How Tía Lola Came to Stay

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Julia Alvarez, How Tía Lola Came to Stay, Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

            I think that this book would be a great story to read with a young middle school audience.  The book follows two young adolescents, Miguel and Juanita, who are children of two divorced Dominican immigrants.  The story highlights different aspects of life with divorced parents, and also introduces a great deal of cultural aspects.  The children and their mother move from New York to Vermont in order to start a new life, but when they settle in, their lonely mother invites their aunt Lola, or Tía Lola, to come to Vermont to visit them.  Tía Lola is from the Dominican Republic and cannot speak any English, her culture and traditions are strange to the children, and they are very embarrassed by her.  However, after they begin to teach her English and she introduces them to Spanish, their relationship draws closer and they reach a mutual understanding and grow to love and appreciate each other.  Finally, when the family travels to the Dominican Republic together for Christmas, everything finally makes sense for them and they learn to appreciate their family and the Dominican culture. 

            This book has many teachable qualities.  It not only discusses the hardships of divorce, which many students may relate to, but is from the narrative of a young teenage boy, most likely around the age of the middle school students that would be in our classes; the book narrates his hardships in school, especially with trying to fit in, which would also be relevant to students.  The most interesting teachable aspect of this book, however, is the rich cultural knowledge that it presents and the strong attention to cultural misunderstanding that can happen without the drive to learn about other cultures.  Additionally, for most of the book, Tía Lola speaks in Spanish, but it is immediately translated after each sentence, which would meaningfully introduce students to this language.  A memo in the back of the book also explains why some of the words in the story were not “typical” Spanish, because they are the words used in the Dominican dialect. 

            I would be comfortable teaching this book to any level of middle school students.  The language and vocabulary in this book are not difficult to understand, but the Spanish words and information about the Dominican culture is relevant to any age group; I even found myself learning new things about life in the Dominican Republic.  I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it, especially if doing some kind of multicultural unit.   

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