Summer Reading Response - Before We Were Free

In the book, Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez, the story focuses on the main character, Anita de la Torre, who is a twelve year old girl growing up in the Dominican Republic, in the year 1960.  The book starts a month before her twelfth birthday and ends right after her thirteenth birthday.  Anita’s parents are a part of a group called the Butterflies.  The Butterflies want to get rid of the dictator who rules over the Dominican Republic, and gain freedom.  Anita and her mother end up getting out just in time, before the government finds and captures them.  Anita de la Torre’s main personality trait is her strong curiosity.  Her curiosity causes her to discover strong emotions, gets her in trouble, and finally helps her understand what is really going on in her country.

Anita’s curiosity and questioning causes her family to have to tell the truth to her.   At one part in the story, after arriving in America, when Anita is wondering about her father and uncle, she asks her grandfather, “When are Papi and Tio Toni ever going to get here?”  Her grandpa said, “Your uncle and father are dead.”  Every family member in the room bursts into tears.   Her curiosity about things also sometimes gets her in trouble.  Every day, Anita goes to the supermarket and looks at all the food.  One day, she decides to get a cart.  “I go up and down each aisle, filling the basket with things I really like, pretending I have the money to buy them.”  The storekeeper stops her and says, “Do you have the money to buy all of this, young lady?  His tone of voice suggests he knows I don’t.”  She has to fight to get away from the storekeeper.  Finally, for Anita, being curious means that she comes to learn more about what happened in her country and the truth about her parents.  When she was once hiding from the dictator’s troops, along with her mother in a closet, she asks her mother what was going on.  Her mother tells her about the Butterflies (Las Mariposas), sisters who were organizing a movement to bring freedom to the country.  Anita’s mother tells her how the Butterflies were ambushed and murdered, and how she and Anita’s father have taken up the cause of the Butterflies.  “I couldn’t believe my own mother with her bad nerves was part of a secret plot!  But suddenly, like one of those lamps you click one more turn and it throws an even brighter light, I saw her at Papi’s old Remington, typing up declarations, or out in the yard, burning incriminating stuff, or in the garden shed, covering a sack of guns with an old tarp.  My Joan-of-Arc mother, my Butterfly mami!  I felt so proud of her!”  Her curiosity truly helps Anita understand what was happening and why they had to leave the Dominican Republic.  It is her questioning that causes her to find out the truth about her mother.

Anita de la Torre is blessed with a curiosity for the truth.  Curiosity helps her in unexpected circumstances, even when the same trait sometimes gets her in trouble or even jeopardizes her family’s freedom.   She is still even curious, when she finds out the truth about the death of her father and uncle, and her mother orders, “Tell us!  I want to know how they died.  I want my children to hear this.  I want my country to hear this.  I want the United States to hear this.”  Anita doesn’t cry, but listens carefully until the very end.  Throughout the book, despite her troubles, her curiosity helps her understand life better, helps her mature and get wiser.