Module 5: Before We Were Free

Image from: http://www.juliaalvarez.com/young-readers/

Summary:

Anita De La Torre is a young twelve year old who lives in the Dominican Republic in a compound when once her relatives lived.  Due to the decisions of her father and uncles in killing the dictator, many of the relatives flew to the U.S. to escape.  Anita and her family was the only family to stay longer.  Her father and her uncle decided to continue the plan which they eventually succeed only to be captured by the dictator's son.  Anita, her mother, and brother were in hiding to avoid being tortured by the SIM.  They all somehow move to New York to escape to later find out her father and uncle got killed before being rescued.  But many people tell Anita how they think her father is truly a hero now that the country can elect their own president.  Due to her father's death, the family decide to stay in New York for a while and try to move on with their lives through pain and changes in lifestyle.

Reviews:

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 firs-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 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 of things, until she starts to write in a secret diary.  Readers interested in the history will grab this.

 Rochman, H. (2002, August).  Alvarez, Julia. Before we were free.  [Review of the book Before we were free, by J. Alvarez].  Booklist 98(22), 1945.  Retrieved from http://www.booklistonline.com.


Impressions:

This story was difficult for me to be engaged to due to the fact that the main character had limited information about that was going on.  But after three or four chapters, I was able to know more or less what was going on.  This is a good book for people that can understand the hardships other countries go through.  Placing the little girl as the main character shows people that sometimes they feel helpless and they too want to help in some way but can be too hard due to their age.  

Suggestions:

I would highly recommend this book during a history lesson using a Venn Diagram.  On the right side the student can fill out things that occur in the U.S. and on the left what Anita encountered in her native land.  The middle area of the diagram are the similar things between them and discuss in class.

Bibliography:

Alvarez, J. (2002).  Before we were free. New York, NY: Knopf.