preview

The Time Of The Butterflies By Julia Alvarez

Good Essays

Julia Alvarez is a Dominican Republican novelist, poet and essayist. She spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic until her family had to flee the country due to her father’s involvement in a political rebellion. Many of Alvarez’s works are influenced by her experiences as a Dominican in the United States and much of her writing takes a political and personal tone. She is known for works that explore cultural expectations of women in both the Dominican Republic and the United States and for meticulous investigations of cultural stereotypes. In the Time of the Butterflies is a historical novel by Julia Alvarez. It follows the lives of the four Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic during the time of the Trujillo dictatorship. These four sisters: Dedé, Patria, Minerva, Maria Teresa, were Las Mariposas, “The Butterflies” and were symbols of defiant hope in a country shadowed by dictatorship and despair. They sacrificed their safe, cozy lives in the name of freedom and in this novel, they speak across the centuries to tell their own stories. Las Mariposas describe the everyday horrors of life under the Dominican dictator Trujillo, from tales of secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture. Julia Alvarez states that, “A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart” (Alvarez 324). In the Time of the Butterflies is a perfect example of this statement because it tells the story of true events in

Get Access