Anyhow, I’ve got to memorize this diagram before we burn the master.
Not so much a passage but a diagram, on this page, of a homemade bomb which María Teresa records in the diary entry for Thursday evening, October 15 [1957]. In order to diagram this bomb I had to do bit of research on homemade explosives–thank goodness there was no Google back then, early 1990s, so I did not leave any electronic tracks the FBI could follow to my door. I also got some help from my husband, Bill, and some of my students who were science majors. I combed diaries and records from underground movements in Latin America and Resistance movements in France during the Nazi occupation. I obviously did a credible job (keep reading this entry!), but please don’t try to build it. I don’t worry too much about you blowing up your house so much as creating a huge mess in your garage.
A few years after the novel’s publication in English and in Spanish translation, an ESL teacher in a prison in upstate New York contacted my husband who would sometimes visit the prison to do medical exams. The prison was packed with young Dominicans. Bill would come home and tell me stories. Over time, he gained the trust and affection of these inmates by mentioning that he was married to a Dominicana. At some point he mentioned that I had written the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies. The teacher caught wind of this and asked my publisher if they would donate copies of the novel in English and Spanish. As a culmination of that class segment, the teacher asked if I would visit the prison and give a reading. ¡Por supuesto! I was eager to visit and give ánimo to these young, incarcerated Dominicans.
I have never been as thoroughly searched as at the entrance of that huge frightening prison complex. Not even by TSA at airports. Afterwards, I was escorted into a large classroom lined with seats, and a few minutes later, the mostly Dominican prisoners were brought in—many so young, my maternal heart went heavy at the sight of them. Quite a few had drawn small Dominican flags, taped to pencils, which they waved at me as they sat down. After my presentation, during the Q & A, one of the prisoners raised his hand and asked why page 143-144 was missing from the novel. I thought maybe it was one defective copy, but all of them said it was also missing from their copies. My first thought was that my publisher had gotten rid of a bad batch of the novel! Later, the teacher took me aside and explained that the security at the prison had gone through the novel and removed that page as it might encourage prisoners to build explosives in their cells!
I thought it was just prison, but in October 2020, the Port Washington (NY) Board of Education met to discuss the issue of teaching In the Time of the Butterflies to tenth graders in the district. The board ruled that the novel should not be on the curriculum. “This is not an issue of censorship, but one of safety,” they ruled. “In today’s climate we have problems with a book that gives out instructions on how to build a bomb.” [Check out The New York Times, Sunday, October 1, 2000, issue, “School Board Questions Fitness of Book Because of Bomb Diagram.”
Maybe it’s running through your heads as well: Wait: we allow sales of automatic weapons to individuals who mow down students in schools and shoppers at Walmart, but we can’t let tenth graders see a diagram in a novel that takes place in a bloody dictatorship?
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