[3] Born in New York, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.

In recent years, Alvarez has expanded her subject matter with works such as 'In the Name of Salomé (2000)', a novel with Cuban rather than solely Dominican characters and fictionalized versions of historical figures.

[9] In 1960, the family was forced to flee to the United States after her father participated in a failed plot to overthrow the island's military dictator, Rafael Trujillo,[10] circumstances which would later be revisited in her writing: her novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, for example, portrays a family that is forced to leave the Dominican Republic in similar circumstances,[11] and in her poem, "Exile", she describes "the night we fled the country" and calls the experience a "loss much larger than I understood".

[12] Alvarez's transition from the Dominican Republic to the United States was difficult; Sirias comments that she "lost almost everything: a homeland, a language, family connections, a way of understanding, and a warmth".

[12] In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a character asserts that trying to raise "consciousness [in the Dominican Republic]... would be like trying for cathedral ceilings in a tunnel".

After her work in Kentucky, she extended her educational endeavors to California, Delaware, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Illinois.

[21] She and her partner, Bill Eichner, an ophthalmologist, created Alta Gracia, a farm-literacy center dedicated to the promotion of environmental sustainability and literacy and education worldwide.

[24] Alvarez is part of Border of Lights, an activist group that encourages positive relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

[28] Alvarez's poetry celebrates and questions nature and the rituals of family life, (including domestic chores) a theme in her well known poem "Dusting."

Nuances of asphyxiated family life such as exile, assimilation, identity, and social class ebb and flow passionately through her poems.

[32][33] Alvarez illuminates the integration of the Latina immigrant into the U.S. mainstream and shows that identity can be deeply affected by gender, ethnic, and class differences.

In 1960, their bodies were found at the bottom of a cliff on the north coast of the island, and it is said they were a part of a revolutionary movement to overthrow the oppressive regime of the country at the time.

[40] Alvarez's opinions on the hybridization of culture are often conveyed through the use of Spanish-English malapropisms, or Spanglish; such expressions are especially prominent in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.

The Ciguapas are a fictional people that have dark skin, black eyes, with long, shiny hair that flows down the length their bodies.

Again, Alvarez uses the friendship between an American boy and Latina young girl as part of the story, but makes the relationship much less central in this earlier work.

The novel takes place in several locations, including the Dominican Republic before a backdrop of political turbulence, Communist Cuba in the 1960s, and several university campuses across the United States, containing themes of empowerment and activism.

"[42] This book has been widely acclaimed for its careful historical research and captivating story, and was described by Publishers Weekly as "one of the most politically moving novels of the past half century.

[26] As Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez observes, Alvarez is part of a movement of Latina writers that also includes Sandra Cisneros and Cristina García, all of whom weave together themes of the experience of straddling the borders and cultures of Latin America and the United States.

[44] Coonrod Martínez suggests that a subsequent generation of Dominican-American writers, such as Angie Cruz, Loida Maritza Pérez, Nelly Rosario, and Junot Díaz, have been inspired by Alvarez's success.

[44] Alvarez has admitted that: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is the first novel by a Dominican-American woman to receive widespread acclaim and attention in the United States.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents was the winner of the 1991 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for works that present a multicultural viewpoint.