I Can't be me without my people: Julia Alvarez and the Postmodern Personal Narrative

Abstract

Julia Alvarez uses autobiographical narratives to expose plural models of group formation and community identity in her novels to complicate the stability of history, autobiography, and fiction. This deployment of the autobiographical narratives helps to foreground her construction of a transnational Dominican Republic that is based on a transformative history of the self. As a result of the real trauma inflicted on Dominicans in both the island and US contexts, a linear, univocal history of the nation can no longer be constructed. Alvarez foregrounds the internal problematics of historical narratives through the self-conscious blending of genres. By situating historical considerations in her novels as much more than mere “setting,” Alvarez complicates what constitutes a “valid” historical narrative.