Written Task 1

RATIONAL

I decided to choose the interview as text type for my first written task because in my opinion it is a type of text that allows me to transmit deeply the style and the beliefs of the poet who I am going to interview. I am going to interview Julia Alvarez, a very successful Dominican- American poet who had to move from the Dominican Republic to the United States when she was ten years old. As a Latina writer her most impacting and successful works portray how difficult is to learn a new language, and the impact that moving to a total different culture can create. Besides of this by doing this interview I can portray in a better way, how did she manage to become a poet and writer having to struggle with a new language, and how did that affect to her poetry. My intended audience is the program that is interviewing Julia Alvarez, and all the persons who want to know how Julia Alvarez became a poet, and what does she transmit in her poetry. The purpose of my response is mainly to explain how Julia managed to become a poet, and why did she chose to become a writer. In this interview I express how difficult was for Julia Alvarez to learn a new language when she had to move from the Dominican Republic to New York, and besides of this after becoming a poet, I explain what does the use of Spanish in her poems mean, how is her use of Spanish different from her use of English in her poetry. Using the interview as text type gives me the opportunity to speak in the poet’s voice, an interviewer asks questions to Julia Alvarez while she responds all the questions that the interviewer asks her.

AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIA ALVAREZ

Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Julia Alvarez was born in New York in March 27, 1950, although she was born in New York her family is originally from the Dominican Republic. After spending the ten first years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, Julia moved to the United States because of his father involvement in a political rebellion which forced her family to leave the country.

  In reference to her grants and honors, she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, several manuscripts that she has written have a permanent home at the New York Public Library, she has received the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1974, and besides this she received the first prize in narrative from the Third Woman Press Award in 1986. Her most important and influential works are, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, which won the PEN

Oakland/Josephine Literary Awards in 1991 for multicultural view content, In Time of Butterflies, Yo!, Homecoming, and The Woman I Kept Myself.

Besides of this she is regarded as one of the most successful Latina writers of her times. Her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, was the first novel wrote by a Dominican- American writer that had that much impact and attention, the main reason that made this possible is the way Julia Alvarez portrays ethnic identity as a problematic in several ways.

Interviewer: First of all we are so glad that you accepted our interview and you came here to our program, giving us a little bit of your time.

Julia: It is an honor for me to be here with you, and to have the opportunity to respond all of your question.

Interviewer: Let’s start with the questions, how was life for you, having to learn a complete new language?

Julia: Well, first off, being honest before moving to New York, I cannot say that I did not know English at all, but the classroom English that I had learnt did not prepare me properly for the American English that was spoken at that times. I had to struggle so much to learn to speak English as a native speaker, I had to pay so much attention for every single word in order to know perfectly when to use each one of them. Besides of this, I discovered the amazing world of imagination and books, where nobody was rejected because of his accent or skin color, so I fall in love with this new and amazing world for me. Reading really helped me to learn more and more English, and besides of this it is the main reason that made me become a writer.

Interviewer: In the Bilingual Sestina you use many Spanish words, and you mix both English and Spanish to write this poems, is using your native language different for you than using English in poems?

Julia: I have to say that I have a special affection for the Bilingual Sestina. It have put so much heart on the Bilingual Sestina, mainly because it describes perfectly what does Spanish mean for me now that I already know English, when I use Spanish in my poems I want to transmit the feeling that even though I have learnt English, Spanish is always going to be my native language, and when I use it I can say that I write with the voice of the real me.

Interviewer: In your book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents you tell the story of the lives of four girls who have to move to the United States because of divorces, family disputes or cultural change, can we say that the book reflects your own situation in some way?

Julia: We can totally say that, in that book I try to portray how the migration from a Latin country to the United States is, just like what happened to me. The protagonists of the book portray just like in reality how difficult is to leave your own country, having to deal with for example the dislocation of family ties or the difficult cultural adjustments. When I moved from my country I had to struggle with the language, and I had to adapt to a total new culture and atmosphere which is reflected in this book by the four girls Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia.

Interviewer: Your works are normally assigned as multicultural and ethnic literature, how do you feel about that?

Julia: Well, I have to say that I do not like the fact that writers are pushed off into a specific area of literature, in my opinion keeping us in separate groups is a way to keep us at remove, as if we were not a set. Besides of this I believe that literature is what unites us, but the way in that we, the writers, are separated goes totally against it. So as personal conclusion of this issue I have to say that do not like to see any of my works as a work addressed to a specific group of people.

Interviewer: And lastly now that you have explained us that your book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and the book can reflect some of your personal experiences, does the way in that your family react affect your work?

Julia: Yes, it totally affects, before publishing anything, we have to keep in mind that we live in the world and that we cannot publish stories of others all the time because we have to be responsible for the people around us. For my personal experience I believe that what we write is not what offends our family, is that the writer is not a single person, the writer is all his family, their daughter, their sister, their nieces. But on the other hand I also believe that the stories that we, the writers, tell in our books are magical circles that we draw around ourselves, but sometimes those stories overlap with stories of other important people around us. So, as writers, we cannot use those stories which might be the sacred ground of one person, and we have to respect their privacy and their own stories.