In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

A Postscript

When readers tell me that reading In the Time of the Butterflies changed or inspired them in some way, I feel a sense of deep gratitude and also affirmation/confirmation that all those years of struggling to become a writer were worth it. So many discouragements made me lose faith along the way. In those early years, ethnic writers, writers of color, women writers were often dismissed, ignored, turned back from those canonical borders set up by the guardians of Literature, sent to the kitchen of minor writers, as Langston Hughes once wrote in his poem, “I, too.” It was a long, tough road, “abriendo caminos,” that still need to be widened and opened for the next and the next generation of wonderful storytellers from communities historically kept off the shelves of American literature. But I would be misrepresenting my motivation if I tried to make myself out as the lofty, liberating writer who set out to write the Mirabal story. Reader, I needed to write this story down for myself, my sisters, my familia, especially Papi. I was haunted by it. And so I researched it, I wrote it, and rewrote it, with all my heart and passion in it. So possessed was I that when I was done, I had to do a kind of exorcism so I could move on. I gathered all my little talisman objects, my special pens, and such, and on my next trip to the DR, I buried them in the yard of the house where the girls had spent the last days of their life, which now serves as the Museo Hermanas Mirabal. But the Mariposas had taken wing. The novel was translated into over a dozen languages. A film was made. A theatre piece by a women’s dance troupe in San Diego (EVEOKE) which then toured the Dominican Republic, and gave performances in different cities, which Dedé, Minou and other family members attended. Dedé reported that readers would show up at the Museo with a copy of my novel in their hands, wanting to meet her. Every day, it was her habit to go to the Museo and sit in a mecedora on the porch to meet with these surprise visitors as well as with schoolchildren who would be taken there on field trips. Often, she’d shake her head at me, laughing, and say, Ay Julia, you sure have complicated my life. But according to Minou and others, the opportunity to be an oral storyteller—and she was a grand one-- gave her ánimo and life. I kept urging her to write these stories down, and with Minou’s help, she did just that. Her memoir, Vivas en su jardín, was published in 2009. Dedé died on February 1, 2014. I still miss her and stay in touch with the family, especially with Minou and Jacquelín. Dedé lived to see the story of her sisters ignite an international movement, just as their activism had sparked a national resistance movement that brought down the dictatorship. In 1999, the United Nations declared November 25th, the day of their murder, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in their honor. Back in 1960, who knew this would happen? Three victims in a dictatorship in which thousands upon thousands died, in a world in which millions were dying in many dictatorships and military regimes. But it’s as if this story was working itself through the bloodstream of the imagination. A little change here, a little change there, under the radar, but it builds, reaches a critical point, and then, a sea change happens. The power of stories to transform the world one imagination at a time! Thank you for being a part of this grand transformative movement by being a reader, spreading the stories, joining the Goodreads community whose motto and mission is “The right book in the right hands at the right time can change the world.” I’ll vote for that! Julia Alvarez, March 15-21, 2021