47 pages • 1 hour read
Julia AlvarezHow Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Authorial Context: Julia Alvarez’s Works and Honors
Julia Alvarez is a renowned Latina author. Like Miguel Guzmán in the Tía Lola series, she is Dominican American and was born in New York City. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), uses the lives of four sisters to examine the immigrant experience, the impact of class and gender on identity, and the struggles facing the post-colonial Dominican Republic. The bildungsroman draws from the author’s childhood on the island. Like Alvarez’s own family, the fictional Garcías flee to the US after their father is involved in a failed attempt to overthrow the brutal military dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Her second novel, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), is a work of historical fiction set during Trujillo’s rule. The book is based on the true story of the Mirabal sisters, who were murdered for their opposition to the dictator and became national heroes known as the Mariposas (the Spanish word for butterflies). Her 2002 young adult novel Before We Were Free explores these themes from the perspective of 11-year-old Anita de la Torre.
Alvarez has also penned commercially and critically successful books for young readers. In 2009, she published Return to Sender, a middle-grade novel about a white boy named Tyler whose family hires migrant workers from Mexico. Mari, one of the worker’s daughters, befriends Tyler and faces conflict due to prejudice and the infrastructural challenges of living as an undocumented immigrant. Like the Tía Lola series, Return to Sender is set in Vermont and examines immigrants’ struggles through the lens of its child protagonist. The novel won the Pura Belpré Award and the Américas Award. Alvarez’s other honors include the Hispanic Heritage Award and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts, which is the highest honor the US government bestows on artists.
Series Context: The Tía Lola Books
How Tía Lola Came to (Visit) Stay is the first installment of a 4-book series. This first book, which was published in 2001, introduces readers to 10-year-old Miguel Guzmán and his possibly magical great-aunt. The novel received praise for the heartfelt and humorous way it addresses difficult situations children face, such as their parents’ divorce and moving to a new place. In 2010, Alvarez published How Tía Lola Learned to Teach. In this sequel, Tía Lola becomes a Spanish teacher at Miguel and Juanita’s rural Vermont school. Miguel objects to this arrangement and to his father’s new girlfriend similar to the way he’s resistant to his parents’ divorce and to Tía Lola moving in with his family in the first book. This second story continues Miguel’s journey of personal growth as he accepts his family’s changing structure and learns to take pride in his heritage. Miguel’s little sister, Juanita, has a more prominent role in the second book. Alvarez gives her a subplot in which she struggles with maintaining attention and focus in school and leads her classmates in a competition. In addition, Tía Lola’s new role as a language teacher echoes the first novel’s thematic interest in the role of language in shaping identity.
The third book in the series, How Tía Lola Saved the Summer, was published in 2011. In this book, Miguel’s mother welcomes a man named Mr. Sword and his three daughters to the Guzmán family’s home for a week. Her generous gesture aligns with the theme of community support in the first book, but it vexes Miguel. Tía Lola comes to the rescue by creating a summer camp for Miguel, Juanita, and the Sword girls. The fourth and final book in the series, How Tía Lola Ended Up Starting Over, was published in 2012. In this story, Tía Lola transforms Colonel Charlebois’s farmhouse into a bed and breakfast with the help of Miguel, Juanita, and the three Sword sisters. One of the major plot events is a surprise birthday party for Tía Lola, echoing the surprise parties for Miguel and his mother that advance the theme of family and community in the first book. Readers who enjoy How Tía Lola Came to (Visit) Stay can join Tía Lola for three more adventures that celebrate the importance of culture, language, and family.
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