Tyranny and Butterflies

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994.
325 p. ; 23 cm.

I'm not sure why I decided to read this book now, but I'm glad I did.  I think I was feeling a little unenthusiastic about the lightness of some of the YA fantasy books and wanted something with more substance.  I also had not read Alvarez yet and wanted to, so it seemed like a good a time as any. 

In the Time of Butterflies is the fictionalized account of four Dominican sisters - three of whom (along with their driver) were murdered by Trujillo, the horrid dictator of the Dominican Republic.  The novel is a beautiful retelling of the lives of the sisters and their families and how they became involved in revolutionary politics. For a novel that involves imprisonment, beatings, and political assassinations - it is really a tender and beautiful book. Alvarez seems determined to demythologize the heroics of the characters and instead show how human, humane and complicated it is for people to get involved in clandestine, violent political work.  Of course one can't read Alvarez' book and not think of a later novel set in the Trujillo dictatorship, Junot Diaz' 2007 masterpiece - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Both are fantastic books, and offer unique angles on life under dictatorship ( and immigration in the case of Diaz).  I would recommend them both.

If read over a long period, the novel can get a little confusing (which sister is which and is married to who and what year is it?) but still manages to be engaging and moving.  I found reading the last chapter of the book to be a very emotional experience. Alvarez manages to not only tell the story of repression, revolution, and family, but she makes you, the reader, feel like it is your story, your family - and that the loss is your loss, too.

The Silenced Speak Again

The Silenced by James DeVita
New York : Eos, c2007.
504 p. ; 22 cm.

Someone checking out this book these days might be forgiven for thinking, "Oh, it's one of those books that has jumped on the Hunger Games bandwagon," - you know, brave young teen female hero rebelling against the post-war authoritarian dictatorship, etc., etc.  But DeVita published his novel a year before Hunger Games was published and in his afterword he describes writing the book over the course of six years...    

One of the beautiful things about The Silenced, is that it was inspired by DeVita's discovery and subsequent research into the Hans and Sophie Scholl "White Rose" resistance movement against the Nazis. It gives the novel a poignancy and depth - and hopefully will intrigue some young readers into learning about totalitarianism, WWII, and resistance.

The novel is interesting, exciting and well written.  It is set in a fictional post-war dystopian future where power is wielded by the dictatorial Zero Tolerance (ZT) party.  It is a world of Youth Training Facilities (YTFs), drones, disappeared persons, informants, surveillance and censorship.

The back story to my reading this novel was my discovering that it had been reissued by Milkweed Press.  I was reading the Milkweed Press blog - with an eye toward their poetry - when the post about The Silenced caught my eye.  It's a great story - involving a class of 8th grade fans, a teacher, and even Louise Erdrich! After reading the post, I ordered a copy of the paperback with its much improved cover (see the graphic above), and I'll definitely recommend it.