Lisa Alvarado grew up in Albany Park in the 60s. “We were the only people who weren’t German or Polish. Our neighbors stood in their yards and stared when we had our housewarming in the yard. It was definite culture shock. I had to defend my little sisters all the time.”
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As a senior at the all-girls Alvernia High School, Alvarado became a feminist, reading books such as Sisterhood Is Powerful and The Feminine Mystique and changing her last name to her mother’s maiden name. She also started writing for the school newspaper and writing poetry on the side. As a student at Northeastern Illinois University she became an activist but couldn’t decide what she wanted to study. “By my third year I couldn’t figure out what I was doing there. I had gone from sociology to criminal justice to women’s studies.”
But she also kept writing, and in 1979 did her first reading, at the Jane Addams Bookstore. A couple of years later she took a job at the Chicago Women’s Health Center as a health worker, eventually becoming director of outreach and training. But her drinking was getting worse. “I went from the cute girl that could drink everyone under the table to the reclusive alcoholic. I was drinking about a gallon a day.” In 1985 she joined a 12-step program. “It saved my life. I’ve been sober ever since.”
–Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
