Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez Poems

Julia Alvarez Biography

Born in New York City, Julia Alvarez moved to the Dominican Republic with her Dominican American parents when she was an infant. In 1960, though, the political situation forced the family to return to New York. Alvarez has explained that the experience of being forced to refine her English upon returning to the United States made her very aware of language—good training for a writer. Alvarez’s poetry often explores her identity as a Dominican American. She writes about childhood memories and the experience of being an immigrant living between two cultures. Alvarez has also written a number of 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 released in 2001.)

The Best Poem Of Julia Alvarez

Hairbands

My husband has given away my hairbands
in my dream to the young women he works with,
my black velvet, my mauve, my patent leather one,
the olive band with the magenta rose
whose paper petals crumple in the drawer,
the flowered crepe, the felt with a rickrack
of vines, the twined mock-tortoise shells.
He says I do not need them, I've cut my hair,
so it no longer falls in my eyes when I read,
or when we are making love and I bend over him.

But no, I tell him, you do not understand,
I want my hairbands even if I don't need them.
These are the trophies of my maidenhood,
the satin dress with buttons down the back,
the scented box with the scalloped photographs.
This is my wild-haired girlhood dazzled with stories
of love, the romantic heroine with the pale, operatic face
who throws herself on the train tracks of men's arms.
These are the chastened girl-selves I gave up
to become the woman who could be married to you.

But every once in a while, I pull them out
of my dresser drawer and touch them to my cheek,
worn velvet and faded silk, mi tesoro, mi juventud—
which my husband has passed on to the young women
who hold for him the promise of who I was.
And in my dream I weep real tears that wake me up
to my husband sleeping beside me that deep sleep
that makes me tremble thinking of what is coming.
And I slip out of bed to check that they are still mine,
my crumpled rose, my mauve, my black hairbands.

Julia Alvarez Comments