PBS Books | "The Cemetery of Untold Stories" by Julia Alvarez | Readers Club @PBSBooks | Uploaded September 2024 | Updated October 2024, 20 hours ago.
Literary icon and great American novelist Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of "In the Time of the Butterflies" and "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", joins the PBS Books Readers Club to discuss a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Readers will be excited to pair this novel with the September 2024 release of American Masters: Julia Alvarez on PBS, chronicling the life and work of one of the most critically and commercially successful Latina writers of her generation.
Learn more here: pbsbooks.org/event/readers-club-109
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
2:28 About "The Cemetery of Untold Stories"
3:11 Thoughts on the book
8:26 Julia Alvarez Interview
22:40 Julia's Question for her Readers
26:58 Julia Alvarez Interview Continues
42:20 Interview Recap
44:36 Preview of American Masters featuring Julia Alvarez
48:15 Reveal - October Book Pick
51:14 Outro
About "The Cemetery of Untold Stories"
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Welcome to PBS Books!
Explore our website: pbsbooks.org
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#pbsbooks #readersclub #juliaalvarez #author #authorinterview #pbs #fiction
Literary icon and great American novelist Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of "In the Time of the Butterflies" and "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents", joins the PBS Books Readers Club to discuss a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Readers will be excited to pair this novel with the September 2024 release of American Masters: Julia Alvarez on PBS, chronicling the life and work of one of the most critically and commercially successful Latina writers of her generation.
Learn more here: pbsbooks.org/event/readers-club-109
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
2:28 About "The Cemetery of Untold Stories"
3:11 Thoughts on the book
8:26 Julia Alvarez Interview
22:40 Julia's Question for her Readers
26:58 Julia Alvarez Interview Continues
42:20 Interview Recap
44:36 Preview of American Masters featuring Julia Alvarez
48:15 Reveal - October Book Pick
51:14 Outro
About "The Cemetery of Untold Stories"
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Welcome to PBS Books!
Explore our website: pbsbooks.org
Subscribe to our newsletter: pbsbooks.org/subscribe
Join the Readers Club: facebook.com/groups/pbsbooksreadersclub
Support us: pbsbooks.org/donate
#pbsbooks #readersclub #juliaalvarez #author #authorinterview #pbs #fiction
