SOURCE: A review of The Other Side/El Otro Lado, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 17, April 24, 1995, p. 65.

In the following review, the critic lauds The Other Side/El Otro Lado as a "meticulous examination of self-evolution."

Widely known for her novels, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, Latina author Alvarez claims her authority as a poet with this collection. Tracing a lyrical journey through the landscape of immigrant life, these direct, reflective and often sensuous poems are grouped into five sections which, like the points of a star, indicate a circle. Alvarez begins with "Bilingual Sestina," a meditation on leaving her native Dominican Republic for an alien land and strange language. She ends with the title poem "The Other Side / El Otro Lado," a long, multipart narrative recounting her return to her homeland as a woman transformed—translated—by the...