Poems by Julia Alvarez
(New York: Grove Press, 1984)
In this first collection of poems, Julia Alvarez returns to the old world culture of her childhood in the Dominican Republic. There she reconstructs her experiences as an apprentice housekeeper with a mother who is at once Ariadne and Penelope, mistress of all domestic arts. Yet the grownup daughter of the later poems is not the heroine of her mother's s story, for she is "thirty-three, without a husband, house, or children." In the closing sequence of narrative sonnets, Alvarez explores her own identity as daughter, sister, friend, lover, and poet. Hers is a fresh voice that speaks to the reader with precision, humor, and compassionate honesty.
"Julia Alvarez ... becomes the architect of her own selfhood as she explores her ambivalent relations to a lost Caribbean heritage' to a domestic tradition learned from her mother, to her own highly complex sexual and social identity. The delicate structure of Homecoming? has its foundations deep in the terra firma of language itself." ---Jay Parini
"Searching for the secret meanings of what has been known as "women's work,"Julia Alvarez, in this promisingfirst book, is alsosearching for the secret meanings of her own womanhood." ---Linda Pastan
"This is a book in which every woman will recognize the necessities and choices that make up her life." ---Pamela White Hadas