Explore the story of Dominican-American poet and novelist Julia Alvarez, who burst onto the literary scene and blazed a trail for a generation of Latino authors.
American Masters “Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined airs Tuesday, September 15 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.
Her semi-autobiographical novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, was published in 1991, followed in 1994 by In the Time of the Butterflies, which sold over a million copies and raised global awareness about life under Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Spanning multiple genres and audiences, Alvarez’s work includes three nonfiction books, three poetry collections, 11 books for children and young adults and seven literary novels. This new documentary opens a window into her extraordinary journey from an idyllic, privileged childhood in the Dominican Republic to a life of exile in New York City to a brilliant literary career that shows no sign of slowing down. At 74, she recently published the critically acclaimed novel The Cemetery of Untold Stories.
Filmed in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic, Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined features extensive interviews with Alvarez, her family, and her literary contemporaries. The documentary is produced and directed by Adriana Bosch, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who served as series producer on the PBS series Latino Americans (2013) and Latin Music USA (2009). Born in Cuba, Bosch has produced and written a number of films for the PBS series American Experience, including a film on Fidel Castro and several acclaimed presidential biographies.
Photo credit: Corey Hendrickson