<b>Writing from memory: history, stories and narrative voices in In The Time of The Butterflies by Julia Álvarez</b><br>

Autores

  • Manuel F Medina University of Louisville

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2010n59p147

Resumo

Julia Álvarez (Dominican Republic, 1951) and her family left the Dominican Republic in 1960 to escape the persecution of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship, which ruled the country with terror from 1930 to 1961. Her father had gotten involved with clandestine forces that attempted to overthrow the dictator. Precisely the opposition to Trujillo’s dictatorship constitutes the referent of her second novel, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), which deals with the life of the four Mirabal sisters, Minerva, María Teresa (Mate), Patria, and Dedé. My article, using a theoritical framework based mostly in the works of Foucault, Hayden White and Linda Hutcheon poses that In the Time of the Butterflies revises the official history of the Mirabal sisters and their subsequent murder by providing a more humanized version of their own stories in order to divide the truth of the myth created about the three sisters. The novel shows their development as characters as we follow them in different stages of their lives while the shadow of dictator Trujillo’s looms large encompassing every aspect of their and everybody’s existence. Lastly, I argue that Julia Álvarez’s position of being born Dominican, but acculturated as an American, allows her to observe and present the text from a unique view and perspective. She travels to the places of the facts to research the sisters’ story and to get to know the archive that includes not only the official versions, but also the most credible mythicized oral accounts provided by Dedé, the Mirabals’ other relatives, neighbors and the like. The novel’s greatest merit derives from its attempt to revise history from memory, the collective memory whose voices Álvarez masterfully reproduces and therefore perpetuates in the pages of the book.

Biografia do Autor

Manuel F Medina, University of Louisville

Manuel F. Medina earned his doctorate in Spanish with a minor in Brazilian Literature from the University of Kansas. He has worked as a faculty member in the Department of Classical of Modern Languages in the University of Louisville since 1994. He has lectured and published extensively in his main areas of research and professional interest,  including Latin American fiction, drama and film, U.S. Latino Fiction, and teaching with technology. His published work fits within the realm  of cultural studies as it attempts to trace how the cultural production derives from the social, economical and political conditions. He currently directs the Brazilian Studies program at the University of Louisville.  His book-length study on the representation of history in the contemporary Mexican fiction will appear later on this year.

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Publicado

2010-03-01

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