Return to Sender

Although she was born in the United States, Julia Alvarez spent the first part of her life in her parents’ native Dominican Republic, where the family moved when she was just three months old. The Alvarez family subsequently fled the island nation after Alvarez’s father became involved in a failed coup attempt against the Dominican Republic’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo, in 1960. The family returned to the United States, where Alvarez faced discrimination and prejudice as well as the homesickness and disorientation of living in exile. She grew up between two worlds, the Dominican Republic of her early youth, to which she returned frequently, and the America where she was largely educated. Throughout, she found comfort in books, and she was encouraged by her teachers to write from a young age. Alvarez received her bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College and a master’s degree from Syracuse University, after which she became writer in residence for the Kentucky Arts Commission. Alvarez’s career has included both education and writing. She has published no fewer than eight novels for adults and young readers, three poetry collections, three works of nonfiction, and numerous children’s picture books. She taught creative writing at the University of Vermont and Middlebury College. Alvarez has been called one of the foremost Latina authors of her era and has been honored with a grant from the American National Endowment for the Arts and prizes from the Academy of American Poets, Third Woman Press, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, and the Belpre Medal, which recognizes works by Latino authors and portraying Latino experiences.

Return to Sender takes place between 2005 and 2006 and makes both oblique and direct references to the fraught political situation is the United States and (to a lesser extent) Mexico in the early 21st century. Protagonist Tyler is fearful of foreigners and immigrants generally thanks to the Terror Attacks of 9/11, in which hijackers flew two airplanes into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City and contributed to rising xenophobia in the United States and military interventions around the world. Concurrently, political upheaval in Mexico and an economic boom in the United States led to unprecedented levels of illegal border crossings and undocumented immigrants in the country. This, in combination with a newfound sense of outsiders as a threat following the terror attacks, led to increasing political attention on the issue of illegal immigration. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, was found in 2003 in this political climate, and throughout the administration of President George W. Bush, they conducted operations like Operation Safe Shield (2005) and Operation Return to Sender (2006). Although both operations were supposedly focused on arresting and deporting violent and dangerous criminals, including people with ties to drug trafficking or gangs, many individuals with no criminal record other than their immigration status were, like the Cruz family, also detained and deported.

In exploring themes of exile, homesickness, belonging, coming of age and acculturation, Return to Sender bears a striking similarity to Julia Alvarez’s first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents. Published in 1991, this acclaimed novel for adult readers draws on Alvarez’s own life experiences as it describes events in the lives of the four Garcia sisters. The Garcias live an upper-middle-class life in their native Dominican Republic but are forced to flee to New York due to an unstable political situation, where they deal with racism and prejudice while ultimately assimilating to American culture. The themes of immigration and its fraught legal, moral, and ethical questions have been amply explored in literature in the early 21st century, hand in hand with migrant crises and political debates in the United States and around the world. In this vein, Return to Sender is a forerunner of more recent works like Efren Divided, published in 2020 by Ernesto Cisneros, a book which follows the life of Efren, the American-born son of undocumented immigrants after his mother is detained and deported. Another title with similar themes but a European setting is Katherine Marsh’s 2018 Nowhere Boy, which describes the friendship that grows between 13-year-old American expatriate Max and 14-year-old Syrian refugee Ahmed when their lives intersect in Amsterdam. For readers interested in the perilous trek undocumented immigrants from Central and South America make into the United States (and the reasons why), Sonia Nazario’s 2006 work of nonfiction, Enrique’s Journey, describes the journey of one teenaged immigrant from Honduras.