Something to Declare Book

Something to Declare: Essays was a delightful collection of essays written over the years by Julia Alvarez. Many of her essays pertained to the period of time when her family was forced to flee from the Dominican Republic to New York City when it was discovered that her father was involved in a plot to assassinate dictator Trujillo. However, as Alvarez points out, Dominicans don't refer to the death as an assassination but "an ajusticiamiento, a bringing to justice. . . after thirty-one years, Trujillo was brought to justice, found guilty, and executed." Many of the essays talk about the immigrant experience as her family adjusts to living in America, while most of their family remained in the Dominican Republic where Alvarez spent many summers. Alvarez emigrated to the United States with her parents and sisters when she was ten years old. So many of the essays are about her grandparents and godmother as she discusses her early childhood in the Dominican Republic. It is very interesting to see how well Alvarez and her family adapted and assimilated in America. But Alvarez strongly felt none of the issues that "she was facing in her secret soul" had no place in this world and culture, so she started having a secret inner life that she felt contributed to her becoming a writer.

One of my favorite books by Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies was an historical fiction novel about the lives and the murder of the Mirabal sisters, Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa. She discusses the shock her father must have experienced as the Mirabal sisters were part of the same underground that her father had escaped in order to save his life as they fled from the Dominican Republic just four months prior to this brutal murder. The Mirabal sisters were forced to make the perilous journey on a lonely mountain road because their husbands had been transferred to a distant prison. Alvarez writes that it was because of this connection that she always felt haunted by the Mirabal sisters. One essay, Chasing the Butterflies talks about the impact on her as a child when her father brought home a Time magazine article detailing the brutal and horrific murders of the Mirabal sisters. Because she and her sisters were forbidden to read the article, years later in doing the research on the Mirabals she looked up that Time article that she secretly spied as a child, once again haunted by the photograph of the surviving sister. Alvarez returned to the Dominican Republic to follow up on their compelling history and finally meeting Dede, the surviving sister. Alvarez relates that Dede "had suffered her own martyrdom: the one left behind to tell the story of the other three." She and her husband traveled throughout the Dominican Republic as she sought the research to be able to tell the story, not only of the Mirabals, but the brutality of the Trujillo regime. Cautioned by both her parents not to publish the book, Alvarez inscribed a copy to both her Mami and Papi with a note: "Thank you for having instilled in me through your sufferings a desire for freedom and justice."