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In the Time of the Butterflies (Questions) In the Time of the Butterflies (Questions) 1. Julia Alvarez has said that one of the things that interested her while she was writing the novel was the question, What politicizes a person? What makes a revolutionary risk everything for a certain cause? Alvarez has also said that one of the things she learned writing this novel was that what politicizes each person is different, and surprisingly, it’s not always a big idealistic cause or idea. What do you think politicizes each of the Mirabal sisters, including, ultimately, Dedé? What would politicize you? 2. The Mirabal sisters are very different individuals. Which of them would you most like to have been friends with? Which one do you most admire? Which one is most like you? 3. What about the men in the book? Some male readers have confessed to feeling that the book is focused too much on female characters. How do different key male figures come across in the book? Do you think Alvarez intentionally weighted the book toward the female point of view, and if so, why? 4. Does the father make you feel sympathetic or judgmental? Do your feelings change as the book progresses? 5. Minerva reacts with shock and anger after learning about her father’s second family but later chooses to take care of her half sisters. Why does Minerva want to help them? Would you have reacted in the same way? 6. In your opinion, is Jaimito a good man or not? Why? 7. Much is made of Dedé’s survival. Why do you think she survived? What is the role she plays in the Mariposas’ history? Do you consider her to be equally heroic despite the fact that she did not join the revolution? 8. The book is built around life and politics in the Dominican Republic during the reign of Rafael Trujillo. Is this a time period you knew about before reading this book? Did you gain a greater understanding of this particular time in Hispanic Caribbean history? 9. What does it mean to write historical fiction? Did it bother you that the sisters Alvarez created might not be exact duplicates of the historical Mirabals? Dedé has said when asked about specific details that some of them Alvarez invented or learned from someone else. But she loved the novel because Alvarez “captured the spirit of the Mirabal sisters.” Does the book encourage you to want to know more about them? 10. The Dominican people, both in the book and in real life, view the Mirabal sisters as heroines and martyrs. Why do you think their legend endures? What makes the story of these particular revolutionaries so captivating? 11. The United Nations has declared November 25, the day of the Mirabals’ murder, International Day Against Violence Against Women, the first day of the international movement “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence,” which ends on Human Rights Day, December 10. (www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/home.html) Should writers be writing to change the world? What is the role of an author’s politics in a novel? Does politics have any place in fiction? https://www.workman.com/products/in-the-time-of-the-butterflies In the Time of the Butterflies (About the Author) Born in New York City in 1950, Julia Alvarez's parents returned to their native country, Dominican Republic, shortly after her birth. Ten years later, the family was forced to flee to the United States because of her father’s involvement in a plot to overthrow the dictator, Trujillo. Alvarez has written novels (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!, In the Name of Salomé, Saving the World, Afterlife), collections of poems (Homecoming, The Other Side/ El Otro Lado, The Woman I Kept to Myself), nonfiction (Something to Declare, Once Upon A Quinceañera, and A Wedding in Haiti), and numerous books for young readers (including the Tía Lola Stories series, Before We Were Free, finding miracles, Return to Sender and Where Do They Go?). Alvarez’s awards include the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards for her books for young readers, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama. https://www.juliaalvarez.com/about In the Time of the Butterflies (Reviews) Brimming with warmth and vitality, this new novel by the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) is a paean to the power of female courage. The butterflies are four smart and lovely Dominican sisters growing up during Trujillo's despotic regime. While her parents try desperately to cling to their imagined island of security in a swelling sea of fear and intimidation, Minerva Mirabal—the sharpest and boldest of the daughters, born with a fierce will to fight injustice—jumps headfirst into the revolutionary tide. Her sisters come upon their courage more gradually, through a passionate, protective love of family or through the sheer impossibility of closing their eyes to the horrors around them. Together, their bravery and determination meld into a seemingly insurmountable force, making Trujillo, for all his power, appear a puny adversary. Alvarez writes beautifully, whether creating the ten-year-old Maria Teresa's charming diary entries or describing Minerva's trip home after her first unsettling confrontation with Trujillo: ``As the road darkened, the beams of our headlights filled with hundreds of blinded moths. Where they hit the windshield, they left blurry marks, until it seemed like I was looking at the world through a curtain of tears.'' If the Mirabal sisters are iron-winged butterflies, their men—father and husbands— often resemble those blinded moths, feeble and fallible. Still, the women view them with kind, forgiving eyes, and though there's no question of which sex is being celebrated here, a sweet and accepting spirit toward frailty, if not human cruelty, prevails. This is not García Márquez or Allende territory (no green hair or floating bodies); Alvarez's voice is her own, grounded in realism yet alive with the magic of everyday human beings who summon extraordinary courage and determination to fight for their beliefs. As mesmerizing as the Mirabal sisters themselves. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/julia-alvarez/in-the-time-of-the-butterflies/ In the Time of Butterflies (Enhancement) 1960: The Mirabal Sisters Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal—three sisters from a middle class family, all married with children—may not have seemed the most likely revolutionaries. But living under the Dominican Republic’s brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo in the late 1950s, the Mirabal sisters risked their lives to work in the resistance. During Trujillo’s 31 years in power, the regime violently repressed civil liberties and dissent. The Mirabal sisters helped to organize and grow the underground movement challenging the regime, and were repeatedly arrested for their activities. Minerva once dismissed her allies’ fears for her life, saying “If they kill me, I’ll reach my arms out from the tomb and I’ll be stronger.” She fulfilled the promise. The state’s murder of the three sisters, aged 36, 34 and 25 on Nov. 25 1960, outraged the public and was a key trigger for Trujillo’s own assassination by a group of dissidents and former allies six months later. After the transition to democracy in the late 1970’s, the Butterflies, as Dominicans call the sisters, became symbols of both democratic and feminist resistance. A fourth Mirabal sister, Dede, who was less actively involved in the resistance, survived the regime and helped continue her sisters’ legacy until her death in 2014, setting up a foundation and a museum in their name. The U.N. made the date of their death the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. —Ciara Nugent https://time.com/5793594/mirabal-sisters-100-women-of-the-year/ .
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