Two of Alvarez's earlier works are especially useful in understanding her techniques and themes in the present work. In the Time of the Butterflies and YO!, in particular, emphasize the importance of family stories, whether directly from the oral tradition or as recovered from journals, diaries, and letters, in telling family members, as well as others, of the journey of the family and how it got where it is as part of its homeland, as a family, and as individual members of that family. Both YO! and In the Name of Salome are in many ways "metafiction," that is, works that examine every aspect of the creative writing life, including the emotional challenges of creating stories and poems, the writer's need for love and acceptance, the writer's use of both her own experience and that of others, the connections between life (especially political life) and art...