Every adult reader can recall the book that had the most profound influence on him or her as a child. Whether delightful or terrifying, there was some story or novel that etched itself indelibly into memory. In this third essay in Salon's "Birth of a Reader" series, Julia Alvarez recalls her childhood skepticism about books, which was transformed when she read the story of another girl like herself who used the power of stories to dramatically change her fate: Scheherazade, the storyteller of "A Thousand and One Nights." Throughout the week, visit Salon's Table Talk discussion area and share your thoughts and questions with Julia Alvarez.

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By Julia Alvarez

May 10, 1999 | Reading was not an activity that was encouraged in my family, certainly not for girls or even for boys. In fact, as a child, I only knew two readers. One reader was my cousin Juan Tomás, who not only loved to read but as a teenager began to write poetry. This affliction was blamed on the fact that, el pobrecito, he had been sent to boarding school in Germany when he was 9. His father had meant to make a man out of him and instead he came back a reader. "Se va a enfermar," my grandmother would say, shaking her head every time she found Juan Tomás sitting in a chair, reading a book. "He's going to get sick." It just wasn't healthy to enjoy such a solitary, sedentary activity in a culture that prized social interaction and considered cock fighting, rum drinking, and womanizing as normal activities for healthy young men.

The other reader I knew was my maiden aunt Titi, who was 26 and unmarried. Una jamona, an old maid. !Pero cómo no! my grandmother scolded. But of course! Who would want a woman who was a reader for a companion?

Perhaps you think that because I became a writer, I was one of those born bookworms who despite this lack of encouragement kept a diary and read Cervantes by the time she was 9. I'm afraid I was definitely in the non-reading tradition of my family. I didn't care much for books. In part it was that I was surrounded by non-readers; there weren't many books around. At the American school where I was sent in hopes that it might turn me into a well-behaved young lady who spoke English, I was introduced to books: Dick and Jane, and their tame little pets Spot and Puff. Just that morning we had trapped tarantulas in the yard and witnessed Iluminada receiving a spirit. Believe me, the Dick-and-Jane readers seemed bland in contrast to the world I was living in. Besides, these books were written in that impossible marbles-in-your-mouth language of English. In my first self-motivated piece of writing, I scratched out a note for my teacher, a note that eventually found its way home to my mother. "Dear Mrs. Brown," my note read, "I love you very much. But why should I read when I can have fun?"

Although I was not a lover of the written word, I loved a good story or a catchy rhyme or the rhythmic lyrics of a merengue. I just didn't think of these treasures as anything I'd find between the covers of a book. I was growing up in the '50s on a little island in the Caribbean, a basically oral culture where the most interesting information was passed around by word of mouth. I was also growing up in a ruthless dictatorship within which key information could not be written down. So, I never trusted books as places where I could find out anything I really needed to know. Instead I went to the people around me to find out the things I wanted to find out about.

There was my grandmother, who told me about ciquapas, beautiful magical women who came out at night to hunt for food but disappeared at daylight. Iluminada, the cook, was born under a Santo, which meant that from time to time she would throw something like an epileptic fit when her Santo entered her. Porfirio, her husband, had lots of warts on his arms until he got the paletero, the candy man, to count them, and the next morning, Porfirio's arms were clean as a newborn baby's and the paletero had 27 warts on his arms. No one wanted to buy candy from him from then on.

So although I did not have a literary childhood, it was a childhood surrounded by stories. What good were books with storytellers like Iluminada and my grandmother Mamita around?

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