Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez's works demonstrate varying degrees of self-representation. Crucial to the ongoing process of identity construction that takes place in Alvarez's novels is the figure of the mother, who at once facilitates and threatens the daughter's negotiation of an autonomous identity. In both Alvarez's own life and in her texts, the mother's authority, and consequently the authority of the motherland that she represents, are placed in jeopardy by a new nation and culture. Thus both author and protagonists find themselves the targets of two different sources of authority: the mother/motherland and the new North American homeland. Numerous studies explore the impact of the mother figure on the daughter's process of identity definition in Alvarez's more overtly autobiographical works such as "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" (1991) and "Yo!" (1997). However, less attention has been paid to how Alvarez subtly continues this project of identity negotiation through works that superficially appear to be biographical or fictional rather than autobiographical in nature, such as "In the Name of Salome" (2000). This study proposes that "Salome" may be read as a narrative palimpsest in which Alvarez continues her own autobiographical project over (or under) the fictionalized retelling of the lives of the novel's mother-daughter protagonists. Alvarez's literary appropriation of the lives of these famous Dominican figures allows her a space to examine her own identity in relation to both her mother and her motherland.