Alvarez to Speak at Ellsworth

This year’s Ellsworth lecturer, Julia Alvarez, will speak on Wednesday, March 26, in the Ellsworth Room at 4 p.m. and Bentley 207 at 7 p.m. Alvarez, an award-winning author, has written in a variety of genres, including novels, essays, and poems. Her lecture will focus on writing and how it guides individuals in mysterious but important ways in their daily lives.

“The lectures are something that will give the campus community the chance to learn about different lives in different parts of the world,” said Director of Development and Alumni Relations Sally Laughlin. “She will be talking about the Dominican Republic and the United States.”

Julia Alvarez was invited to speak at JSC by faculty members who knew her personally. “She’s really quite famous, and we don’t have the kind of money that she would normally get for a lecture,” Laughlin said. “But because she knew people here, she agreed to come, which is neat because if we went to an agent, I bet it would’ve cost ten times as much.”

Alvarez’s parents were both native of the Dominican Republic. She was born in New York City in 1950, during one of her parents’ first attempts at immigrating to the United States. When Alvarez was only three months old, her family moved back to the Dominican Republic for political reasons. Back in the Dominican Republic, her father, who worked as a doctor, got involved in working for the underground, and after 10 years they were forced to flee the country, returning to New York City.

The transition from being part of a large, well-known and powerful family to living in a small apartment and facing many forms of prejudice was hard on Alvarez as a young girl.

But in America she found a love for reading, and eventually writing. The language barrier helped her learn how to analyze the written world, which in return helped make her an even better writer.

After high school, Alvarez continued with her education. She attended Middlebury College, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and received her Bachelor of Arts degree. She also graduated with her Masters in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. After college she worked as a teacher, doing writing on the side as well.

In 1991, at the age of forty-one, Alvarez published her first novel, and was also granted tenure at Middlebury College in the English Department. Her novel, “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents” was highly successful, winning many prizes. However, it also faced a lot of criticism. The book was banned by a school in Johnston, North Carolina, due to its sexual content.

In the subsequent years, Alvarez has had 16 more books published.

On January 12, 2004, Alvarez received the Pura Belpre Author Award for her book, “Before We Were Free.” Her most recent book, “Once Upon A Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the U.S.A,” was published in August of 2007.

After taking a few semesters off from teaching, she finally decided to give up her tenure position to dedicate more time to being a full-time writer, although she continues to teach courses at Middlebury. She lives in Vermont with her husband, Bill Eichner, on a farm they share.

Both March 27 lectures are free and open to the JSC community. Her 4 p.m. lecture in the Ellsworth Room will be complemented with home-grown Dominican Republic coffee.

 

The Ellsworth Trust, funded by the late Professor Robert A. Ellsworth, is a private foundation that exists for the benefit of promoting history and political science at JSC.

The money earned on the interest of the endowment is used in many different ways, including providing scholarships for Political Science and History majors, and funding the annual Ellsworth Lecture as well. The trust also donates money every year to the Break Away trips. This year a JSC Junior, Meredith Kenton, was given $1,500 from the trust towards travel expenses during her semester abroad in Scotland.

(Accompanying photo is courtesy of media.collegepublisher.com)