"When we got to Queens, it was really a shock to go from a totally Latino, familiar Caribbean world into this very cold and kind of forbidding one in which we didn't speak the language. I didn't grow up with a tradition of writing or reading books at all. People were always telling stories but it wasn't a tradition of literary ... reading a book or doing something solitary like that. Coming to this country I discovered books, I discovered that it was a way to enter into a portable homeland that you could carry around in your head. You didn't have to suffer what was going on around you. I found in books a place to go"
---Julia Alvarez

Tacoma Public Library booklists

We Dream of America
Non fiction books about imigration and immigrants for younger readers

Coming to America
Children's fiction about immigration

The Immigration Experience
A selection of books for adults

Online resources about Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez's web site
http://www.alvarezjulia.com

A biography / bibliogrpahy of Ms. Alvarez
http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/chh/bio/alvarez_j.htm

Las Mujeres: A Profile of Julia Alvarez
http://www.lasmujeres.com/juliaalvarez/profile.shtml
This site, which provides resources and information about notable Latinas, includes a detailed biographical and bibliographical profile of Alvarez..

“In the Name of the Homeland”: An Interview with Julia Alvarez from the Atlantic Monthly
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba2000-07-19.htm
In this interview, Alvarez talks about her life, work, and teaching at Middlebury College and describes how she uses her heroines to illustrate the history of her native Dominican Republic.

An interview with Julia Alvarez
http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-alvarez-julia.asp

Cafe Alta Garcia
http://www.cafealtagracia.com/
Julia Alvarez's and Bill Eichner's coffee farm in the Dominican Republic.

A comprehensive bibliography of Julia Alvarez's work
http://www.middlebury.edu/depts/english/faculty/alvarez/Alv-pub.html

Penguin Books Reading Guide
http://www.idiotsguides.com/static/rguides/us/something_to_declare.html#intro
A Reading Guide for Something to Declare in which Julia Alvarez writes of the process of writing.

How the Alvarez girl found her magic
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/05/10/alvarez_thousand/
Julia Alvarez on reading, from Salon

Online resources about immigration

The peopling of America
http://www.ellisisland.org/ (then follow link to the Immigrant Experience)
A timeline showing forces behind immigration and their impact on the immigrant experience.

Immigration: the changing face of America (from the Library of Congress)
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/introduction.html
An introduction to the study of immigration to the United States focuses on the immigrant groups that arrived in greatest numbers during the 19th and early 20th centurie using primary sources available in the Library of Congress' online collections.

Tenement Museum
http://www.thirteen.org/tenement/
Public TV station WNET presents a web tour of New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which housed over ten thousand people, mostly recent immigrants between the years 1870 and 1915.

The Golden Door: Immigration images from the Keystone-Mast Collection
http://photo.ucr.edu/projects/immigration/
The California Museum of Photography at UC, Riverside presents this collection of nearly 70 photographs on the topic of turn of the 20th century immigration to the United States, including the subjects of Ellis Island, immigrant life and labor, and World's Fair "foreign villages."

The New Americans
http://www.pbs.org/newamericans/index.html
A seven-hour PBS miniseries premiering March 29, 30 & 31, 2004. The series focuses on the search for the American Dream through the eyes of today's immigrants and refugees. From Nigeria, India, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, each family has come with different hopes.The series explores the dreams of these newcomers before they leave their homelands and follows their first years in America.

Immigration: stories of yesterday and today
http://teacher.scholastic.com/immigrat/index.htm

Ellis Island
http://www.historychannel.com/ellisisland/main.html
Outstanding online exhibit devoted to Ellis Island, with facts and figures, photos, audio and video clips, and more. Provided by the History Channel.

Ancestors in America
http://www.cetel.org/
Ancestors in America was the first major television series to offer the general public an in-depth historical understanding of one of the fastest growing -- and least known groups of immigrants in the U.S.-- Asian Americans.

From One Life to Another
http://library.thinkquest.org/26786/
This ThinkQuest presentation examines the journey of immigrants from their countries of origin to the United States. Your students can start with the Flash movie introduction, go on a site-wide tour, view the immigration time line, and play the life quiz. This site challenges students to immerse themselves in the immigrant experience. The authors invite contributions of stories of European immigration.

The Close Up Foundation
http://www.closeup.org/immigrat.htm#
An overview overview of contemporary immigration policy (through 1998).The nation’s largest nonprofit (501(c)(3)), nonpartisan citizenship education organization. Since its founding in 1970, Close Up has worked to promote responsible and informed participation in the democratic process through a variety of educational programs

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