Key themes
- The ordinary women who become heroes — and what heroism costs
- Dominican Republic under Trujillo — the dictatorship that controlled everything
- Dedé and the burden of surviving when her sisters did not
About this book
The Mirabal sisters — Patria, Dedé, Minerva and María Teresa — are heroines of the Dominican resistance to the Trujillo dictatorship. Three were murdered on Trujillo's orders in 1960; Dedé survived to remember them. Alvarez's novel imagines their inner lives from childhood through to the assassination, telling the story of how ordinary women become revolutionaries.
Published in 1994, In the Time of the Butterflies was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Alvarez drew on interviews with Dedé Mirabal and extensive research in the Dominican Republic.
Discussion questions
- The novel imagines the inner lives of historical figures — the Mirabal sisters, whose assassination helped end Trujillo's dictatorship. What does fiction give Alvarez that a biography cannot?
- Dedé survived where her sisters did not. How does Alvarez develop this — and what is she saying about the specific guilt and responsibility of the witness who lives on?
- Minerva is the political radical; Patria is the religious one; María Teresa is the youngest and least sure. How does Alvarez differentiate the sisters — and which do you find most compelling?
- The novel shows how ordinary domestic life continued under a dictatorship — surveillance, compromises, small resistances. How does Alvarez make the political register personal?
- In the Time of the Butterflies is widely assigned in US classrooms. What does it offer students who are unfamiliar with Latin American history — and what does it give to those who are?
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