Host Kathleen Stephenson speaks with writer Julia Alvarez, author of numerous books including How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
In her new memoir, A Wedding in Haiti (Algonquin), she tells the story of a Haitian boy known as Piti. When she first met him in 2001, Piti had crossed the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic looking for work. Impressed by his courage and charmed by his smile, Alvarez comes to think of him as a son, even promising to attend his wedding someday. When Piti calls in 2009, her promise is tested. Alvarez crosses the border into Haiti twice, first to celebrate Piti's wedding and a year later to look for his loved ones after the devastation of the 2010 earthquake. Throughout, Alvarez meditates on the nature of poverty and wealth, of love and frailty, of history and modernity.