![]() She becomes involved with the underground after witnessing a battle in the mountains between government forces and anti-Trujillo rebels on the fourteenth of June, 1959. The eldest sister, Patria, toys with the idea of becoming a nun before falling in love at sixteen with Pedrito González, a handsome young farmer. My true identity now is Mariposa (#2), waiting daily, hourly, for communications from up north." I just go to classes in order to keep my cover as a second-year architecture student. She marries Leandro and both join the resistance. She becomes aware of the underground after she questions Minerva about both the strange, coded language she uses and a crate of guns that is delivered to the house. María Teresa, young and naïve, communicates primarily through journal entries. Adversity was like a key in the lock for me." But by now in my life I should have known. " They marveled at my self-control-and so did I. Her husband Manolo is also a leader in the underground. She is the first to join the revolution- la primera mariposa, the first Butterfly. Independent, outspoken Minerva is determined to get an education but, even after finishing law school, is prohibited by Trujillo from practicing. ![]() We learn the details of the Butterflies' martyrdom slowly and, as it emerges from its chrysalis, readers find a story that spreads its wings, pauses to breathe the air of freedom, and gently takes flight. Scattered through the girls' stories are glimpses of a nation under siege, where the simplest liberties have been stripped away. Each of the sisters chooses to join the revolution in her own time-even Dedé, the one who lives to tell the tale and admits she only got involved "when it was already too late." In the body of the book, narrated in turn by each of the four sisters, Alvarez brings them to life, skillfully telling the story of four young girls who come of age wanting the same things most young women hope for: love, family, and freedom. Exhausted by the steady stream of pilgrims who have visited her in the thirty-four years since her sisters' deaths, Dedé reluctantly begins to tell the story of a family entwined with the political turmoil of their country. The first chapter begins in 1994 when a young Dominican-American writer, a gringa dominicana, visits the surviving sister, Dedé Mirabal, at the sisters' childhood home, which has been turned into a museum. The novel is both an homage to the bravery and sacrifice of the Mirabal family and a literary work of high grace. Their story haunted Alvarez, whose own family had fled the Dominican Republic just three months earlier in fear that her father's participation in the resistance would make him a target of Trujillo. Three of the sisters-Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa-were slain on Trujillo's orders on November 25, 1960. Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) is a work of historical fiction based on the lives of the four Mirabal sisters, who participated in underground efforts to topple Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's three-decade-long dictatorial regime in the Dominican Republic. "A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart." -postscript of In the Time of the Butterflies Alvarez is “one of our national literary treasures” ( The Oregonian). “Rich in historical detail and immensely, hauntingly lyrical … as lovely as a butterfly at rest, and as moving as one in flight” ( Burlington Free Press). Her second novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, is based on the real story of the four Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic, three of whom became symbols of resistance after being murdered at the order of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature, a Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and a National Medal of Arts. She published her first novel at the age of 41 and has since gone on to receive an F. In the first 13 years of her adult life, she had over 15 addresses: she taught children in Kentucky, bilingual students in Delaware, and senior citizens in New Hampshire. Julia Alvarez is a novelist, poet, essayist, National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellow, and cofounder with her husband of a coffee farm and literacy center in the Dominican Republic, her home until she was ten. This title is no longer available for programming after the 2021-2022 grant year.
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