Julia Alvarez via Matrix

Julia Alvarez

THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL
CREATIVE ECONOMY

promulgated by
The Brazilian Ministry of Culture

fomented by
The Bahian Secretary of Culture

fomented by
The Palmares Foundation
for the promotion of Afro-Brazilian Culture

fomented by
The National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples

I CURATE/pathways out

Network Node

Name: Julia Alvarez
City/Place: Weybridge, Vermont
Country: United States
Hometown: New York City/Dominican Republic

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix

Life & Work

Bio: I guess the first thing I should say is that I was not born in the Dominican Republic. The flap bio on García Girls mentioned I was raised in the D.R., and a lot of bios after that changed raised to born, and soon I was getting calls from my mother.

I was born in New York City during my parents' first and failed stay in the United States. When I was three months old, my parents, both native Dominicans, decided to return to their homeland, preferring the dictatorship of Trujillo to the U.S.A. of the early 50s. Once again, my father got involved in the underground and soon my family was in deep trouble. We left hurriedly in 1960, four months before the founders of that underground, the Mirabal sisters, were brutally murdered by the dictatorship (see In the Time of the Butterflies).

It's not like I didn't know some English at ten when we landed in New York City. But classroom English, heavily laced with Spanish, did not prepare me for the "barbaric yawp" of American English -- as Whitman calls it. I couldn't tell where one word ended and another began. I did pick up enough English to understand that some classmates were not very welcoming. Spic! a group of bullies yelled at me in the playground. Mami insisted that the kids were saying, Speak! And then she wonders where my storytelling genes come from.

When I'm asked what made me into a writer, I point to the watershed experience of coming to this country. Not understanding the language, I had to pay close attention to each word -- great training for a writer. I also discovered the welcoming world of the imagination and books. There, I sunk my new roots. Of course, autobiographies are written afterwards. Talk to my tías in the D.R. and they'll tell you I was making up stuff way before I ever set foot in the United States of America. (And getting punished for it, too. Lying, they called it back then.) But they're right. As a kid, I loved stories, hearing them, telling them. Since ours was an oral culture, stories were not written down. It took coming to this country for reading and writing to become allied in my mind with storytelling.

All through high school and college and then a graduate program in creative writing -- you can get all the dry facts in my attached resume -- I was a driven soul. I knew that I wanted to be a writer. But it was the late sixties, early seventies. Afro-American writers were just beginning to gain admission into the canon. Latino literature or writers were unheard of. Writing which focused on the lives of non-white, non mainstream characters was considered of ethnic interest only, the province of sociology. But I kept writing, knowing that this was what was in me to do.

Of course, I had to earn a living. That's how I fell into teaching, mostly creative writing, which I loved doing. For years, I traveled across the country with poetry-in-the-schools programs, working until the funds dried up in one district, and then I'd move on to the next gig. After five years of being a migrant writer, I decided to put down roots and began teaching at the high school level, moving on to college teaching, and finally, on the strength of some publications in small magazines and a couple of writing prizes, I landed a tenure-track job.

1991 was a big year. I earned tenure at Middlebury College and published my first novel, How The García Girls Lost Their Accents. My gutsy agent, Susan Bergholz, found a small press, Algonquin Books, and a wonderful editor, Shannon Ravenel, willing to give "a new voice" a chance. I was forty-one with twenty-plus years of writing behind me. I often mention this to student writers who are discouraged at nineteen when they don't have a book contract!

With the success of García Girls, I suddenly had the chance to be what I always wanted to be: a writer who earned her living at writing. But I'd also fallen in love with the classroom. I toiled and troubled about what to do. After several years of asking for semester leaves, I gave up my tenured post. Middlebury College kindly invited me to stay on as a writer-in-residence, advising students, teaching a course from time to time, giving readings.

So here I am living in the tropical Champlain Valley. (That's the way folks in the Northeast Kingdom refer to this part of Vermont!) I'm happily settled down with my compañero, Bill Eichner, on eleven acres which Bill farms, growing most of our vegetables and greens and apples and potatoes and even Asian pears organically, haying the back pasture, and planting so many berry-bearing trees and bushes we now have enough birdsong around here to keep me humble. Recently, he has added animals: cows, calves, rabbits, chickens. As a vegetarian, it is an odd adventure helping raise somebody else's meat. But if you are going to be a carnivore (or wear shoes or carry a handbag) this is the way to do it: conscionably with affection and care and abiding gratitude to the creatures who provide for us.

The other reason I am in Vermont is Middlebury College. Now too many years ago to count, I came here as a transfer student after spending two weeks at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, which is run by the college. Here on this campus, I found my calling as a young writer. Excellent teachers taught me my craft, and friends and classmates encouraged me by listening to me read my poems late at night in our dorm rooms or more formally at campus readings. Years later, after teaching all around the country, I was offered a job here. I came back and have never left. After I gave up tenure to devote myself to full-time writing, the college offered me a post as a writer in residence. I teach occasionally, give readings often, visit classes, advise young writers by reading their creative writing assignments and theses, and -- one of my greatest honors -- serve as the godmother/madrina to our Latino students' organization ALIANZA. I've now spent more years at this place than I have anywhere else on this planet. It truly is my Alma Mater, the mother of my soul.

One last thing I should mention is the closing down of our project in the Dominican Republic. About eleven years ago, Bill and I started a sustainable farm-literacy center called Alta Gracia. I wrote a "green fable," A Cafecito Story, inspired by our adventure. In the afterword, Bill described our actual project -- how and why we got together with a group of small farmers who were trying to continue their old way of planting coffee under shade trees, organic, by default -- who could afford fertilizers? The literacy center was run by fabulous volunteer teachers, recent graduates of Middlebury College. We also teamed up with a stateside roaster and distributor, Vermont Coffee Company®. They roasted and sold Tres Mariposas and Café Altagracia and helped with funding our volunteer program. But given age and living in Vermont, Bill and I could not sustain the Dominican side of our project. If anyone is interested, we have 260 acres in a cloud forest, it is for sale.

Contact Information

Management/Booking: Stuart Bernstein
Representation for Artists
63 Carmine St. 3D
New York, New York 10014
phone: 917-864-1532
www.stuartbernstein.com

Media | Markets

▶ Book Purchases: http://www.juliaalvarez.com/books/
▶ Website: http://www.juliaalvarez.com
▶ Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/books/review/afterlife-julia-alvarez.html

Clips (more may be added)

Art Works Podcast: Julia Alvarez--NEA Literature Fellow and Big Read author
By Julia Alvarez

377 views
Julia Alvarez: 2019 National Book Festival
By Julia Alvarez

386 views

Julia Alvarez Curated
pathways in

What's Been Happening?

A category was added to Julia Alvarez:

Middlebury College Faculty
- April 5, 2020
A category was added to Julia Alvarez:

Poet
- April 5, 2020
A video was posted re Julia Alvarez:

Art Works Podcast: Julia Alvarez--NEA Literature Fellow and Big Read author
Twenty-five years ago, Julia Alvarez published In the Time of the Butterflies, which was chosen as a Big Read title in 2010. Set in the Dominican Republic...
- April 5, 2020
A video was posted re Julia Alvarez:

Julia Alvarez: 2019 National Book Festival
Julia Alvarez discussed "In the Time of the Butterflies" at the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. - Twenty-five years ago, ...
- April 5, 2020
A category was added to Julia Alvarez:

Latin American Literature
- April 5, 2020
A category was added to Julia Alvarez:

Novelist
- April 5, 2020
A category was added to Julia Alvarez:

Dominican Republic
- April 5, 2020
A category was added to Julia Alvarez:

Writer
- April 5, 2020
Julia Alvarez is matrixed!
- April 5, 2020

ENGLISH (pra Portuguese →)

João had something priceless to offer the world.
But he was impossible for the world to find.
✅—João do Boi

✅—Pardal/Sparrow
Royalty work in NYC for
Aretha Franklin, Gilberto Gil
Mongo Santamaria, Airto Moreira
Astrud Gilberto, Barbra Streisand
Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass
Carlinhos Brown, Richie Havens
Jim Hall, Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam)
Ray Barretto, Wah Wah Watson
The Cadillacs, The Flamingos...
I've been screamed at by Aretha Franklin,
and harangued by Allen Klein over
royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke.
I built this matrix beginning with João do Boi.
Please link to, tell others about, join us!
[email protected]

PATHWAYS
from Brazil, with love

THE MISSION: Beginning with the atavistic genius of the Recôncavo (per the bottom of this section) & the great sertão (the backlands of Brazil's nordeste) — make artists across Brazil — and around the world — discoverable as they never were before.

HOW: Integrate them into a vast matrixed ecosystem together with musicians, writers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers, fashion designers, educators, chefs et al from all over the planet (are you in this ecosystem?) such that these artists all tend to be connected to each other via short, discoverable, accessible pathways. Q.E.D.

"Matrixado! Laroyê!"
✅—Founding Member Darius Mans
Economist, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
✅—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President of Brazil

The matrix was created in Salvador's Centro Histórico, where Bule Bule below, among first-generation matrixed colleagues, sings "Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor... The time has come for these bronzed people to show their worth..."

Music & lyrics (Brasil Pandeiro) by Assis Valente of Santo Amaro, Bahia, Brazil. Video by Betão Aguiar of Salvador.

...the endeavor motivated in the first instance by the fact that in common with most cultures around our planet, the preponderance of Brazil's vast cultural treasure has been impossible to find from outside of circumscribed regions, including Brazil itself...

Thus something new under the tropical sun: Open curation beginning with Brazilian musicians recommending other Brazilian musicians and moving on around the globe...

Where by the seemingly magical mathematics of the small world phenomenon, and in the same way that most human beings are within some six or so steps of most others, all in the matrix tend to proximity to all others...

The difference being that in the matrix, these steps are along pathways that can be travelled. The creative world becomes a neighborhood. Quincy Jones is right up the street and Branford Marsalis around the corner. And the most far-flung genius you've never heard of is just a few doors down. Maybe even in Brazil.

"I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
✅—Susan Rogers
Personal recording engineer: Prince, Paisley Park Recording Studio
Director: Music Perception & Cognition Laboratory, Berklee College of Music
Author: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You

"Many thanks for this - I am touched!"
✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
That most fabled cellist in the United Kingdom (and Brazilian music fan)

"I'm truly thankful... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini
Blue Note recording artist

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals
Founder of The Klezmatics

"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad
Compositions recorded by Yo Yo Ma and played by orchestras around the world

"Thank you"
(Banch Abegaze, manager)
✅—Kamasi Washington

Bahia is a hot cauldron of rhythms and musical styles, but one particular style here is so utterly essential, so utterly fundamental not only to Bahian music specifically but to Brazilian music in general — occupying a place here analogous to that of the blues in the United States — that it deserves singling out. It is derived from (or some say brother to) the cabila rhythm of candomblé angola… …and it is called…

Samba Chula / Samba de Roda

Mother of Samba… daughter of destiny carried to Bahia by Bantus ensconced within the holds of negreiros entering the great Bahia de Todos os Santos (the term referring both to a dance and to the style of music which evolved to accompany that dance; the official orthography of “Bahia” — in the sense of “bay” — has since been changed to “Baía”)… evolved on the sugarcane plantations of the Recôncavo (that fertile area around the bay, the concave shape of which gave rise to the region’s name) — in the vicinity of towns like Cachoeira and Santo Amaro, Santiago do Iguape and Acupe. This proto-samba has unfortunately fallen into the wayside of hard to find and hear…

There’s a lot of spectacle in Bahia…

Carnival with its trio elétricos — sound-trucks with musicians on top — looking like interstellar semi-trailers back from the future…shows of MPB (música popular brasileira) in Salvador’s Teatro Castro Alves (biggest stage in South America!) with full production value, the audience seated (as always in modern theaters) like Easter Island statues…

…glamour, glitz, money, power and press agents…

And then there’s where it all came from…the far side of the bay, a land of subsistence farmers and fishermen, many of the older people unable to read or write…their sambas the precursor to all this, without which none of the above would exist, their melodies — when not created by themselves — the inventions of people like them but now forgotten (as most of these people will be within a couple of generations or so of their passing), their rhythms a constant state of inconstancy and flux, played in a manner unlike (most) any group of musicians north of the Tropic of Cancer…making the metronome-like sledgehammering of the Hit Parade of the past several decades almost wincefully painful to listen to after one’s ears have become accustomed to evershifting rhythms played like the aurora borealis looks…

So there’s the spectacle, and there’s the spectacular, and more often than not the latter is found far afield from the former, among the poor folk in the villages and the backlands, the humble and the honest, people who can say more (like an old delta bluesman playing a beat-up guitar on a sagging back porch) with a pandeiro (Brazilian tambourine) and a chula (a shouted/sung “folksong”) than most with whatever technology and support money can buy. The heart of this matter, is out there. If you ask me anyway.

Above, the incomparable João do Boi, chuleiro, recently deceased.

Why Brazil?

Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.

Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.

Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).

Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.

Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming a scintillatingly unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.

Nowhere else but here. Brazil itself is a matrix.

PORTUGUÊS (to English →)

João tinha algo inestimável a oferecer ao mundo.
Mas ele era impossível pro mundo encontrar.
✅—João do Boi

✅—Pardal/Sparrow
Trabalho de royalties para
Aretha Franklin, Gilberto Gil
Mongo Santamaria, Airto Moreira
Astrud Gilberto, Barbra Streisand
Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass
Carlinhos Brown, Richie Havens
Jim Hall, Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam)
Ray Barretto, Wah Wah Watson
The Cadillacs, The Flamingos...
Fui gritado por Aretha Franklin,
e arengado por Allen Klein sobre
royalties para o patrimônio de Sam Cooke.
Eu construi este matrix a partir de João do Boi.
Por favor, faça um link para, conte aos outros, junte-se a nós!
[email protected]

CAMINHOS
do Brasil, com amor

A MISSÃO: Começando com a atávica genialidade do Recôncavo (conforme o final desta seção) e do grande sertão — tornar artistas através do Brasil — e ao redor do mundo — descobriveis como nunca foram antes.

COMO: Integrá-los num vasto ecosistema matrixado, juntos com músicos, escritores, cineastas, pintores, coreógrafos, designers de moda, educadores, chefs e outros de todos os lugares (você está neste ecosistema?) de modo que todos esses artistas tendem a estar ligados entre si por caminhos curtos, descobriveis e acessíveis. Q.E.D.

"Matrixado! Laroyê!"
✅—Membro Fundador Darius Mans
Economista, doutorado, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
✅—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Presidente do Brasil

O matrix foi criado no Centro Histórico de Salvador, onde Bule Bule no clipe, entre colegas da primeira geração no matrix, canta "Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor..."

Música & letras (Brasil Pandeiro) por Assis Valente de Santo Amaro, Bahia. Vídeo por Betão Aguiar de Salvador.

...o empreendimento motivado na primeira instância pelo fato de que em comum com a maioria das culturas ao redor do nosso planeta, a preponderância do vasto tesouro cultural do Brasil tem sido impossível de encontrar fora de regiões circunscritas, incluindo o próprio Brasil.

Assim, algo novo sob o sol tropical: Curadoria aberta começando com músicos brasileiros recomendando outros músicos brasileiros e avançando ao redor do globo...

Onde pela matemática aparentemente mágica do fenômeno do mundo pequeno, e da mesma forma que a maioria dos seres humanos estão dentro de cerca de seis passos da maioria dos outros, todos no matrix tendem a se aproximar de todos...

Com a diferença que no matrix, estes passos estão ao longo de caminhos que podem ser percorridos. O mundo criativo se torna uma vizinhança. Quincy Jones está lá em cima e Branford Marsalis está ao virar da esquina. E o gênio distante que você nunca ouviu falar tá lá embaixo. Talvez até no Brasil.

"Fico muitíssimo feliz em receber seu e-mail! Obrigada por me incluir neste matrix maravilhoso."
✅—Susan Rogers
Engenheiro de gravação pessoal para Prince: Paisley Park Estúdio de Gravação
Diretora: Laboratório de Percepção e Cognição Musical, Berklee College of Music
Autora: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You

"Muito obrigado por isso - estou tocado!"
✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
Merecidamente o violoncelista mais lendário do Reino Unido (e fã da música brasileira)

"Estou realmente agradecido... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini
Artista da Blue Note

"Obrigada, esta é uma ideia brilhante!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals
Fundadora do The Klezmatics

"Este é um trabalho super impressionante! Parabéns! Obrigada por me incluir :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad
Composições gravadas por Yo Yo Ma e tocadas por orquestras ao redor do mundo

"Thank you"
(Banch Abegaze, empresário)
✅—Kamasi Washington

A Bahia é um caldeirão quente de ritmos e estilos musicais, mas um estilo particular aqui é tão essencial, tão fundamental não só para a música baiana especificamente, mas para a música brasileira em geral - ocupando um lugar aqui análogo ao do blues nos Estados Unidos - que merece ser destacado. Ela deriva (ou alguns dizem irmão para) do ritmo cabila do candomblé angola... ...e é chamada de...

Samba Chula / Samba de Roda

Mãe do Samba... filha do destino carregada para a Bahia por Bantus ensconced dentro dos porões de negreiros entrando na grande Bahia de Todos os Santos (o termo refere-se tanto a uma dança quanto ao estilo de música que evoluiu para acompanhar essa dança; a ortografia oficial da "Bahia" - no sentido de "baía" - foi desde então alterada para "Baía")... evoluiu nas plantações de cana de açúcar do Recôncavo (aquela área fértil ao redor da baía, cuja forma côncava deu origem ao nome da região) - nas proximidades de cidades como Cachoeira e Santo Amaro, Santiago do Iguape e Acupe. Este proto-samba infelizmente caiu no caminho de difíceis de encontrar e ouvir...

Há muito espetáculo na Bahia...

Carnaval com seu trio elétrico - caminhões sonoros com músicos no topo - parecendo semi-reboques interestelares de volta do futuro...shows de MPB (música popular brasileira) no Teatro Castro Alves de Salvador (maior palco da América do Sul!) com total valor de produção, o público sentado (como sempre nos teatros modernos) como estátuas da Ilha de Páscoa...

...glamour, glitz, dinheiro, poder e publicitários...

E depois há de onde tudo isso veio... do outro lado da baía, uma terra de agricultores e pescadores de subsistência, muitos dos mais velhos incapazes de ler ou escrever... seus sambas precursores de tudo isso, sem os quais nenhuma das anteriores existiria, suas melodias - quando não criadas por eles mesmos - as invenções de pessoas como eles, mas agora esquecidas (pois a maioria dessas pessoas estará dentro de um par de gerações ou mais), seus ritmos um constante estado de inconstância e fluxo, tocados de uma forma diferente (a maioria) de qualquer grupo de músicos do norte do Trópico de Câncer... fazendo com que o martelo de forja do Hit Parade das últimas décadas seja quase que doloroso de ouvir depois que os ouvidos se acostumam a ritmos sempre mutáveis, tocados como a aurora boreal parece...

Portanto, há o espetáculo, e há o espetacular, e na maioria das vezes o último é encontrado longe do primeiro, entre o povo pobre das aldeias e do sertão, os humildes e os honestos, pessoas que podem dizer mais (como um velho bluesman delta tocando uma guitarra batida em um alpendre flácido) com um pandeiro (pandeiro brasileiro) e uma chula (um "folksong" gritado/cantado) do que a maioria com qualquer tecnologia e dinheiro de apoio que o dinheiro possa comprar. O coração deste assunto, está lá. Se você me perguntar de qualquer forma.

Acima, o incomparável João do Boi, chuleiro, recentemente falecido.

Por que Brasil?

O Brasil não é uma nação européia. Não é uma nação norte-americana. Não é uma nação do leste asiático. Compreende — selva e deserto e centros urbanos densos — tanto o equador quanto o Trópico de Capricórnio.

O Brasil absorveu mais de dez vezes o número de africanos escravizados levados para os Estados Unidos da América, e é um repositório de divindades africanas (e sua música) agora em grande parte esquecido em suas terras de origem.

O Brasil era um refúgio (de certa forma) para os sefarditas que fugiam de uma Inquisição que os seguia através do Atlântico (aquele símbolo não oficial da música nacional brasileira — o pandeiro — foi quase certamente trazido ao Brasil por esse povo).

Através das savanas ressequidas do interior do culturalmente fecundo nordeste, onde o mago Hermeto Pascoal nasceu na Lagoa da Canoa e cresceu em Olho d'Águia, uma grande parte da população aborígine do Brasil foi absorvida por uma cultura caboclo/quilombola pontuada pela Estrela de Davi.

Três culturas - de três continentes - correndo por suas vidas, sua confluência formando uma quarta cintilante e sem precedentes. Pandeirista no telhado.

Em nenhum outro lugar a não ser aqui. Brasil é um matrix mesmo.