Rachael asked Julia Alvarez:

You write a lot about the relationships between Antonia and her sisters. Do you have siblings? Which parts of their relationships felt familiar to you?

Julia Alvarez I do have siblings, three sisters--an all-female family. Maybe because of that, I've always been drawn to stories in which there are strong bonds between women, whether of blood or friendship. My first novel How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, as well as its sequel, ¡YO!, focus on the four García sisters, and In The Time Of The Butterflies is about the four historical sisters, the Mirabals. As a young reader, my favorite books were the Arabian Nights, in which Scheherazade and her sister, Dunyazad, work together to enthrall the cruel sultan with stories, and also Little Women, about four sisters, very much like my own family. Those powerful bonds of blood or friendship were what allow so many women to survive and thrive in the oppressive regimes they found themselves. That said, I don't want to airbrush "the sisterhood" and make it all about how wonderful and empowering such covens can be--they are also riddled with competition, conflict, grievances--and I can attest to that in my own life and in my novel! Especially in a Latina sisterhood, we don't have "pelos en la lengua," we don't hold back when we have something to say. The sparks fly, but they also create a bonfire by which we can sit, feel warmed, tell our stories.

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