Julia Alvarez released “Afterlife” in 2020, about a woman dealing with her husband’s unexpected death and meeting an undocumented teenager. The book was dedicated to her oldest sister, Maury, who died in 2015, and was Alvarez’s way of “[giving] voice to that landscape of aging.”
Video Features
Clip | How Julia Alvarez brought truth to the Mirabal sisters in her novel “In the Time of the Butterflies”
Clip | The true story behind “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents”
Clip | How Julia Alvarez was inspired by the working class
Clip | How Julia Alvarez conceived the story for her novel “Afterlife”
Clip | Julia Alvarez on the female perspective in “In the Time of the Butterflies”
Written Features
TRANSCRIPT
- [Narrator] Julia's next novel, the first she had written in 10 years, was dedicated to her sister.
(page rustling) - [Julia] When I was writing "Afterlife," I was reading every novel where there was an elder, especially an elder woman, to try to understand what that story is and to give voice to that landscape of aging.
You know, the same way that I felt like I wanted to give voice to the landscape of being Latina, of coming from another place.
What is that story of aging and of losses?
And how do you survive what you've lost and still go for the larger version of yourself?
(gentle music)
