Irvine Valley College writing professor pens a new chapter, just before retirement
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The start of the school year is usually associated with new possibilities, an opportunity to learn, a chance to grow.
For Lisa Alvarez, it signals a final chapter. The Irvine Valley College English instructor is retiring this year after 33 years at “the little college in the Orange groves,” as she lovingly deemed it when she began her career there.
“When I arrived, it really was a very little college surrounded by orange groves, and people did not know where it was,” she said. “Since then, it has become one of the most highly regarded community colleges in the state.”
Alvarez has made a home with her husband, Andrew Tonkovich, a retired UC Irvine English lecturer and founder of the literary journal Citric Acid, in Modjeska Canyon. She has edited anthologies, including “Orange County: A Literary Field Guide,” and her work has been published across the West. She uses art as both performance and activism and each summer leads writing workshops in the High Sierra.
“My colleagues and I, we are so proud to be part of the transformative journey for our students,” Alvarez said. “Community colleges change people’s lives. “Whether they are right out of high school, or in high school, or older returning students, new immigrants, the whole world is there.”
But this year’s autumn breeze doesn’t just bring finality of a teaching career for Alvarez; it is also turning the page of a new chapter.
Alvarez has published her first book.
“My joke is, ‘I am a debut author at 64, exactly how I planned it,’ ” she said.
“Some Final Beauty and Other Stories” is a collection focusing on characters who are engaged with their communities, mainly in Southern California, with some centered in Orange County.
The stories are their own pieces of activism, which isn’t an accident.
“At first, it was going to be a collection of stories set in L.A. about female activists in the 1980s, and you can still see some of those in there,” Alvarez said. “But it was basically going to be an homage to the best girlfriends a young person ever had … then it kept growing in different ways, and then I moved to Orange County. ”
As time went on, Alvarez met more people — characters who found their way into her book — and collected more experiences that she wanted to share.
“I am happy for my characters,” she said. “They get to be together forever.”
Alvarez began the earliest story in the book nearly 13 years ago. The cover art is by activist-artist Andrea Bowers.
The collection begins with “Everyone Was Singing ‘Freiheit,’” in which a former addict learns lessons by spending time in two different rooms of the same building. In “We Told You So,” a grieving widow in an Orange County canyon seeks out an unlike-minded neighbor to help him heal.
In the brief but powerful “Cielito Lindo,” a daughter spends time with her boorish father, contemplating mistakes. The people Alvarez writes feel as real as the person in the car next to you on the 5 Freeway.
While it is true this is her last year at IVC, retirement seems like the wrong word. Even though her teaching career is ending, her career as an author is just beginning.
And she is also looking forward to returning to the activism she had less time for when she had a full-time job. She feels the country needs people fighting for justice more than ever.
“I imagined when this book was picked up by the University of Nevada Press a couple of years ago that the stories of activists from the Reagan era to the first Trump term would be sort of wistful, nostalgic things of the past … but now it seems, unfortunately, even more resonant,” Alvarez said. “These stories remind me of what I used to do and what I will need to do again.”
Alvarez never completely abandoned her need to stand up for others. She leaves behind a legacy at Irvine Valley College that includes two programs that have had a profound impact on many students and will continue doing so in her absence.
Alvarez has led what she calls a “small but vibrant” creative writing community at IVC connected to the campus literary journal, the Ear.
“It provides opportunities for full-time students and occasional students to do what I have done with this book, which is to begin to realize their dreams of becoming writers and finding an audience for the important stories they have to share,” she said.
Alvarez has also been instrumental in the Puente Program, an academic, counseling and mentoring program that serves educationally under-served college students.
“The program has been around for 40 years but it has only recently been at IVC,” she said. “It is celebrating its fifth year.”
Historically, the program has served first-generation Latinos, providing support that helps them make the eventual transfer to four-year colleges and universities.
“We know if those students can get through the first year of community college, they are most likely to continue on and transfer,” Alvarez said. “I take them through their first year of English classes, and I work together with a counselor and an ethnic studies professor to provide an enriched curriculum that focuses on the Latinx experience.”
On Aug. 16, Alvarez plans to sign books at Libro Mobile, which is run by former student of hers, Sarah Rafael Garcia, and return to the independent bookstore Sept. 28 for a Brunch, Bites and Books event in celebration of “Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond,” a collection of poems and micro-essays she contributed to along with other locals writers, including Mary Camarillo.
After that, there are more book signings and, of course, more writing planned.
“As a woman of 64, I think there is still time,” she said. “There is still work to do.”
