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Published Apr 2012
304 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Julia Alvarez has been called "a one-woman cultural collision" by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and that has never been truer than in this story about three of her most personal relationships - with her parents, with her husband, and with a young Haitian boy known as Piti.
A teenager when Julia and her husband, Bill, first met him in 2001, Piti crossed the border into the Dominican Republic to find work. Julia, impressed by his courage, charmed by his smile, has over the years come to think of him as a son, even promising to be at his wedding someday. When Piti calls in 2009, Julia's promise is tested.
To Alvarez, much admired for her ability to lead readers deep inside her native Dominican culture, "Haiti is like a sister I've never gotten to know." And so we follow her across the border into what was once the richest of all the French colonies and now teeters on the edge of the abyss - first for the celebration of a wedding and a year later to find Piti's loved ones in the devastation of the earthquake. As in all of Alvarez's books, a strong message is packed inside an intimate, beguiling story, this time about the nature of poverty and of wealth, of human love and of human frailty, of history and of the way we live now.
"Alvarez's account sounds an urgent need for a humanitarian reckoning between the haves and have-nots." - Publishers Weekly
"A warm, funny and compassionate memoir." - Kirkus Reviews
"She is the ideal travel companion - witty and observant and, as in all of Julia Alvarez's writing, compassionate and full of heart. A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you will find." - Mark Kurlansky
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brandon Cruz González/EL VOCERO DE PUERTO RICO
Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library's program "The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez."
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