Bestselling author Julia Alvarez is the subject of a new PBS documentary
"Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined" covers her breakout semi-autobiographical novel "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" and her searing bestseller "In the Time of the Butterflies."
Her father was a chief surgeon, which gave her family financial comfort. But their political exile to Queens, New York, in 1960 would have a profound effect on her upbringing.
Now, a PBS documentary premiering Tuesday will show how bestselling author Julia Alvarez, who was born in New York and lived the first 10 years of her life in the Dominican Republic, became one of the country's most influential Latina writers and carved a path for other authors.
“If you’re at the margins of a world, it abuts another world. So you have double perspective,” Alvarez said in a video interview with NBC News. “And I see now that without that experience, I would never have become a writer.”
“Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined” takes viewers back to her childhood in the Dominican Republic and follows her footsteps in the U.S. as she develops into an acclaimed poet and author — President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2013.
The documentary covers her breakout semi-autobiographical novel “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents” (1991) and her second novel, the searing bestseller “In the Time of the Butterflies” (1994), which chronicles the true story of the Mirabal sisters who rebelled against Dominican dictator Gen. Rafael Trujillo.
Rating: 5