Translating the Dominican experience : authorial leadership and how the narratives of Julia Alvarez and Junot Diaz imagine community

This paper closely looks at Julia Alvarez\u27s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and Junot Diaz\u27s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in order to understand literature as a form of leadership. Alvarez and Diaz draw upon historical Dominican memory to frame their characters\u27 identities and recreate communities in a new landscape. Their works challenge cultural authority, deconstruct borders, and provide the language to dialogue about the realities of multiculturalism