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 I also found Julia Alvarez’s poetry compelling because of its explicit invocation of traditionally “feminine” activities and interests. When she told us that she would be reading poems about folding laundry and sewing dresses, I didn’t know quite what to think, particularly because I feel that so often the work of women authors become relegated strictly to female readers. While men and women read the Great Male Authors of the canon of literature, I feel that most female writers are read exclusively by women. (I mean, if both men and women can read Phillip Roth and John Updike, then why shouldn’t men read Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf?) I loved the poetry that she read and I felt that just as she was invoking these activities to comment on their important role in shaping her identity and also restricting it. I also think that it’s interesting that a similar argument about audience could be mapped onto her racial and culture identification, as a Dominican American. I think that literature and poetry is a space that still retains a sense of an “Old Boys Club” and that anyone who does not fit that description becomes a voice that only certain identity categories can read and relate to – women, Latino Americans, etc. I think that we’re trying to open up a space in literature for all voices but its still a work in progress.