Julia Alvarez is the author and first-person narrator of “Names/Nombres.” The essay describes Alvarez’s childhood, from the time she returned to the United States with her family at 10 years old to her high school graduation. Although Alvarez was born in the United States, she grew up in the Dominican Republic, and returning to New York City made her feel like an outsider. Her essay thus highlights The Desire to Assimilate Versus Staying Connected to One’s Culture.

Upon arriving in New York, Alvarez describes her young self as being proud of her name and culture. She hears “Alvarez” as an “orchestra of sound” and longs to correct the many ways English speakers mispronounce it (Paragraph 1). However, as she grows up, she begins to distance herself more and more from her Dominican heritage as she feels the pressure of cultural assimilation. She makes friends with American classmates who show their affection with playful nicknames like “Jules” and “Alcatraz.” Slowly, Alvarez’s Spanish name becomes a source of shame, and she only reluctantly answers questions about her home country. She and her family return to the United States at a time when “ethnicity [is] not yet ‘in,’” and Alvarez longs to “merge with the Sallys and the Janes in [her] class” (Paragraph 16). However, even if she were to adopt an Anglicized name, her accent and complexion would still give her away as a “foreigner.” Neither could Alvarez hide her extended Dominican family, who sat in the front row at her graduation, speaking Spanish “among themselves in florid-sounding phrases, rococo consonants, rich, rhyming vowels” (Paragraph 27). It is impossible for her to erase her Dominican identity. By the end of the text, as she celebrates her graduation with her family, she has accepted the duality of her identity. 

By this point, Alvarez is an aspiring writer, and her parents gift her a typewriter for her stories and poems. The text as a whole illustrates Alvarez’s dawning understanding of how language and names shape identity and perception, developing the theme of The Connection Between Language and Identity. The gift of the typewriter marks the resolution of this theme and character arc: When Alvarez’s family predicts that she will become a well-known writer, she “laugh[s] to [her]self” and wonders which of her many names she might use (Paragraph 32). She is no longer trying to erase parts of herself; she accepts the multifaceted nature of her identity and sees language and naming as playful ways to express herself and shape how others see her. As she lets go of her need to conform to mainstream American culture, she takes control of herself and her narrative.