Julia Alvarez

And in my memory, it is afternoon and we're in the present tense.

We're living that moment with her.

I mean, it is not in the past in sepia.

We're there.

We see it all, you know.

Oh, I totally agree.

I think...

to really have that kind of accuracy.

And it's so hard to find those just right, not just right words, but the right details.

And then to, you know, with tone and structure and all of that, it's just, for me, this poem,

I think it's part of its accessibility.

You know, I've, in many classes, even people that, you know, composition classes where they weren't necessarily English majors, everybody got this poem, you know, because of its simplicity.

But it means that it's really touched bottom in something that's kind of universal.

Well, I would read it as the epigraph, but point out that this is a moment that recurred in Ciudad Trujillo in the 1950s.

This was during the dictatorship that lasted 31 years.

And

The dictator changed the name of the capital.

Dictators tend to do that.

Watch out, America.

Changed the names into their own names.