Book Club): a young woman's journey from the mango groves and barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eventually on to Harvard
$16.00ISBN: 9781400033416Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Vintage - June 8th, 2004Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding New York Times bestseller transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.
$13.95ISBN: 9781565125582Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: A Shannon Ravenel Book - April 27th, 2007Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic.ISBN: 9781931498067Availability: Special OrderPublished: Chelsea Green Publishing Company - June 1st, 2002A Cafecito Story is a story of love, coffee, birds and hope. It is a beautifully written eco-fable by best-selling author Julia Alvarez.
ISBN: 9780452282438Availability: Hard to FindPublished: Plume Books - June 1st, 2001"The story of my life starts with the story of my country... ." Thus begins Julia Alvarez's epic fictional account of the real-life SalomE UreNa-the "Emily Dickinson of the Dominican Republic." Born in the 1850s, in a time of intense political repression and turmoil, SalomE's fervent patriotic poems turned her-at seventeen-into a national icon.
$15.95ISBN: 9781616209490Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Algonquin Books - April 9th, 2019"Charming and funny . . . Mesmerizing . . .$15.95ISBN: 9781616202804Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Algonquin Books - March 19th, 2013“[A] beguiling memoir of family and culture.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
In a story that travels beyond borders and between families, acclaimed Dominican novelist and poet Julia Alvarez reflects on the joys and burdens of love—for her parents, for her husband, and for a young Haitian boy known as Piti.ISBN: 9780452288300Availability: Special OrderPublished: Plume - July 29th, 2008Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a “phenomenal, indispensable” (USA Today) exploration of the Latina “sweet fifteen” celebration, by the bestselling author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies.
The quinceañera, a celebration of a Latina girl’s fifteent
$15.95ISBN: 9781616205584Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Algonquin Books - October 28th, 2014“Julia Alvarez has suitcases full of history (public and private), trunks full of insights into what it means to be a Latina in the United States, bags full of literary wisdom.” —Los Angeles Times
From the internationally acclaimed author of the bestselling novels In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls L$15.95ISBN: 9781616200725Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: A Shannon Ravenel Book - April 5th, 201175 Poems by the Author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies
The works of this award-winning poet and novelist are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: those of the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood.ISBN: 9780452275676Availability: Special OrderPublished: Plume - April 1st, 1996Homecoming is Alvarez's first published collection of poetry, a work of great subtlety and power in which the young poet returned to her old-world childhood in the Dominican Republic. Now this revised and expanded edition adds thirteen new poems.
ISBN: 9780452273412Availability: Special OrderPublished: Plume - December 1st, 1996The New York Times Book Review has praised Alvarez’s fiction as “powerful...beautifully captures the experience of the new immigrant’s doorway where a memory is not yet the past and the future is still a dream.”
$6.99ISBN: 9780375873201Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Yearling - September 11th, 2012Welcome to Tía Lola's bed and breakfast! With the help of her niece and nephew and the three Sword Sisters, Tía Lola is opening the doors of Colonel Charlebois' grand old Vermont house to visitors from all over.
$6.99ISBN: 9780375866876Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Yearling - May 8th, 2012Miguel Guzman isn't exactly looking forward to the summer now that his mother has agreed to let the Sword family—a father, his three daughters, and their dog—live with them while they decide whether or not to move to Vermont. Little does Miguel know his aunt has something up her sleeve that just may make this the best summer ever.
$7.99ISBN: 9780375857928Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Yearling - September 13th, 2011Tía Lola has been invited to teach Spanish at her niece and nephew’s elementary school. But Miguel wants nothing to do with the arrangement. He hasn’t had an easy time adjusting to his new school in Vermont and doesn’t like living so far away from Papi, who has a new girlfriend and an announcement to make.
$6.99ISBN: 9780440418702Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Yearling - August 13th, 2002A delightfully entertaining story of family and culture from acclaimed author Julia Alvarez.
$7.99ISBN: 9780375851230Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Yearling - September 14th, 2010An award-winning, moving, and timely story about the families of undocumented workers by renowned author Julia Alvarez.
ISBN: 9780399555480Availability: Special OrderPublished: Ember - March 27th, 2018A new paperback edition of Julia Alvarez’s beloved story about family, identity, and first love.
$8.99ISBN: 9780399555497Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Ember - March 27th, 2018A new paperback edition of Julia Alvarez’s beloved Pura Belpré winner about life in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic. “Diary entries written by a child while in hiding will remind readers of Anne Frank’s story.” —SLJ
