Leery of tokenism, Alvarez resists describing herself with political or aesthetic labels, a decision that makes claiming her difficult for any group, but her poetic project to merge exalted traditional forms with the drudgery of housekeeping, for instance, certainly dovetails with the stated desires of both feminist and New Formalist critics.
Born in New York City, Julia Altagracia Alvarez grew up in the Dominican Republic until the age of ten, when in 1960 her father and the rest of the family escaped the country after supporting a rebel faction trying to oust dictator Rafael Trujillo. Her father (who often recited poems and ended each evening by announcing that El Doctor was heading to bed) established a medical practice in Brooklyn while her mother, born Julia Tavares, attended to their four daughters. Alvarez attended Connecticut College for two years, graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College in 1971, earned her master's degree at Syracuse University in 1975, and in 1986 attended Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the director of which later assisted with the publication of Alvarez's first poetry book. She married Bill Eichner, a doctor from Nebraska with two grown daughters, on 3 June 1989. The couple lives in Vermont, where she has been teaching at Middlebury College since 1988 and is now writer-in-residence.
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