Anyways, I wanted to talk a little about my most recent read: In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Álvarez. It follows the lives of the four Mirabal sisters, three of whom were murdered for their struggle against Trujillo's regime. This novel was assigned in my US Latino Literature class, where we are learning to think about the ways in which stories mold our lives. We interpret our past (and our present) in words and terms we know, but those terms have no necessary meaning to them. They have been ascribed certain meanings, reinforced throughout our lives and throughout history as concrete and absolute. With this novel, which is historical fiction, we are focusing on the difference between "bearing witness" and "re-playing the past." The latter comes down to being irresponsible. One person cannot tell the essential truth of an event, just as no words can ever convey the essential, true meaning of anything at all. Time makes it impossible to ever keep the past stable enough to truthfully "tell" it and though this is something most people understand, it has implications we sometimes do not think about. In Álvarez's novel, the futility of bringing back a person and her story as it truly was is recognized, and instead, the surviving sister Dedé is bearing witness as responsibly and truthfully as she can.
In the Time of the Butterflies is a great novel to read with this mindset. I cried a lot at the end and not only because of how sadly the Mirabal sisters' lives ended. I kept in my mind these issues of time and language as I read, and I beceame so aware of the fact that I will never know these girls that it really shook me up. I got to know Alvarez's imaginings of them, and, sure, she seemed to make it pretty historically accurate...but even the Acknowledgements underscore that the book, in the end, is fiction. But isn't every story we tell?
I cried for these girls, turned into myths and legends, their lives raised to represent freedom and what it is worth. I cried because behind the political lives of these girls, they had families, husbands, children, a mother and father, all who become, too, just part of a story. It is sad to know that I can't ever know.
Apart from all that, I loved reading the novel. In the beginning, I did not think I would but it was by no means boring or badly written. I guess I expected it to start off really intense, but for most of the novel it was just four women, growing up under Trujillo, in fear, in defiance, in love. The characters really grew on me as the pages turned, and I could not help but identify with their sisterly affection, their motherly instincts, and their strong religious faith.
Anyways, I'm excited for class to start now and to start discussing the novel. I brought Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell to school, too, because I want to try to read it before the movie comes out. My sister once tried to read it and couldn't get into it, and I've heard from some other people similar thoughts. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, another one of Mitchell's novel was to me a beautiful, touching novel, quite romantic (but not in the ways one would expect) and by no means predictable. Though it is not guaranteed his other books will be so sensitively written and superbly imagined, something tells me Cloud Atlas is going to sweep me off my feet.
Meanwhile, I began reading D.H Lawrence's St. Mawr, a novella I bought on my Kindle that was also, thankfully, assigned to me in my classes, this time for Psychological Novel. I started it on my Kindle yesterday (it was less than a dollar!!) and couldn't go to sleep until my eyes were closing on their own. I haven't read before bed in a while, mostly because reading gets me too excited to sleep, but I was immediately intrigued by this short novel. So much that I picked it up right when I woke up! Another thing I haven't done in a while, especially when I have class in the morning.
Well, I'm off, readers. Have a nice start of the week!!
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