Tuesday, October 4 & 11, 2022, 7 pm

Julia Alvarez’s voice vibrates with cultural duality. Her latest novel, Afterlife, braids the loss of a spouse, an undocumented worker’s personal drama, the fate of New England dairy farmers depending on their shadow-immigrants, and small town Vermont life into a tale of our times. Alvarez, American born, who returned to the Dominican Republic with her family for the first ten years of her life and then fled back to America with them in 1960, keeps her heritage alive in all her books. From Saving the World, the tale of a 19th-century Spanish expedition sent to vaccinate Spain’s American colonies against smallpox woven with a contemporary tale to In the Time of the Butterflies, the heart-wrenching account of the Mirabal sisters assassinated in 1960 under Trujillo’s brutal regime and now, Afterlife, she pulls us into the arc of deep history, politics, and cultural identity that has shaped her own life experience. Participants are encouraged to read the novel first and come to share ideas as we celebrate her contribution to American literature.

FREE