How Tia Lola Came To [Visit] Stay

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 5x0x8. Signed by author. First edition. Signed by author without inscription. Near fine. Jacket lightly toned. 2001 Hard Cover. 147 pp. "Moving to Vermont after his parents split, Miguel has plenty to worry about! Tía Lola, his quirky, carismática, and maybe magical aunt makes his life even more unpredictable when she arrives from the Dominican Republic to help out his Mami. Like her stories for adults, Julia Alvarez’s first middle-grade book sparkles with magic as it illuminates a child’s experiences living in two cultures." "Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Alvarez rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and Yo! (1997). Her publications as a poet include Homecoming (1984) and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004), and as an essayist the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare (1998). Many literary critics regard her to be one of the most significant Latina writers and she has achieved critical and commercial success on an international scale. Born in New York, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father’s involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country. Many of Alvarez’s works are influenced by her experiences as a Dominican in the United States, and focus heavily on issues of assimilation and identity. Her cultural upbringing as both a Dominican and an American is evident in the combination of personal and political tone in her writing. She is known for works that examine cultural expectations of women both in the Dominican Republic and the United States, and for rigorous investigations of cultural stereotypes. In recent years, Alvarez has expanded her subject matter with works such as In the Name of Salomé (2000), a novel with Cuban rather than solely Dominican characters and fictionalized versions of historical figures. In addition to her successful writing career, Alvarez is the current writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.