Interviews

On Tuesday, May 26th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Julia Alvarez to discuss ¡YO!.

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Moderator: Tonight Julia Alvarez joins us to discuss her acclaimed book ¡YO! and the Spanish edition of IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES (recently published). ¡YO! is a hilarious novel that is the sequel to her book HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS. Welcome, Julia Alvarez! Thank you for taking the time to join us online this evening. How are you doing tonight?

Julia Alvarez: Fine! This is my first online interview. I am interested and curious.

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Sarah from Alexandria, VA: Your character Yolanda Garcia and you have a lot in common -- both of you are immigrants from the Dominican Republic and writers. Would you say this character is autobiographical? Isn't yo the Spanish word for "I"?

Julia Alvarez: Well, of course I am playing with that, because I think that all characters come out of the well of their mind and hearts. I write about the people whom we are going to find out about -- the yo, or I. Of course, Yo is a part of me, but she is not me. I would not be so coy to call it fiction and not memoir. But I am certainly playing with that. What is called fiction and where the true story begins is what I am concerned with. I feel that fiction tells the truth more than the facts do. When you are writing, you are in the service of the story, not in the tyranny of what really happened. You enter the reality of the novel. Also, I think if you write about characters that are not included in literature -- a little girl in Latin America for example -- people think you are writing about yourself, because these are not the traditional characters in literature. These creations come out of your experience, what you have read, what you are really interested in.

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Leslie Taylor from San Francisco: All of the characters of this book have such distinct voices and tell such great stories. Why did you choose to have so many narrators describe Yo? What were the advantages of this method?

Julia Alvarez: Well, I think that part of the strategy of the novel was to give the voice to the little people; like Andy Warhol said, we are all meant to get our moment of fame. These people don't usually get their point of view across, so this is a chance for them to tell their story in the form of the writer who usually tells the story of them. It comes out of themselves. In other words, we really find out about these characters and their stories.

I wrote a lot more voices that were not included in the book. There were some that overlapped a lot, and it was a process of finding out which would tell the whole story of what I wanted to tell -- which ones would create the quilting I was making of all these characters. I have been accused of not wanting to write about men, and that was part of the challenge in this book (for example, the stalker). There is a curiosity in the writer to take in all the stories. People focus on whether this book is about Yo or Alvarez, but this is really a book about storytelling.

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Colleen from Portland, Maine: Are the sisters in ¡YO! and HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS based on real sisters? Perhaps your own?

Julia Alvarez: I certainly come from a family of sisters, so I understand that kind of family dynamic very well. I am a woman who took an unconventional path. I was really alone until I recently got married. I felt like my sisters and my family were my sisterhood. Sisterhood is a world that I understand. The whole relationship of women trying to describe a world for themselves in a place where this is not usually available.

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James from Princeton, NJ: Your novels describe young immigrants trying to reconcile their Hispanic roots and the new American culture. I know that you also emigrated to America as a child from Latin America. What would you say are some of the biggest obstacles to acculturation? What do you see as some of the benefits to being an immigrant?

Julia Alvarez: I definitely think that language is a big one. If you don't understand the language, you don't know the story out there and whether you fit in it. It depends on the age when you come. I came when I was ten. I was a little human being -- I had already found a voice for myself but it was still forming. I came at an interesting border, when it is not quite clear what or who you are yet. There is not a black or white definition you can claim. Stories here are important -- that is their province. They allow for conflicting realities; that is why you have different characters. A good piece of fiction allows for that complexity. I came at that point. I hadn't been formed completely in another language and culture. In your own story, you come into the "new culture story," which you join as an immigrant. Some of the obstacles I found in the United States of America story were not like me. It didn't have me there -- just the guy with the Chiquita banana! I did not have the advantage of kids who can read Amy Tan or Toni Morrison and say, "Hey, that's me!" Thank God I was post-civil rights movement, so there was some sympathy and understanding of the others. The benefits: We are the 21st century. We are all so mobile. Maybe you are people from Vermont, and you have adopted a Chinese. Because of the mobility and meltdown of borders that you see in this culture, it is so rich. We have to think globally. We can have two languages and different ways of looking at the world.

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Katrina from Richmond, VA: Yo infuriates her family by writing about them in her novel. What do you think about this situation? Do you think a writer should avoid writing about family or friends so they won't betray them, or is everything up for grabs for an artist?

Julia Alvarez: I certainly think we are human beings in a life with other people, and we are responsible for them. Mining the people in your life -- I am against that. See what's appropriate and what's right. Writers write out of their experience. But they also are other peoples stories. You have to be sensitive. The idea that it is all free rein is not a humane or professional way of dealing with the craft. But the people who know you will know "someone nervous who plays with the buttons on their shirt," or about "the little cowboy on your shorts." Of course, it is going to come from your life, and people will be able to trace that. People who know me and my books -- there is such a tendency to think that is me. There are always little trades. You see the context out of which the creation comes. I often think the real issue is whether the person already had an issue with you. It really isn't about the work.

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Pamela from Albuquerque: ¡YO! is very funny. I found myself laughing out loud throughout the book. Did you intentionally aim to make your readers laugh? Do you find it more easy to write comic passages than serious ones?

Julia Alvarez: I really thank you for really understand the spirit of what I write. Sometimes I have been criticized for not being serious. People want me to write another book like IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES. But I say humor and laughter goes very deep -- sometimes more than serious fiction. We can realize the irony of something: What we laugh at is often painful. Humor is about seeing double. You see both sides. You see the humanness of someone who is supposed to be a great figure. Or you see the devilness. I am interested in that double vision. I think humor is very funny and very sad.

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Stephanie Kriner from Arlington, VA: I understand that you also write poetry. Do you think of yourself as a novelist or a poet first? What draws you to write poetry? Do you find it more or less difficult than writing novels?

Julia Alvarez: I definitely began as a poet, and that is my first love. I keep going back to it as a place to get clean again or innocent, refresh the language. But I think of myself as a writer. What form that takes has so much to do with what is pressing on me and my heart at that moment. I try to find the right form -- letter, card, poem, whatever. I find poetry is a harder craft than fiction. I go back to that craft to rediscover the rhythm of the language. That is what is important in a novel -- whether the language is moving us.

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Peter Wood from Portland, Maine: Greetings from a member of the Middlebury Class of 1971. The whole family enjoys your books! Was there a professor at Middlebury College who influenced your work?

Julia Alvarez: I was a transfer student. I only came my junior year. We were part of the '60s and a nontraditional year. We don't even have a yearbook where I could look you up! A professor who influenced me...hmmm.... Back then I was writing poetry. Bob Pack was the only poet at Middlebury, so he was the one of my greatest influences. His support and encouragement and generosity influenced me. Also, I transferred from Connecticut College, where teacher William Meredith -- who won the National Book Critics Award this year for poetry for EFFORT AT SPEECH -- taught. He was the first "creative writing" teacher I had. Also June Jordan, visiting that school for a semester, introduced me to nontraditional literature, which was a great influence.

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Lyons from Newport: When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? Did you write as a child like Yo?

Julia Alvarez: I actually wasn't a very literary kid. I came from a very nonliterary family. I never saw people reading books in the Dominican Republic. I was not part of an intellectual family but a storytelling family. I think that I got the love of stores and voice from them. My Aunt Sophie, who would hone her stories, and everyone in the family were always competing to tell the best story. I was not very good in school or very interested. It was not very diverse in what they taught you. It wasn't a place where story or imagination resides. For me, coming into another language and having to listen to it -- why one word was used instead of another -- these are all things you do as a writer. I was doing this as a ten-year-old. I became conscious of words and how they work. In America, public libraries were so accessible, and I found wonderful teachers who motivated me.

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Melanie L. from Toronto: ¡YO! is a sequel of sorts to HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS. When you finished GARCIA GIRLS, did you imagine there would be a sequel? What drew you to write about the characters again in ¡YO!?

Julia Alvarez: I think that whenever you finish a book, it is still so alive for you, it is hard to put the characters away. If they remain and keep coming back, then there must be more to say -- they said that. It wasn't so much I planned it, it just evolved that way. You never know where the next book is coming, what is will be. Slowly you discover it if you listen carefully.

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Monica from Philadelphia: Are there plans to make any of your novels movies? if so, would you write the screenplay? I can really see a movie for your book IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES.

Julia Alvarez: Actually for both GARCIA GIRLS and BUTTERFLIES, the options sold. When a company is interested, they will buy the options...but so much else matters whether they will get funding. GARCIA GIRLS is still in the works. I wasn't happy with the screenplay someone else wrote, and neither were they. IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES is farther along. They have gone down to the Dominican Republic and met families, et cetera. I don't have craft or training in the screenplay genre. I would like someone else to take it and make it work. Some books work and you fall in love with them. They speak for themselves. Like THE ENGLISH PATIENT. I have been asked whether I want to be involved in screenwriting, but I haven't wanted to. I want the next book. I dont want to be rewriting the book I have already written.

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Paul from Morris Plains, NJ: Hello, Julie. I am curious to get your opinion on the recent controversy in the news concerning Hispanic children and the learning of English. Do you feel all children here in the United States should learn English in school? Why? Or why not?

Julia Alvarez: The reason I am a storyteller is that I don't have answers to things. Chekhov said that the job of the writer is not to answer the question but state the question correctly. I do not have solutions to a lot of these riddling questions about ethnicity and multiculturalism. I came to this country before bilingual languages came to this country. I was thrown in the big pool -- but I didn't drown. I had a lot of support and resources. Our culture needs to recognize that we are a pluralist society. What holds the culture together is a common language. Using English and being able to use it to tell your story is a very important skill. More and more in the 21st century, we learn more languages. I learned another language with the computer. It wasn't easy, because I didn't grow up with it, but you just have to learn it.

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Colleen from Portland, Maine: I've noticed that there are many times in the book when you use a Spanish phrase or word and don't translate it. Is there a reason why you do this? I am fluent in Spanish and always feel that I am at an advantage because I can truly understand what the characters are feeling.

Julia Alvarez: My litmus test is ideally, if I have done my job right, someone who doesn't know any Spanish can understand my writing. The way I write the scenes, I hope it would give someone a sense of that culture and the meaning of the passage. I have a book of essays, SOMETHING TO DECLARE, coming out in September 1998. One of the reasons I decided not to use italics for the Spanish in this book was not because of me but because of my readers. I didn't want them to look at a page and feel left out -- only see a lot of italics. I wanted it to come upon them and get that pleasure as a reader that you get something. I wanted to let it seem so seamless with the English and Spanish together. It is something that you work on, though, as a writer. Hemingway did it too. What I don't want to happen is for the reader to be sort of blasted with something they dont understand and be blown out of the narrative dream -- that can happen in old English also. It happens often in translated work. I am aware I have to do my job well; I don't want to anglicize my characters just because they are strange or odd or a little different.

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Moderator: Thank you for joining us tonight, Julia Alvarez. Do you have any closing comments for your online audience tonight?

Julia Alvarez: Thanks for calling up. One of the nightmares of this thing is if it is live and no one but your mom calls up -- so thanks for all the questions. And thanks for being my readers and caring about my work.

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