First, last, and always, Julia Alvarez is a storyteller.
The Middlebury College writer-in-residence, coffee farmer, and author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents launched the 2010 Living Writers lecture series on Wednesday evening, giving a rapt audience the story of her own life, which began in the Dominican Republic under the dictator Rafael Trujillo.
When her father fled the country after participating in a failed coup attempt, the family moved to Jamaica, Queens. Lost in the monochromatic culture of mid-20th century America, she found herself, thanks to a sixth-grade teacher who gave Alvarez a book list and sent her to the library. “New York, 1960, I became a reader; I dwelt in possibility,” she said.
But her teacher didn’t just encourage her to read. “She told me to write my own stories,” said Alvarez. “The taste of guava, the smell of the ocean, the feel of the tropical sun like a warm blessing on my head — write that down. I did. I wrote stories, and everything I lost came back to me.”
Alvarez retrieved her past and parlayed it into a successful future, earning a bachelor’s at Middlebury and a master’s in creative writing at Syracuse University. Her prolific writing has earned her countless awards, including the 2009 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature, the 2007 Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s Latina Leader Award in Literature, and several honorary degrees.
“I love storytelling,” she said. “We have a way of finding our way through our stories and songs and poems.” Now — in print, lecture halls, workshops, and one-on-one conversation — she’s helping others find their way, too.
When she purchased her coffee plantation, Alta Gracia, in the Dominican Republic, she looked around and realized that the children living there were illiterate. Wanting them to find the same freedom she found in the written word, she set up a school and a library with the help of the Peace Corps and Middlebury students on alternative spring break trips.
Reading stories to Dominican children inspired her to write her own works for younger audiences, resulting in books like The Best Gift of All: The Legend of La Vieja Belén. The exile who navigated by narrative has returned to her roots and is inspiring a new generation with her storytelling.
This edition of Living Writers was co-sponsored by the ALANA Cultural Center and the university library. Colgate will welcome nine more speakers in 2010, including Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri on September 16 and Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul on October 15. Authors meet with students in the classroom, then give a public reading and lecture, which streams live on Colgate’s Livestream channel at www.livestream.com/colgateuniversity.