Module 3: Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez

Bibliographic Citation: Alvarez, Julia. Before We Were Free. New York: Laurel Leaf, 2004.

Plot Summary:

Anita is a 12 year old girl living in the Dominican Republic under a dictator, Trujillo.  Anita lives in a compund with her family and extended family, but little by little, her cousins, aunts, and uncles begin to move to the United States.  Anita's young uncle is missing and she hasnt seen him in months.  So, Anita and her immediate family are the only ones left in the compund.  One day, Anita looks out the window and the secret police have their cars parked outside her compund, and she does not know why.  

Anita and her peers attend an American school, but soon that changes.  Things all around her seem to be changing for the worse, but whenever Anita asks her parents any questions, they don't give her any answers.  The only person that reveals tid bits of information to Anita is her nanny, Chucha, an older lady from Haiti.  Chucha shares her dreams with Anita, where she sees Anita tkaing flight soon.  So, she tells her to prepare herself.  Soon Anita's older sister is sent to the United States and again, Anita loses another loved one to the U.S.

One day Anita and her friend notice that someone is staying in one of their back rooms in the compound, and being children, they make sure to keep a close eye as to what is going on.  Turns out her uncle is in hiding, and then Anita begins to notice her father and his friends meet up and hold meetings in the compound.  What the men don't realize is that they hold their meetings outside of Anita's window and this is how Anita learns that her father and his friends are planning something big against El Jefe, Trujillo.  Her father and his friend go with their their plan and then some men force their way into Anita's house.  Anita and her mother go into hiding, living in a friends closet.  Eventually, Anita and her mother escape to the United States and are reunited with their family members.     

My Impressions of the Book:

Anita is a young girl living life under a dictator in the Dominican Republic.  This is one of those books that makes you appreciate your freedom and teaches you a history lesson at the same time.  I really enjoyed this book, and I think it was mostly because I had the opportunity to see what life under a dictator is like.  The harsh reality is that this is not just a novel, this novel depicts what life was like for some people living in the Dominican Republic in the 1960's.  This book holds so much culture and history, one can enjoy a good read and learn a thing or two. 

Review(s) About the Book & My Thoughts:

Amazon Editorial Reviews

 From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. What is it like for a 12-year-old girl living under a ruthless dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960? Alvarez draws on her own cousins' and friends' experiences to tell the political story through the eyes of Anita, whose father is involved in a plot to assassinate the dictator and bring democracy to the island. This doesn't have the passionate lyricism of Alvarez's great adult novels. The pace, at least for the first half of the book, is very slow, perhaps because the first-person, present-tense narrative stays true to Anita's bewildered viewpoint and is weighed down with daily detail and explanation of the political issues ("I feel just awful that my father has to kill someone for us to be free"). Yet it is Anita's innocence, her focus on the ordinary, that young readers will recognize. She's busy with school, friends, getting her period, falling in love, even as the secrets and spies come closer and, finally, the terror destroys her home. Her father is arrested; she and her mother are in hiding. There's no sensationalism, but Anita knows the horrific facts of how prisoners are tortured and killed. Trying to block out the truth, she loses her voice, even forgets the words for things, until she starts to write in a secret diary. Readers interested in the history will grab this. Like Lyll Becerra de Jenkins' The Honorable Prison (1988), about a young girl whose father resists a Latin American dictatorship, and Beverley Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth (Booklist' s 2001 Top of the List winner for youth fiction), Alvarez's story will also spark intense discussion about politics and family. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Amazon Editorial Reviews

 From School Library Journal

Grade 6-10-By the morning of her 12th birthday, in December, 1960, Anita de la Torre's comfortable childhood in her home in the Dominican Republic is a thing of the past. The political situation for opponents of the dictator Rafael Trujillo has become so dangerous that nearly all of her relatives have emigrated to the U.S., leaving only her uncle, T'o Toni, somewhere in hiding, and her parents, still determined to carry on the resistance. Over the next year, the girl becomes increasingly aware of the nature of the political situation and her family's activities. Once her father's cotorrita, or talkative parrot, she grows increasingly silent. When the dictator is assassinated, her father and uncle are arrested, her older brother is sheltered in the Italian Embassy, and Anita and her mother must go into hiding as well. Diary entries written by the child while in hiding will remind readers of Anne Frank's story. They will find Anita's interest in boys and her concerns about her appearance, even when she and her mother can see no one, entirely believable. Readers will be convinced by the voice of this Spanish-speaking teenager who tells her story entirely in the present tense. Like Anita's brother Mund'n, readers will bite their nails as the story moves to its inexorable conclusion.Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC 
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Use in Library Setting:

This book can be used to teach students about Dominican Republic history, dictatorship, and refugees.  It would be a great read for a book club because it reflects real events and teens can discuss what life might have been like.