Julia Alvarez was born in 1951 in New York but lived in the Dominican Republic until she was 10. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents mirrors many of the events of Alvarez’s own life, especially via the character of Yolanda García. Alvarez was born into a large, affluent family in the Dominican Republic. Her family lived under the Trujillo dictatorship before being exiled from the Dominican Republic. Her father was involved in a failed plot to overthrow Trujillo, after which her family was granted permission to leave for the United States. In “An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic,” an essay narrating the experience of growing up between and within two places, Alvarez speaks of their time in the Dominican Republic with fondness and fear. She cites black Volkswagens in their driveway every night preventing her father from going to the hospital to perform emergency surgeries. The García family landed in Queens, New York, where her father received a fellowship to practice medicine.

Alvarez was 10 when she arrived in America speaking Spanish. Learning English became a priority for her, as she recognized that language would be the best, most immediate way to erase the cultural differences between her and her peers at school.