In her first book of nonfiction, Julia Alvarez takes us behind the scenes and shares the lessons she's learned on her way to becoming an internationally acclaimed novelist. In 1960, when Alvarez was ten years old, her family fled the Dominican Republic. Her father participated in a failed coup attempt against the dictator Rafael Trujillo, and exile to the United States was the only way to save his life. The family settled in New York City, where Dr. Alvarez set up a medical practice in the Bronx while his wife and four daughters set about the business of assimilation--a lifelong struggle. Loss of her native land, language, culture, and extended family formed the thematic basis for two of Julia Alvarez's three best-selling novels--HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and its sequel, YO! Her father's revolutionary ties inspired IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES, her historical novel about one of Trujillo's most infamous atrocities. SOMETHING TO DECLARE offers an extraordinary collection of essays that deal with the two big issues of Alvarez's life--growing up with one foot in each culture and writing. The twelve essays that make up "Customs," the first of two parts, examine the specific effects of exile on this writer. The essays are personal--how her maternal grandfather passed along his love of the arts, how the nuclear family-in-exile snuggled down every year to watch the Miss America contest from the parental bed, how Julia feared her family might disown her upon publication of her first novel. In the second half, "Declarations," are twelve essays about writing that range from confession of Alvarez's means of supporting her writing habit to the gritty details of her actual process. Every one of these essays is warm, open, honest, and generous. SOMETHING TO DECLARE will appeal not only to her many fans, but to students of writing at all levels. YA-The poet and novelist brings together two dozen pithy autobiographical essays that are by turn humorous, thoughtful, or frightening. The first third of the book follows Alvarez's early Dominican childhood-when she was one of the wild cousins who was seated between well-behaved ones at family gatherings-through her family's immigration to the United States and their assimilation. Later essays take up the author's college years, budding career as a writer, marriages, and return trips to the Dominican Republic. Alvarez presents her personal experiences with a literary skill that converts them into universal moments. This book will delight her fans, attract new readers to her previous work, and open the possibility for discussions about experiences with emigration, immigration, growing apart from one's family, and discovering one's own career path and status as an adult. Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. This first collection of essays, some previously published, by award-winning Hispanic American author Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, LJ 5/1/91) ranges freely between her life as a child displaced by her family's flight from the Dominican Republic and her development as a writer. In two sections, she explores childhood memories of trying to become part of American society, her developing interest in writing?encountering encouragement from a teacher and some discouragement from her family?and the road to becoming a full-time writer. Along the way, she offers comments on teaching?repeating Roethke's saying that teaching is "one of the few professions that permit love"?and some advice for young writers, including the idea that "we are here to learn a craft that truly takes all of life to learn." This collection will be of interest to both public and academic libraries.?Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, NC Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Readers can sense the bright flame of Alvarez's young self in her exuberant novels, and that same energy animates her essays, whether she's describing her Dominican Republic childhood or her life in the U.S. Two themes shape her first nonfiction collection: family and literature. In her familial recollections, she emerges as the most rebellious of four sisters and nearly the only one in the entire clan to be bookstruck. This love of reading proved providential because books helped her cope with her family's abrupt move to New York City (a leave-taking necessitated by her parents' resistance work against the island's dictatorship) and the long struggle to feel comfortable in a culture that automatically stigmatized her and her relatives by virtue of their accents and appearance. As she moves on to contrast the dynamics of family life with the solitude of writing, Alvarez ends up sharing her views on such personal matters as food, marriage, and the decision not to be a mother, all the while exuding an easy charm that almost succeeds in concealing the tremendous force of her will. Donna Seaman The much-praised poet and novelist Alv