During the 1980s, Alvarez became increasingly prolific in the genres of poetry, nonfiction prose, and the novel and continued to be productive throughout the 1990s.

The Housekeeping Book (1984) was a handmade book of her housekeeping poems, parts of which she wrote while at Yaddo (a writer's retreat) where she began to discover her voice as a woman and as a Latina.

Her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), was followed by In The Time of the Butterflies (1994); The Other Side/ El Otro Lado, a book of poems (1995); Homecoming: New and Collected Poems (1996); Seven Trees, another book of poems (1999); Something to Declare, a book of essays (1998); and her third novel YO! (1997). In the three novels especially, Alvarez has explored many of the same themes that make In the Name of Salome (2000) such a compelling novel: race and racism, the homeland, the role of the...