In the Time of the Butterflies by: Julia Alvarez

review by: Jill Brown '04

 In the Time of the Butterflies is the heroic tale of the Mirabal sisters and their political opposition to the dictator Trujillo. Cleverly written from the point of view of all four sisters using diary entries, the horrors of living in a dictatorship are revealed one after another. The four Mirabal sisters, known as las Mariposas (the butterflies), were an integral part of an underground movement to remove Trujillo from power. The sisters, Dedé, Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria were ranked as one of Trujillo’s top two threats - the other being the church. Throughout the book, the Mirabal sisters tell their stories of torture, loss, fear, and hope. Las Mariposas were the four Mirabal women willing to stand up to a dictatorship at a time when many men could not summon the same courage. The Mirabal sisters were not secluded to a life of political activism; they were wives, mothers and sisters, always looking out for one another. From the beginning of the book, Dedé as narrator makes it clear that the story is not one with a happy conclusion. She is the only sister still living – but the past is always around her. Dedé recounts how her sisters are a national treasure, immortalized in statues, stories and pictures and how she (Dedé) is expected to always be willing to tell their story. Dedé is never able to say no to someone who asks to hear the story and so the story continues. Alvarez cleverly weaves truth with viable fiction to create In the Time of the Butterflies.

"What you find in these pages are not the Mirabal sisters of fact, or even the Mirabal sisters of legend. As for the sisters of legend, wrapped in superlatives and ascended into myth, they were finally also inaccessible to me. I realize too, that such deification was dangerous, the same god-making impulse that had created our tyrant. So what you will find here are the Mirabals of my creation, made up but, I hope, true to the spirit of the real Mirabals" (Author’s note 324).

Knowing the reality behind the fictionalized book creates a heightened effect of suspense and pain while reading the book. Yet the spirit Alvarez infuses into each character has the ability to captivate the reader’s heart as well as mind. It is a hard book to put down once it has been started, but one that should not be forgotten once it is finished.