Julia+Alvarez



By: Liliana Cruz =**Biography:**= Julia Alvarez was born in New York City, moved to the Dominican Republic with her Dominican American parents as an infant. For a political situation were forced to move back to New York in 1960. She has explained that being forced to refine her English upon return to the United States made her aware of language. Alvarez's poetry often explores her identity as a Dominican American. She often writes about her childhood memories and what it was like being an immigrant living between two cultures. She has written multiple novels, including //How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents// (1991) and //In the Time of Butterflies// (1994), which was set during the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and adapted into a motion picture that was released in 2001.



=Poem Analysis:= ====Julia Alvarez's poem pretty much spells out imagery to me. Throughout the entire time she has the reader picturing everything she is saying. Alvarez is admiring and remembering her mother in this poem.There is not any specific meter throughout this poem. In this poem she is clearly reminiscing old times admiring her mother and her ability. She explains how she had the job holding the fabric as it came through the machine her impatience clear as her mother told her not to rush it. As i read the poem it created a picture in my mind of her mom being somewhat of a perfectionist as she made the clothes. I picture this because of when she says //flip it over and see the work doesn't show// in the 7th line. This goes to show her mother's want for the clothes to be as perfect as possible for her.Overall the poem to me is her admiration towards her mother and the clothes that she made for her. As well as her remembrance for her as a child on those "rainy days" that she did all she did for her. Overall this poem is based off pure admiration and remembrance for her mother and all those sewing sessions being a big part of her childhood all memories of hers now. Personally //New Clothes// allows readers to not only read her very own memories of her mother but allows the reader to take a minute to possibly reminisce upon their own childhood memories of their mother as well.====

=Sources:= http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/140/2#!/20594502



=**Poem Analysis:**= ====In Julia Alvarez's poem "Heroics" i got the sense of sadness throughout her poem. This poem is clearly based off love. Although in my perspective it seemed as if Alvarez's point was that love does not end up being all it is cut out to be. It seems as if she has been hurt multiple times and although one has this mere image of love it does not turn out to be what one sees in the magazines,movies,shows etc.This poem basically tells how people have this idea of love in their head and many times get heart broken by what the end result is. Alvarez also says how many times our moms let us know how everything is gonna end up fine and tell all friends and family all that society has confused us with this idea of love yet we buy all the plot ideas of love to read them allowing us to believe in love again before turning the page and knowing to well that it is not gonna be that way. In the first stanza there is some rhyme when Alvarez writes" we keep coming to this part of the story where were sad : I've broken up with my one true love man after man."The length of the stanza's also tend to be pretty equal throughout the poem.Alvarez has repetition in the first stanza once is repeated when she says" Once, it was god and then next line says Once, revolution. She also creates some imagery when she writes how we turn the pages to write our hearts out knowing our lives to well.Overall Alvarez's poem does a perfect job at allowing a reader to have an insight on one's reality of how the idea of what love is supposed to be is crushed when faced with reality on what it turns out to be.====

=**Poem:**= =Sources:= http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=35138



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