Julia Alvarez: The Voice Of The Mirabal Sisters

Julia Alvarez: The Voice of the Mirabal Sisters Numerous accounts of families affected by oppressive dictatorships exist all around the world. Julia Alvarez, an author whose father was involved in a resistance group to such a regime, is a prime example of one of those stories. After leaving her childhood home of the Dominican Republic, Alvarez struggled to adapt her lifestyle to match that of an average American. During this time period, Alvarez recalled her experience under an authoritarian government and combined it with her impressive storytelling skills to create a fictional documentation of another family just like her’s. Influenced by her father’s involvement in a Dominican rebel group, Julia Alvarez drew from her vivid imagination and

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College in 1971, she continued onto Syracuse University where she obtained her master’s (“Julia Alvarez Biography”). Currently, Alvarez has returned to Middlebury College and is a writer-in-residence along with occasionally teaching creative writing classes (Alvarez “About Me”). Married to Bill Eichner since 1989, they have together created Alta Gracia, a small, organic coffee farm and literary arts center in the Dominican Republic, her childhood home (“Julia Alvarez Biography”; Alvarez In the Time

She gives precedence to deep, complex characters. While writing In the Time of the Butterflies, she took the time to describe the passions, dreams, and feelings of each character in order to help the story impact everybody, not just the people touched by the problem presented in the book (Smith). Alvarez claims that she sacrificed correct dates, events, and different characters while writing her novel in an effort to fully immerse her reader in the story, believing that an understanding of a true tragedy can only come from fiction (Alvarez In the Time of). Along with giving priority to characterization, Alvarez also strives to not advocate for political change in her writing. In her opinion, stressing political points and diatribes makes the work only relevant to a certain time period. Once the problem presented in the book is resolved, the book will disappear as well. She aims to present her characters as real people, maintaining that readers will then feel more connected to the story and the issue presented. Books that touch the hearts of humanity are the ones that are remembered (Smith). In a postscript from In the Time of the Butterflies, Alvarez states that “A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart” (Alvarez In the Time of). Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies is a heartfelt novel filled with rich characters who expose the true evils