Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez will be the focus of a new documentary for PBS from “American Masters” and Latino Public Broadcasting. Timed to Hispanic Heritage Month, “Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined” will premiere on Tuesday, Sept, 17 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS. The program will be presented by “American Masters” and the LPB series “Voces.”
A Dominican-American poet and novelist, Alvarez made literary waves beginning in the early 1990s with her semi-autobiographical novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” (published in 1991), followed by 1994’s “In the Time of the Butterflies,” about life under Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Now 74, Alvarez most recently published the novel “The Cemetery of Untold Stories.”
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Alvarez has been behind three nonfiction books, three poetry collections, 11 children/young adult books and seven literary novels.
“Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined” includes extensive interviews with Alvarez, her family and her literary contemporaries. The documentary is produced and directed by Adriana Bosch (“Latino Americans,” “Latin Music USA”).
“In our film, Dominican poet Elizabeth Acevedo introduces Julia by saying that ‘Julia belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Women Latino writers, along with Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros,'” Bosch said. “She was among the pioneers in creating a new literature that expanded the meaning of the ‘American Mainstream’ and reminds us of the famous line by Langston Hughes – I too sing America.”
Per the logline, the doc (filmed both in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic) “opens a window into her extraordinary journey from an idyllic, privileged childhood in the Dominican Republic to a life of exile in New York City to a brilliant literary career that shows no sign of slowing down.”
“We’re delighted to partner with American Masters to tell the story of one of the most influential Latina writers of our time,” said Sandie Viquez Pedlow, LPB executive director and executive producer of “Voces.” “Alvarez’s poetry and novels offer a unique perspective on the melding of her two cultures — American and Dominican — and are among the finest works about the American immigrant experience.”
“Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined” is a co-production of Latino Public Broadcasting, Bosch & Company, Inc. and ITVS in association with “American Masters.”
