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Part 1, Chapters 1 & 2

1/6/2014

124 Comments

 
Below are chapters 1 and 2 of Julia Alvarez' In the Time of the Butterflies.

By Thursday, January 9th, you should choose one quote that stands out to you from the text, and then compose AT LEAST 2 paragraphs (you may post longer responses) that speak to the significance of your quote as well as these chapters. In addition, you should identify connections you can make. Here are some think questions to get you started. You should address significance and connection somewhere in your answer, but you also may branch off into other things that speak to you about these two chapters. That was a lot of writing so I'm going to type something happy here before putting more text. I LOVE YOU GUYS! I'M SO EXCITED TO BE READING THIS WITH YOU! 

By Saturday, January 11th, you should respond to at least two other people's writing, keeping significance and connection in mind as well. Try to respond with at least 3 sentences, although you could of course go above and beyond this! 

I'll go first with a response below so you know what I'm after! 

Significance:
*What happens in these two chapters that feel important? Why do you think they feel important? What parts stand out? Why do you think they stand out? 
*What matters about these two chapters?
*Is there any part of these two chapters that give you a clue to why the book as a whole is valuable? What part?
*Why should people care about this story?
*Is this piece relevant to everyone? Who? Who isn’t it relevant to?  

Connection:
*How can you connect this piece to current events, to the past or the future?
*What personal connections can you draw to these two chapters? Do these characters remind you of anyone or anything in your own life? 
*How does any part of this connect to any other areas of your learning? (Maybe other subjects/texts that you have studied in the past or present?)
*Do these two chapters connect to anything that you have read in the past?What? How?
*What other relationships/connections can you draw between these two chapters and your life, the world, other literature, history or other art? 

CHAPTER ONE

Dedé
1994 and
circa 1943

She is plucking her bird of paradise of its dead branches, leaning around the plant every time she hears a car. The woman will never find the old house behind the hedge of towering hibiscus at the bend of the dirt road. Not a gringa dominicana in a rented car with a road map asking for street names! Dedé had taken the call over at the little museum this morning.

Could the woman please come over and talk to Dedé about the Mirabal sisters? She is originally from here but has lived many years in the States, for which she is sorry since her Spanish is not so good. The Mirabal sisters are not known there, for which she is also sorry for it is a crime that they should be forgotten, these unsung heroines of the underground, et cetera.

Oh dear, another one. Now after thirty-four years, the commemora tions and interviews and presentations of posthumous honors have almost stopped, so that for months at a time Dedé is able to take up her own life again. But she’s long since resigned herself to Novembers. Every year as the 25th rolls around, the television crews drive up. There’s the obligatory interview. Then, the big celebration over at the museum, the delegations from as far away as Peru and Paraguay, an ordeal really, making that many little party sandwiches and the nephews and nieces not always showing up in time to help. But this is March, ¡Maria santisima! Doesn’t she have seven more months of anonymity?

“How about this afternoon? I do have a later commitment,” Dedé lies to the voice. She has to. Otherwise, they go on and on, asking the most impertinent questions.

There is a veritable racket of gratitude on the other end, and Dedé has to smile at some of the imported nonsense of this woman’s Spanish. “I am so compromised,” she is saying, “by the openness of your warm manner.”

“So if I’m coming from Santiago, I drive on past Salcedo?” the woman asks.

“Exactamente. And then where you see a great big anacahuita tree, you turn left.”

“A ... great... big ... tree ...,” the woman repeats. She is writing all this down! “I turn left. What’s the name of the street?”

“It’s just the road by the anacahuita tree. We don’t name them,” Dedé says, driven to doodling to contain her impatience. On the back of an envelope left beside the museum phone, she has sketched an enormous tree, laden with flowers, the branches squirreling over the flap. “You see, most of the campesinos around here can’t read, so it wouldn’t do us any good to put names on the roads.”

The voice laughs, embarrassed. “Of course. You must think I’m so outside of things.” Tan afuera de la cosa.

Dede bites her lip. “Not at all,” she lies. “I’ll see you this afternoon then.”

“About what time?” the voice wants to know.

Oh yes. The gringos need a time. But there isn’t a clock time for this kind of just-right moment. “Any time after three or three-thirty, four-ish.”

“Dominican time, eh?” The woman laughs.

“iExactamente!” Finally, the woman is getting the hang of how things are done here. Even after she has laid the receiver in its cradle, Dedé goes on elaborating the root system of her anacahuita tree, shading the branches, and then for the fun of it, opening and closing the flap of the envelope to watch the tree come apart and then back together again.

In the garden, Dedé is surprised to hear the radio in the outdoor kitchen announce that it is only three o‘clock. She has been waiting expectantly since after lunch, tidying up the patch of garden this American woman will be able to see from the galería. This is certainly one reason why Dedé shies from these interviews. Before she knows it, she is setting up her life as if it were an exhibit labeled neatly for those who can read: THE SISTER WHO SURVIVED.

Usually if she works it right—a lemonade with lemons from the tree Patria planted, a quick tour of the house the girls grew up in—usually they leave, satisfied, without asking the prickly questions that have left Dedé lost in her memories for weeks at a time, searching for the answer. Why, they inevitably ask in one form or another, why are you the one who survived?

She bends to her special beauty, the butterfly orchid she smuggled back from Hawaii two years ago. For three years in a row Dedé has won a trip, the prize for making the most sales of anyone in her company. Her niece Minou has noted more than once the irony of Dedé’s “new” profession, actually embarked upon a decade ago, after her divorce. She is the company’s top life insurance salesperson. Everyone wants to buy a policy from the woman who just missed being killed along with her three sisters. Can she help it?The slamming of a car door startles Dedé. When she calms herself she finds she has snipped her prize butterfly orchid. She picks up the fallen blossom and trims the stem, wincing. Perhaps this is the only way to grieve the big things—in snippets, pinches, little sips of sadness.

But really, this woman should shut car doors with less violence. Spare an aging woman’s nerves. And I’m not the only one, Dedé thinks. Any Dominican of a certain generation would have jumped at that gunshot sound.

She walks the woman quickly through the house, Mamá’s bedroom, mine and Patria‘s, but mostly mine since Patria married so young, Minerva and María Teresa’s. The other bedroom she does not say was her father’s after he and Mamá stopped sleeping together. There are the three pictures of the girls, old favorites that are now emblazoned on the posters every November, making these once intimate snapshots seem too famous to be the sisters she knew.

Dedé has placed a silk orchid in a vase on the little table below them. She still feels guilty about not continuing Mamá’s tribute of a fresh blossom for the girls every day. But the truth is, she doesn’t have the time anymore, with a job, the museum, a household to run. You can’t be a modem woman and insist on the old sentimentalities. And who was the fresh orchid for, anyway? Dedé looks up at those young faces, and she knows it is herself at that age she misses the most.

The interview woman stops before the portraits, and Dede waits for her to ask which one was which or how old they were when these were taken, facts Dedé has at the ready, having delivered them so many times. But instead the thin waif of a woman asks, “And where are you?”

Dedé laughs uneasily. It’s as if the woman has read her mind. “I have this hallway just for the girls,” she says. Over the woman’s shoulder, she sees she has left the door to her room ajar, her nightgown flung with distressing abandon on her bed. She wishes she had gone through the house and shut the doors to the bedrooms.

“No, I mean, where are you in the sequence, the youngest, the oldest?”

So the woman has not read any of the articles or biographies around. Dedé is relieved. This means that they can spend the time talking about the simple facts that give Dedé the illusion that hers was just an ordinary family, too—birthdays and weddings and new babies, the peaks in that graph of normalcy.

Dedé goes through the sequence.

“So fast in age,” the woman notes, using an awkward phrase.

Dedé nods. “The first three of us were born close, but in other ways, you see, we were so different.”

“Oh?” the woman asks.

“Yes, so different. Minerva was always into her wrongs and rights.” Dedé realizes she is speaking to the picture of Minerva, as if she were assigning her a part, pinning her down with a handful of adjectives, the beautiful, intelligent, high-minded Minerva. “And Maria Teresa, ay, Dios,” Dedé sighs, emotion in her voice in spite of herself. “Still a girl when she died, pobrecita, just turned twenty-five.” Dedé moves on to the last picture and rights the frame. “Sweet Patria, always her religion was so important.”

“Always?” the woman says, just the slightest challenge in her voice.

“Always,” Dedé affirms, used to this fixed, monolithic language around interviewers and mythologizers of her sisters. “Well, almost always.”

She walks the woman out of the house into the galería where the rocking chairs wait. A kitten lies recklessly under the runners, and she shoos it away. “What is it you want to know?” Dedé asks bluntly. And then because the question does seem to rudely call the woman to account for herself, she adds, “Because there is so much to tell.”

The woman laughs as she says, “Tell me all of it.”

Dedé looks at her watch as a polite reminder to the woman that the visit is circumscribed. “There are books and articles. I could have Tono at the museum show you the letters and diaries.”

“That would be great,” the woman says, staring at the orchid Dedé is still holding in her hand. Obviously, she wants more. She looks up, shyly. “I just have to say, it’s really so easy to talk to you. I mean, you’re so open and cheerful. How do you keep such a tragedy from taking you under? I’m not sure I am explaining myself?”Dedé sighs. Yes, the woman is making perfect sense. She thinks of an article she read at the beauty salon, by a Jewish lady who survived a concentration camp. “There were many many happy years. I remember those. I try anyhow. I tell myself, Dedé, concentrate on the positive! My niece Minou tells me I am doing some transcending meditation, something like that. She took the course in the capital.

“I’ll tell myself, Dedé, in your memory it is such and such a day, and I start over, playing the happy moment in my head. This is my movies—I have no television here.”

“It works?”

“Of course,” Dedé says, almost fiercely. And when it doesn’t work, she thinks, I get stuck playing the same bad moment. But why speak of that.

“Tell me about one of those moments,” the woman asks, her face naked with curiosity. She looks down quickly as if to hide it.

Dedé hesitates, but her mind is already racing backwards, year by year by year, to the moment she has fixed in her memory as zero.

She remembers a clear moonlit night before the future began. They are sitting in the cool darkness under the anacahuita tree in the front yard, in the rockers, telling stories, drinking guanábana juice. Good for the nerves, Mama always says.

They’re all there, Mamá, Papá, Patria-Minerva-Dedé. Bang-bang-bang, their father likes to joke, aiming a finger pistol at each one, as if he were shooting them, not boasting about having sired them. Three girls, each born within a year of the other! And then, nine years later, Maria Teresa, his final desperate attempt at a boy misfiring.

Their father has his slippers on, one foot hooked behind the other. Every once in a while Dedé hears the clink of the rum bottle against the rim of his glass.

Many a night, and this night is no different, a shy voice calls out of the darkness, begging their pardon. Could they spare a calmante for a sick child out of their stock of kindness? Would they have some tobacco for a tired old man who spent the day grating yucca?

Their father gets up, swaying a little with drink and tiredness, and opens up the store. The campesino goes off with his medicine, a couple of cigars, a few mints for the godchildren. Dedé tells her father that she doesn’t know how they do as well as they do, the way he gives everything away. But her father just puts his arm around her, and says, “Ay, Dedé, that’s why I have you. Every soft foot needs a hard shoe.

“She’ll bury us all,” her father adds, laughing, “in silk and pearls.” Dedé hears again the clink of the rum bottle. “Yes, for sure, our Dedé here is going to be the millionaire in the family.”

“And me, Papá, and me?” Maria Teresa pipes up in her little girl’s voice, not wanting to be left out of the future.

“You, mi ñapita, you’ll be our little coquette. You’ll make a lot of men‘s—”

Their mother coughs her correcting-your-manners cough.

“—a lot of men’s mouths water,” their father concludes.

María Teresa groans. At eight years old, in her long braids and checkered blouse, the only future the baby wants is one that will make her own mouth water, sweets and gifts in big boxes that clatter with something fun inside when she shakes them.

“What of me, Papá?” Patria asks more quietly. It is difficult to imagine Patria unmarried without a baby on her lap, but Dedé’s memory is playing dolls with the past. She has sat them down that clear, cool night before the future begins, Mamá and Papá and their four pretty girls, no one added, no one taken away. Papá calls on Mamá to help him out with his fortune-telling. Especially—though he doesn’t say this—if she’s going to censor the clairvoyance of his several glasses of rum. “What would you say, Mamá, about our Patria?”

“You know, Enrique, that I don’t believe in fortunes,” Mamá says evenly. “Padre Ignacio says fortunes are for those without faith.” In her mother’s tone, Dedé can already hear the distance that will come between her parents. Looking back, she thinks, Ay Mamá, ease up a little on those commandments. Work out the Christian math of how you give a little and you get it back a hundredfold. But thinking about her own divorce, Dedé admits the math doesn’t always work out. If you multiply by zero, you still get zero, and a thousand heartaches.“I don’t believe in fortunes either,” Patria says quickly. She’s as religious as Mamá, that one. “But Papá isn’t really telling fortunes.”

Minerva agrees. “Papá’s just confessing what he thinks are our strengths.” She stresses the verb confessing as if their father were actually being pious in looking ahead for his daughters. “Isn’t that so, Papá?”

“Sí, señorita,” Papá burps, slurring his words. It’s almost time to go in.

“Also,” Minerva adds, “Padre Ignacio condemns fortunes only if you believe a human being knows what only God can know.” That one can’t leave well enough alone.

“Some of us know it all,” Mamá says curtly.

Maria Teresa defends her adored older sister. “It isn’t a sin, Mamá, it isn’t. Berto and Raúl have this game from New York. Padre Ignacio played it with us. It’s a board with a little glass you move around, and it tells the future!” Everybody laughs, even their mother, for María Teresa’s voice is bursting with gullible excitement. The baby stops, suddenly, in a pout. Her feelings get hurt so easily. On Minerva’s urging, she goes on in a little voice. “I asked the talking board what I would be when I grew up, and it said a lawyer.”

They all hold back their laughter this time, for of course, Maria Teresa is parroting her big sister’s plans. For years Minerva has been agitating to go to law school.

“Ay, Dios mío, spare me.” Mama sighs, but playfulness has come back into her voice. “Just what we need, skirts in the law!”

“It is just what this country needs.” Minerva’s voice has the steely sureness it gets whenever she talks politics. She has begun talking politics a lot. Mamá says she’s running around with the Perozo girl too much. “It’s about time we women had a voice in running our country.”

“You and Trujillo,” Papá says a little loudly, and in this clear peaceful night they all fall silent. Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security. Don Enrique claims Trujillo needs help in running this country. Don Enrique’s daughter says it’s about

time women took over the government. Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much.

Now, as if drops of rain had started falling—though the night is as clear as the sound of a bell—they hurry in, gathering their shawls and drinks, leaving the rockers for the yardboy to bring in. María Teresa squeals when she steps on a stone. “I thought it was el cuco,” she moans.

As Dedé is helping her father step safely up the stairs of the galería, she realizes that hers is the only future he really told. María Teresa’s was a tease, and Papá never got to Minerva’s or Patria’s on account of Mamá’s disapproval. A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn’t want to be the only one left to tell their story.

CHAPTER TWO

Minerva
1938, 1941, 1944
Complications


1938

I don’t know who talked Papá into sending us away to school. Seems like it would have taken the same angel who announced to Mary that she was pregnant with God and got her to be glad about it.

The four of us had to ask permission for everything: to walk to the fields to see the tobacco filling out; to go to the lagoon and dip our feet on a hot day; to stand in front of the store and pet the horses as the men loaded up their wagons with supplies.

Sometimes, watching the rabbits in their pens, I’d think, I’m no different from you, poor things. One time, I opened a cage to set a half-grown doe free. I even gave her a slap to get her going.

But she wouldn’t budge! She was used to her little pen. I kept slapping her, harder each time, until she started whimpering like a scared child. I was the one hurting her, insisting she be free.

Silly bunny, I thought. You’re nothing at all like me.It started with Patria wanting to be a nun. Mamá was all for having a religious in the family, but Papá did not approve in the least. More than once, he said that Patria as a nun would be a waste of a pretty girl. He only said that once in front of Mamá, but he repeated it often enough to me.

Finally, Papá gave in to Mamá. He said Patria could go away to a convent school if it wasn’t one just for becoming a nun. Mamá agreed.

So, when it came time for Patria to go down to Inmaculada Concepción, I asked Papa if I could go along. That way I could chaperone my older sister, who was already a grown-up señorita. (And she had told me all about how girls become senoritas, too.)

Papa laughed, his eyes flashing proudly at me. The others said I was his favorite. I don’t know why since I was the one always standing up to him. He pulled me to his lap and said, “And who is going to chaperone you?”

“Dedé,” I said, so all three of us could go together. He pulled a long face. “If all my little chickens go, what will become of me?”

I thought he was joking, but his eyes had their serious look. “Papá,” I informed him, “you might as well get used to it. In a few years, we’re all going to marry and leave you.”

For days he quoted me, shaking his head sadly and concluding, “A daughter is a needle in the heart.”

Mama didn’t like him saying so. She thought he was being critical because their only son had died a week after he was born. And just three years ago, Maria Teresa was bom a girl instead of a boy. Anyhow, Mama didn’t think it was a bad idea to send all three of us away. “Enrique, those girls need some learning. Look at us.” Mamá had never admitted it, but I suspected she couldn’t even read.

“What’s wrong with us?” Papá countered, gesturing out the window where wagons waited to be loaded before his warehouses. In the last few years, Papá had made a lot of money from his farm. Now we had class. And, Mama argued, we needed the education to go along with our cash.

Papa caved in again, but said one of us had to stay to help mind the store. He always had to add a little something to whatever Mamá came up with. Mama said he was just putting his mark on everything so no one could say Enrique Mirabal didn’t wear the pants in his family.

I knew what he was up to all right. When Papa asked which one of us would stay as his little helper, he looked directly at me.

I didn’t say a word. I kept studying the floor like maybe my school lessons were chalked on those boards. I didn’t need to worry. Dedé always was the smiling little miss. “I’ll stay and help, Papá.”

Papá looked surprised because really Dedé was a year older than me. She and Patria should have been the two to go away. But then, Papá thought it over and said Dedé could go along, too. So it was settled, all three of us would go to Inmaculada Concepción. Me and Patria would start in the fall, and Dedé would follow in January since Papá wanted the math whiz to help with the books during the busy harvest season.

And that’s how I got free. I don’t mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I’d just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country.

First time I met Sinita she was sitting in the parlor where Sor Asunción was greeting all the new pupils and their mothers. She was all by herself, a skinny girl with a sour look on her face and pokey elbows to match. She was dressed in black, which was odd as most children weren’t put in mourning clothes until they were at least fifteen. And this little girl didn’t look any older than me, and I was only twelve. Though I would have argued with anyone who told me I was just a kid!

I watched her. She seemed as bored as I was with all the polite talk in that parlor. It was like a heavy shaking of talcum powder in the brain hearing all those mothers complimenting each other’s daughters and lisping back in good Castilian to the Sisters of the Merciful Mother. Where was this girl’s mother? I wondered. She sat alone, glaring at everybody, as if she would pick a fight if you asked her where her mother was. I could see, though, that she was sitting on her hands and biting her bottom lip so as not to cry. The straps on her shoes had been cut off to look like flats, but they looked worn out, was what they looked like.I got up and pretended to study the pictures on the walls like I was a lover of religious art. When I got to the Merciful Mother right above Sinita’s head, I reached in my pocket and pulled out the button I’d found on the train. It was sparkly like a diamond and had a little hole in back so you could thread a ribbon through it and wear it like a romantic lady’s choker necklace. It wasn’t something I’d do, but I could see the button would make a good trade with someone inclined in that direction.

I held it out to her. I didn’t know what to say, and it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. She picked it up, turned it all around, and then set it back down in my palm. “I don’t want your charity.”

I felt an angry tightness in my chest. “It’s just a friendship button.”

She looked at me a moment, a deciding look like she couldn’t be sure of anybody. “Why didn’t you just say so?” She grinned as if we were already friends and could tease each other.

“I did just say so,” I said. I opened up my hand and offered her the button again. This time she took it.

After our mothers left, we stood on line while a list was made of everything in our bags. I noticed that along with not having a mother to bring her, Sinita didn’t own much either. Everything she had was tied up in a bundle, and when Sor Milagros wrote it out, all it took was a couple of lines: 3 change of underwear, 4 pair of socks, brush and comb, towel and nightdress. Sinita offered the sparkly button, but Sor Milagros said it wasn’t necessary to write that down.

“Charity student,” the gossip went round. “So?” I challenged the giggly girl with curls like hiccups, who whispered it to me. She shut up real quick. It made me glad all over again I’d given Sinita that button.

Afterwards, we were taken into an assembly hall and given all sorts of welcomes. Then Sor Milagros, who was in charge of the tens through twelves, took our smaller group upstairs into the dormitory hall we would share. Our side-by-side beds were already set up for the night with mosquito nets. It looked like a room of little bridal veils.

Sor Milagros said she would now assign us our beds according to our last names. Sinita raised her hand and asked if her bed couldn’t be next to mine. Sor Milagros hesitated, but then a sweet look came on her face. Sure, she said. But when some other girls asked, she said no. I spoke right up, “I don’t think it’s fair if you just make an exception for us.”

Sor Milagros looked mighty surprised. I suppose being a nun and all, not many people told her what was wrong and right. Suddenly, it struck me, too, that this plump little nun with a bit of her gray hair showing under her headdress wasn’t Mamá or Papá I could argue things with. I was on the point of apologizing, but Sor Milagros just smiled her gap-toothed smile and said, “All right, I’ll allow you all to choose your own beds. But at the first sign of argument”—some of the girls had already sprung towards the best beds by the window and were fighting about who got there first—“we’ll go back to alphabetical. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Sor Milagros,” we chorused.

She came up to me and took my face in her hands. “What’s your name?” she wanted to know.

I gave her my name, and she repeated it several times like she was tasting it. Then she smiled like it tasted just fine. She looked over at Sinita, whom they all seemed partial to, and said, “Take care of our dear Sinita.”

“I will,” I said, standing up straight like I’d been given a mission. And that’s what it turned out to be, all right.A few days later, Sor Milagros gathered us all around for a little talk. Personal hygiene, she called it. I knew right away it would be about interesting things described in the most uninteresting way.

First, she said there had been some accidents. Anyone needing a canvas sheet should come see her. Of course, the best way to prevent a mishap was to be sure to visit our chamber pots every night before we got in bed. Any questions?

Not a one.

Then, a shy, embarrassed look came on her face. She explained that we might very well become young ladies while we were at school this year. She went through a most tangled-up explanation about the how and why, and finished by saying if we should start our complications, we should come see her. This time she didn’t ask if there were any questions.

I felt like setting her straight, explaining things simply the way Patria had explained them to me. But I guessed it wasn’t a good idea to try my luck twice in the first week.

When she left, Sinita asked me if I understood what on earth Sor Milagros had been talking about. I looked at her surprised. Here she’d been dressed in black like a grownup young lady, and she didn’t know the first thing. Right then, I told Sinita everything I knew about bleeding and having babies between your legs. She was pretty shocked, and beholden. She offered to trade me back the secret of Trujillo.

“What secret is that?” I asked her. I thought Patria had told me all the secrets.

“Not yet,” Sinita said looking over her shoulder.

It was a couple of weeks before Sinita got to her secret. I’d forgotten about it, or maybe I’d just put it out of my mind, a little scared what I might find out. We were busy with classes and making new friends. Almost every night someone or other came visiting under our mosquito nets or we visited them. We had two regulars, Lourdes and Elsa, and soon all four of us started doing everything together. It seemed like we were all just a little different—Sinita was charity and you could tell; Lourdes was fat, though as friends we called her pleasantly plump when she asked, and she asked a lot; Elsa was pretty in an I-told-you-so way, as if she hadn’t expected to turn out pretty and now she had to prove it. And me, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I had something to say.

The night Sinita told me the secret of Trujillo I couldn’t sleep. All day I hadn’t felt right, but I didn’t tell Sor Milagros. I was afraid she’d stick me in the sickroom and I’d have to lie in bed, listening to Sor Consuelo reading novenas for the sick and dying. Also, if Papa found out, he might change his mind and keep me home where I couldn’t have any adventures.

I was lying on my back, looking up into the white tent of the mosquito net, and wondering who else was awake. In her bed next to mine, Sinita began to cry very quietly as if she didn’t want anybody to know. I waited a little, but she didn’t stop. Finally, I stepped over to her bed and lifted the netting. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

She took a second to calm down before she answered. “It’s José Luis.”

“Your brother?” We all knew he had died just this last summer. That’s how come Sinita had been wearing black that first day.

Her body began to shake all over with sobs. I crawled in and stroked her hair like Mama did mine whenever I had a fever. “Tell me, Sinita, maybe it’ll help.”

“I can‘t,” she whispered. “We can all be killed. It’s the secret of Trujillo.”

Well, all I had to be told was I couldn’t know something for me to have to know it. So I reminded her, “Come on, Sinita. I told you about babies.”

It took some coaxing, but finally she began.

She told me stuff I didn’t even know about her. I thought she was always poor, but it turned out her family used to be rich and important. Three of her uncles were even friends of Trujillo. But they turned against him when they saw he was doing bad things.

“Bad things?” I interrupted. “Trujillo was doing bad things?” It was as if I had just heard Jesus had slapped a baby or Our Blessed Mother had not conceived Him the immaculate conception way. “That can’t be true,” I said, but in my heart, I felt a china-crack of doubt.“Wait,” Sinita whispered, her thin fingers finding my mouth in the dark. “Let me finish.

“My uncles, they had a plan to do something to Trujillo, but somebody told on them, and all three were shot, right on the spot.” Sinita took a deep breath as if she were going to blow out all her grandmother’s birthday candles.

“But what bad things was Trujillo doing that they wanted to kill him?” I asked again. I couldn’t leave it alone. At home, Trujillo hung on the wall by the picture of Our Lord Jesus with a whole flock of the cutest lambs.

Sinita told me as much as she knew. I was shaking by the time she was through.

According to Sinita, Trujillo became president in a sneaky way. First, he was in the army, and all the people who were above him kept disappearing until he was the one right below the head of the whole armed forces.

This man who was the head general had fallen in love with another man’s wife. Trujillo was his friend and so he knew all about this secret. The woman’s husband was a very jealous man, and Trujillo made friends with him, too.

One day, the general told Trujillo he was going to be meeting this woman that very night under the bridge in Santiago where people meet to do bad things. So Trujillo went and told the husband, who waited under the bridge for his wife and this general and shot them both dead.

Very soon after that, Trujillo became head of the armed forces.

“Maybe Trujillo thought that general was doing a bad thing by fooling around with somebody else’s wife,” I defended him.

I heard Sinita sigh. “Just wait,” she said, “before you decide.”

After Trujillo became the head of the army, he got to talking to some people who didn’t like the old president. One night, these people surrounded the palace and told the old president that he had to leave. The old president just laughed and sent for his good friend, the head of the armed forces. But General Trujillo didn’t come and didn’t come. Soon, the old president was the ex-president on an airplane to Puerto Rico. Then, something that surprised even the people who had surrounded the palace, Trujillo announced he was the president.

“Didn’t anyone tell him that wasn’t right?” I asked, knowing I would have.

“People who opened their big mouths didn’t live very long,” Sinita said. “Like my uncles I told you about. Then, two more uncles, and then my father.” Sinita began crying again. “Then this summer, they killed my brother.”

My tummy ache had started up again. Or maybe it was always there, but I’d forgotten about it while trying to make Sinita feel better. “Stop, please,” I begged her. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“I can‘t,” she said.

Sinita’s story spilled out like blood from a cut.

One Sunday this last summer, her whole family was walking home from church. Her whole family meant all Sinita’s widowed aunts and her mother and tons of girl cousins, with her brother José Luis being the only boy left in the entire family. Everywhere they went, the girls were assigned places around him. Her brother had been saying that he was going to revenge his father and uncles, and the rumor all over town was that Trujillo was after him.

As they were rounding the square, a vendor came up to sell them a lottery ticket. It was the dwarf they always bought from, so they trusted him.

“Oh I’ve seen him!” I said. Sometimes when we would go to San Francisco in the carriage, and pass by the square, there he was, a grown man no taller than me at twelve. Mama never bought from him. She claimed Jesus told us not to gamble, and playing the lottery was gambling. But every time I was alone with Papá, he bought a whole bunch of tickets and called it a good investment.

José Luis asked for a lucky number. When the dwarf went to hand him the ticket, something silver flashed in his hand. That’s all Sinita saw. Then José Luis was screaming horribly and her mother and all the aunts were shouting for a doctor. Sinita looked over at her brother, and the front of his white shirt was covered with blood.

I started crying, but I pinched my arms to stop. I had to be brave for Sinita.“We buried him next to my father. My mother hasn’t been the same since. Sor Asunción, who knows my family, offered to let me come to el colegio for free.”

The aching in my belly was like wash being wrung so tightly, there wasn’t a drop of water left in the clothes. “I’ll pray for your brother,” I promised her. “But Sinita, one thing. How is this Trujillo’s secret?”

“You still don’t get it? Minerva, don’t you see? Trujillo is having everyone killed!”

I lay awake most of that night, thinking about Sinita’s brother and her uncles and her father and this secret of Trujillo that nobody but Sinita seemed to know about. I heard the clock, down in the parlor, striking every hour. It was already getting light in the room by the time I fell asleep.

In the morning, I was shaken awake by Sinita. “Hurry,” she was saying. “You’re going to be late for Matins.” All around the room, sleepy girls were clapping away in their slippers towards the crowded basins in the washroom. Sinita grabbed her towel and soap dish from her night table and joined the exodus.

As I came fully awake, I felt the damp sheet under me. Oh no, I thought, I’ve wet my bed! After I’d told Sor Milagros that I wouldn’t need an extra canvas sheet on my mattress.

I lifted the covers, and for a moment, I couldn’t make sense of the dark stains on the bottom sheet. Then I brought up my hand from checking myself. Sure enough, my complications had started.

¡Pobrecita!

1941

The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn’t believe in the hammer. Everything Sinita said I filed away as a terrible mistake that wouldn’t happen again. Then the hammer came down hard right in our own school, right on Lina Lovatón’s head. Except she called it love and went off, happy as a newlywed.

Lina was a couple of years older than Elsa, Lourdes, Sinita, and me; but her last year at Inmaculada, we were all in the same dormitory hall of the fifteens through seventeens. We got to know her, and love her, which amounted to the same thing when it came to Lina Lovatón.

We all looked up to her as if she were a lot older than even the other seventeens. She was grownup-looking for her age, tall with red-gold hair and her skin like something just this moment coming out of the oven, giving off a warm golden glow. Once when Elsa pestered her in the washroom while Sor Socorro was over at the convent, Lina slipped off her gown and showed us what we would look like in a few years.

She sang in the choir in a clear beautiful voice like an angel. She wrote in a curlicued hand that was like the old prayerbooks with silver clasps Sor Asunción had brought over from Spain. Lina taught us how to roll our hair, and how to curtsy if we met a king. We watched her. All of us were in love with our beautiful Lina.

The nuns loved her too, always choosing Lina to read the lesson during silent dinners or to carry the Virgencita in the Sodality of Mary processions. As often as my sister Patria, Lina was awarded the weekly good-conduct ribbon, and she wore it proudly, bandolier style, across the front of her blue serge uniform.

I still remember the afternoon it all started. We were outside playing volleyball, and our captain Lina was leading us to victory. Her thick plaited hair was coming undone, and her face was pink and flushed as she flung herself here and there after the ball.

Sor Socorro came hurrying out. Lina Lovatón had to come right away. An important visitor was here to meet her. This was very unusual since we weren’t allowed weekday visitors and the sisters were very strict about their rules.

Off Lina went, Sor Socorro straightening her hair ribbons and pulling at the pleats of her uniform to make the skirt fall straight. The rest of us resumed our game, but it wasn’t as much fun now that our beloved captain was gone.

When Lina came back, there was a shiny medal pinned on her uniform just above her left breast. We crowded around her, wanting to know all about her important visitor. “Trujillo?” we all cried out. “Trujillo came to see you?” Sor Socorro rushed out for a second time that day, hushing and rounding us up. We had to wait until lights-out that night to hear Lina’s story.It turned out that Trujillo had been visiting some official’s house next door, and attracted by the shouts from our volleyball game below, he had gone out on the balcony. When he caught sight of our beautiful Lina, he walked right over to the school, followed by his surprised aides, and insisted on meeting her. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Sor Asunción finally gave in and sent for Lina Lovatón. Soldiers swarmed about them, Lina said, and Trujillo took a medal off his own uniform and pinned it on hers!

“What did you do?” we all wanted to know In the moonlight streaming in from the open shutters, Lina Lovatón showed us. Lifting the mosquito net, she stood in front of us and made a deep curtsy.

Soon, every time Trujillo was in town—and he was in La Vega more often than he had ever been before—he stopped in to visit Lina Lovatón. Gifts were sent over to the school: a porcelain ballerina, little bottles of perfume that looked like pieces of jewelry and smelled like a rose garden wished it could smell, a satin box with a gold heart charm inside for a bracelet that Trujillo had already given her with a big L charm to start it off.

At first the sisters were frightened. But then, they started receiving gifts, too: bolts of muslim for making convent sheets and terrycloth for their towels and a donation of a thousand pesos for a new statue of the Merciful Mother to be carved by a Spanish artist living in the capital.

Lina always told us about her visits from Trujillo. It was kind of exciting for all of us when he came. First, classes were cancelled, and the whole school was overrun by guards poking through all our bedrooms. When they were done, they stood at attention while we tried to tease smiles out of their on-guard faces. Meanwhile, Lina disappeared into the parlor where we had all been delivered that first day by our mothers. As Lina reported, the visit usually started with Trujillo reciting some poetry to her, then saying he had some surprise on his person she had to find. Sometimes he’d ask her to sing or dance. Most especially, he loved for her to play with the medals on his chest, taking them off, pinning them back on.

“But do you love him?” Sinita asked Lina one time. Sinita’s voice sounded as disgusted as if she were asking Lina if she had fallen in love with a tarantula.

“With all my heart,” Lina sighed. “More than my life.”

Trujillo kept visiting Lina and sending her gifts and love notes she shared with us. Except for Sinita, I think we were all falling in love with the phantom hero in Lina’s sweet and simple heart. From the back of my drawer where I had put it away in consideration for Sinita, I dug up the little picture of Trujillo we were all given in Citizenship Class. I placed it under my pillow at night to ward off nightmares.

For her seventeenth birthday, Trujillo threw Lina a big party in a new house he had just built outside Santiago. Lina went away for the whole week of her birthday. On the actual day, a full-page photograph of Lina appeared in the papers and beneath it was a poem written by Trujillo himself:

She was born a queen, not by dynastic right,

but by the right of beauty

whom divinity sends to the world only rarely.

Sinita claimed that someone else had written it for him because Trujillo hardly knew how to scratch out his own name. “If I were Lina—” she began, and her right hand reached out as if grabbing a bunch of grapes and squeezing the juice out of them.

Weeks went by, and Lina didn’t return. Finally, the sisters made an announcement that Lina Lovatón would be granted her diploma by government orders in absentia. “Why?” we asked Sor Milagros, who was still our favorite. “Why won’t she come back to us?” Sor Milagros shook her head and turned her face away, but not before I had seen tears in her eyes.

That summer, I found out why. Papá and I were on our way to Santiago with a delivery of tobacco in the wagon. He pointed out a high iron gate and beyond it a big mansion with lots of flowers and the hedges all cut to look like animals. “Look, Minerva, one of Trujillo’s girlfriends lives there, your old schoolmate, Lina Lovatón.”“Lina?!” My breath felt tight inside my chest as if it couldn’t get out. “But Trujillo is married,” I argued. “How can he have Lina as a girlfriend?”

Papá looked at me a long time before he said, “He’s got many of them, all over the island, set up in big, fancy houses. Lina Lovatón is just a sad case, because she really does love him, pobrecita.” Right there he took the opportunity to lecture me about why the hens shouldn’t wander away from the safety of the barnyard.

Back at school in the fall during one of our nightly sessions, the rest of the story came out. Lina Lovatón had gotten pregnant in the big house. Trujillo’s wife Doña María had found out and gone after her with a knife. So Trujillo shipped Lina off to a mansion he’d bought for her in Miami where he knew she’d be safe. She lived all alone now, waiting for him to call her up. I guess there was a whole other pretty girl now taking up his attention.

“Pobrecita,” we chorused, like an amen.

We were quiet, thinking of this sad ending for our beautiful Lina. I felt my breath coming short again. At first, I had thought it was caused by the cotton bandages I had started tying around my chest so my breasts wouldn’t grow. I wanted to be sure what had happened to Lina Lovatón would never happen to me. But every time I’d hear one more secret about Trujillo I could feel the tightening in my chest even when I wasn’t wearing the bandages.

“Trujillo is a devil,” Sinita said as we tiptoed back to our beds. We had managed to get them side by side again this year.

But I was thinking, No, he is a man. And in spite of all I’d heard, I felt sorry for him. iPobrecito! At night, he probably had nightmare after nightmare like I did, just thinking about what he’d done.

Downstairs in the dark parlor, the clock was striking the hours like hammer blows.

The Performance

1944

It was our country’s centennial year. We’d been having celebrations and performances ever since Independence Day on February 27th. Patria had celebrated her twentieth birthday that day, and we’d thrown her a big party in Ojo de Agua. That’s how my family got around having to give some sort of patriotic affair to show their support of Trujillo. We pretended the party was in his honor with Patria dressed in white, her little boy Nelson in red, and Pedrito, her husband, in blue. Oh yes, the nun thing had fallen through.

It wasn’t just my family putting on a big loyalty performance, but the whole country. When we got to school that fall, we were issued new history textbooks with a picture of you-know-who embossed on the cover so even a blind person could tell who the lies were all about. Our history now followed the plot of the Bible. We Dominicans had been waiting for centuries for the arrival of our Lord Trujillo on the scene. It was pretty disgusting.

All through nature there is a feeling of ecstasy. A strange otherworldly light suffuses the house smelling of labor and sanctity. The 24th of October in 1891. God’s glory made flesh in a miracle. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo has been born!

At our first assembly, the sisters announced that, thanks to a generous donation from El Jefe, a new wing had been added for indoor recreation. It was to be known as the Lina Lovatón Gymnasium, and in a few weeks, a recitation contest would be held there for the entire school. The theme was to be our centennial and the generosity of our gracious Benefactor.

As the announcement was being made, Sinita and Elsa and Lourdes and I looked at each other, settling that we would do our entry together. We had all started out together at Inmaculada six years ago, and everyone now called us the quadruplets. Sor Asunción was always joking that when we graduated in a couple years, she was going to have to hack us apart with a knife.

We worked hard on our performance, practicing every night after lights out. We had written all our own lines instead of just reciting things from a book. That way we could say what we wanted instead of what the censors said we could say.

Not that we were stupid enough to say anything bad about the government. Our skit was set way back in the olden days. I played the part of the enslaved Motherland, tied up during the whole performance until the very end when Liberty, Glory, and the narrator untied me. This was supposed to remind the audience of our winning our independence a hundred years ago. Then, we all sang the national anthem and curtsied like Lina Lovatón had taught us. Nobody could get upset with that!The night of the recitation contest we could hardly eat our dinners, we were so nervous and excited. We dressed in one of the classrooms, helping each other with the costumes and painting our faces, for the sisters did allow makeup for performances. Of course, we never washed up real good afterwards, so that the next day we walked around with sexy eyes, rosy lips, and painted-on beauty marks as if we were at a you-know-what-kind-of-a-place instead of a convent school.

And the quadruplets were the best, by far! We took so many curtain calls that we were still on stage when Sor Asunción came up to announce the winners. We started to exit, but she motioned us back. The place broke into wild clapping, stomping, and whistling, all of which were forbidden as unladylike. But Sor Asunción seemed to have forgotten her own rules. She held up the blue ribbon since no one would quiet down to hear her announce that we had won.

What we did hear her say when the audience finally settled down was that we would be sent along with a delegation from La Vega to the capital to perform the winning piece for Trujillo on his birthday. We looked at each other, shocked. The nuns had never said anything about this added performance. Later as we undressed in the classroom, we discussed turning down the prize.

“I’m not going,” I declared, washing off all the goop on my face. I wanted to make a protest, but I wasn’t sure what to do,

“Let’s do it, oh please,” Sinita pleaded. There was such a look of desperation on her face, Elsa and Lourdes readily agreed, “Let’s.”

“But they tricked us!” I reminded them.

“Please, Minerva, please,” Sinita coaxed. She put her arm around me, and when I tried to pull away, she gave me a smack on the cheek.

I couldn’t believe Sinita would really want to do this, given how her family felt about Trujillo. “But Sinita, why would you want to perform for him?”

Sinita drew herself up so proud she looked like Liberty all right. “It’s not for him. Our play’s about a time when we were free. It’s like a hidden protest.”

That settled it. I agreed to go on the condition that we do the skit dressed as boys. At first, my friends grumbled because we had to change a lot of the feminine endings, and so the rhymes all went to pot. But the nearer the big day approached, the more the specter of Lina haunted us as we did jumping jacks in the Lina Lovatón Gymnasium. Her beautiful portrait stared across the room at the picture of El Jefe on the opposite wall.

We went down to the capital in a big car provided by the Dominican Party in La Vega. On the way, Sor Asunción read us the epistle, which is what she called the rules we were to observe. Ours was the third performance in the girls‘-school division. It would begin at five, and we would stay to the conclusion of the La Vega performances, and be back at el colegio for bedtime juice. “You must show the nation you are its jewels, Inmaculada Concepción girls. Is that perfectly clear?”

“Yes, Sor Asunción,” we chorused back absently. But we were too excited about our glorious adventure to pay much attention to rules. Along the way, every time some cute fellows passed us in their fast, fancy cars, we’d wave and pucker up our mouths. Once, a car slowed, and the boys inside called out compliments. Sister scowled fiercely at them and turned around to see what was going on in the back seat of the car. We looked blithely at the road ahead, quadruplet angels. We didn’t have to be in a skit to give our best performance!

But as we neared the capital, Sinita got more and more quiet. There was a sad, wistful look on her face, and I knew who she was missing.

Before long we were waiting in an anteroom of the palace alongside other girls from schools all over the country. Sor Asunción came in, swishing her habit importantly and motioned for us.

We were ushered into a large hall, bigger than any room I’d ever been in. Through a break in a row of chairs, we came to the center of the floor. We turned circles trying to get our bearings. Then I recognized him under a canopy of Dominican flags, the Benefactor I’d heard about all my life.

In his big gold armchair, he looked much smaller than I had imagined him, looming as he always was from some wall or other. He was wearing a fancy white uniform with gold fringe epaulets and a breast of medals like an actor playing a part.

We took our places, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was turned towards a young man, sitting beside him, also wearing a uniform. I knew it was his handsome son, Ramfis, a full colonel in the army since he was four years old. His picture was always in the papers.

Ramfis looked our way and whispered something to his father, who laughed loudly. How rude, I thought; after all, we were here to pay them compliments. The least they could do was pretend that we didn’t look like fools in our ballooning togas and beards and bows and arrows.

Trujillo nodded for us to start. We stood frozen, gawking, until Sinita finally pulled us all together by taking her place. I was glad I got to recline on the ground, because my knees were shaking so hard I was afraid that the Fatherland might faint right on the spot.

Miraculously, we all remembered our lines. As we said them out loud, our voices gathered confidence and became more expressive. Once when I stole a glance, I saw that the handsome Ramfis and even El Jefe were caught up in our performance.

We moved along smoothly, until we got to the part when Sinita was supposed to stand before me, the bound Fatherland. After I said,

Over a century, languishing in chains,

Dare I now hope for freedom from my woes?

Oh, Liberty, unfold your brilliant bow,

Sinita was to step forward, show her brilliant bow. Then, having aimed imaginary arrows at imaginary foes, she was to set me free by untying me.

But when we got to this part, Sinita kept on stepping forward and didn’t stop until she was right in front of Trujillo’s chair. Slowly, she raised her bow and took aim. There was a stunned silence in the hall.

Quick as gunfire, Ramfis leapt to his feet and crouched between his father and our frozen tableau. He snatched the bow from Sinita’s hand and broke it over his raised knee. The crack of the splintering wood released a hubbub of whispers and murmurs. Ramfis looked intently at Sinita, who glared right back at him. “You shouldn’t play that way.”

“It was part of the play,” I lied. I was still bound, reclining on the floor. “She didn’t mean any harm.”

Ramfis looked at me, and then back at Sinita. “What’s your name?”

“Liberty,” Sinita said.

“Your real name, Liberty?” he barked at her as if she were a soldier in his army.

“Perozo.” She said it proudly.

He lifted an eyebrow, intrigued. And then, like a hero in a storybook, he helped me up. “Untie her, Perozo,” he ordered Sinita. But when she reached over to work the knots loose, he grabbed her hands and yanked them behind her back. He spit these words out at her: “Use your dog teeth, bitch!”

His lips twisted into a sinister little smile as Sinita bent down and untied me with her mouth.

My hands freed, I saved the day, according to what Sinita said later. I flung off my cape, showing off my pale arms and bare neck. In a trem- bly voice I began the chant that grew into a shouting chorus ¡Viva Trujillo! ¡Viva Trujillo! ¡Viva Trujillo!

On the way home, Sor Asunción scolded us. “You were not the ornaments of the nation. You did not obey my epistle.” As the road darkened, the beams of our headlights filled with hundreds of blinded moths. Where they hit the windshield, they left blurry marks, until it seemed like I was looking at the world through a curtain of tears.










124 Comments
Carol Cabrera link
1/8/2014 12:25:12 am

Quote:
“It is just what this country needs.” Minerva’s voice has the steely sureness it gets whenever she talks politics. She has begun talking politics a lot. Mamá says she’s running around with the Perozo girl too much. “It’s about time we women had a voice in running our country.”

Significance:
I think that these two chapters show us a lot about how different the sisters are. Dede seems so anxious and tired in the first chapter, and when we go back in time in the second chapter, we see how confident and sure Minerva is. The two characters seem like foils for one another, and this feels like it will be important later on in the story. This quote that I pulled shows how incredibly confident Minerva is, even from a young age, early on in the girls' lives.

Connections:
Even in these first two chapters, we begin to feel the heat surrounding Trujillo's rule, especially from Minerva, as shown in this quote. I feel like I see a lot of this passion in many people regarding political issues. When I was in college, I remember that Proposition 8 got everyone heated, and I had friends who lived on both sides of the issue, passionately arguing for what they believed. Another connection that I make to these two chapters on the book is the sisterly aspect of the novel. My sister, Amy, and I are extremely close, and I identify as the Minerva of the family whereas my sister is like Dede. Both of us feel very passionate about what we believe in, but I used to be much more vocal about my thoughts whereas my sister has always tended to sit back and listen before she says anything at all. I have learned over the years to listen more, and my sister has learned to speak up.

Reply
Natalie Boyle link
1/8/2014 01:30:44 pm

"And that’s how I got free. I don’t mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I’d just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country."

Significance:
These first two chapters are very important to the book. The first chapter explained the way Dede and her family lived and the second chapter explained Minerva's life at the school. The second chapter also uncovered how their government works and all the secrecy between them and the citizens. As Minerva gains more knowledge about Trujillo so do we, the readers.

Connection:
The government structure that Trujillo created reminds me of the current situation in North Korea. Kim Jong-un is the supreme leader of North Korea following in his father and grandfather's footsteps. There are death camps currently active in North Korea where people who seem unloyal to their nation are sent and stay their until they die, usually of starvation and exhaustion. However, all of the citizens of North Korea are taught to love and adore their leader similarly to Trujillo. Both Trujillo and Kim Jong-un are killing innocent people yet everyone is taught to love him.

Reply
Carol Cabrera link
1/9/2014 05:25:35 am

Natalie,
The connection you made with Trujillo and Kim Jong-un is a strong one. Kim Jong-un operates as a total dictator similar to the way Trujillo is starting to operate at the beginning of this novel. It's so scary how Sinita's family is being killed off! I wonder if similar things happen in North Korea, and I wonder how many people who have grown up in North Korea and lived under his rule even question what's going on. The sisters don't seem to question Trujillo's rule until they discover these things happening to other girls they go to school with. This makes me wonder what things I accept (or we accept culturally) that perhaps are "wrong" that are just so ingrained in me that I don't know it at all.

Natalie Au link
1/8/2014 02:26:57 pm

Quote:

"Dede," I said, so all three of us could go together. He pulled a long face. "If all my chickens go, what will become of me?"
"I thought he was joking, but his eyes had their serious look."

Significance:

The first two chapters are important to the book because they inform the reader about the four sisters, and allows the reader to foreshadow what is going to happen in the book. Chapter one is more about getting to know about the four sisters, and also their relationship with their father. In chapter two, Minerva explains her life at school, and some secrets about Trujillo also unfold in this chapter as well. The quote that I chose is all about the Minerva sisters relationship with their father. It shows how much he loves them and how hard it is to see them grow and leave home.

Connection:

I can connect this book so far to the Holocaust. This is because so many people think of their leader Trujillo as a hero in The Time of the Butterflies, and they look up to him so much. Nobody knows the truth about the horrible things that he is doing. Everyone loves Trujillo and even through parties in his honor. Likewise, young Germans during the time of Hitler were raised to praise Hitler and thought of him nothing short of great. The young Germans were brainwashed to hate Jews and to think what Hitler was doing was right. They didn't know about the other side of the conflict, and were never educated about how the Jews were treated.

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Bonnie May link
1/9/2014 06:11:46 am

Natalie!

I really like your commentary on chapters one and two. Like you, I also compared it to the Holocaust and Hitler's reign over the Germans. I like the way you wrote that the children were "brainwashed", growing up in a society that praised Hitler for his actions. It makes me wonder about the things that we are learning today that we don't fully grasp. For example, Americans are really only hearing the Israeli side of the war in Israel/Palestine, and we are not fully understanding the damage Israel has done. Likewise, I think it is possible that the education system is biased and we are only learning one perspective on things. Reading this book and other student responses has made me think that I should be more aware of the things I am listening to and that I should hear from all sides and perspectives before having a firm opinion.

Jasmin Diaz link
1/9/2014 06:51:06 am

Hey Natalie! (a.k.a. Tallie)

I really like how you talked about the first two chapters. It was very well worded and detailed. I also liked how you used the word foreshadowing to explain future events. I like the connection you made with the Holocaust. It was very interesting to see your thoughts about how the Germans were brainwashed. Overall, you did a great job! Keep up the good work Tallie!

Eli Steria
1/10/2014 07:25:37 am

I enjoyed the quote you chose because I think that it is a quote that you can read the quote any way, it can be about anything you want it to be. I think you did a great job connecting the TTOTB to the Holocaust and would like to hear more about that. I can see where your coming from how no one knows what Trujillo actually is doing

Aaron Nguyen link
1/11/2014 06:52:12 am

Natalie,

I thought your commentary about the first and second chapters is very good. It sort of captures the smaller bits of the two chapters, but explains a very important detail that others may have missed. I was wrapped up in the end of chapter two, and I almost forgot all about that section in chapter one! I can agree, the sister's father does love them very much, and I can sort of foreshadow that his love will result is something bad. Overall, the significance part was well done!

John contreras
1/15/2014 12:14:00 am

I agree with you about the connection with Trujillo and the holocaust. I also think that they were both deceived and brainwashed. I never really thought about that way until now.

Jacob Fikes link
1/9/2014 05:15:34 am

“Before she knows it, she is setting up her life as if it were an exhibit labeled neatly for those who can read: THE SISTER WHO SURVIVED.”

This quote is significant to the text, ITTOTB because it basically sums up what happens towards the end of the book. There is also a bit of sadness because it tells the audience that Dede was one of a number of sisters who all died except her. It is also significant because it builds to what happens at the play for Trujillo with one of the actors pointing tha arrow at him.
I can make a connection from this quote to something that happened in TKAM because people who defended or opposed something or someone that white men did or did not approve on, they were often bullied, beat, or persecuted along with whoever they were defending just because they had a different skin color. This is important because many of those things still happen in many places across the world today.

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Loren Li Cloes link
1/9/2014 10:24:00 am

Jacob
I really like your connection to TKAM because I would have never of thought of that.Its exactly as you wrote it, no matter what situation there is always someone who does not approve.Jacob you bring up a valid point in your connection, and that point is that people are beat and bullied until there are at breaking point or death. Also I agree that the quote you chose was very significant because in most interviews with people they stretch the truth and don't know the real story behind the four sisters. In the end I really like your connection.

Evan Mark
1/10/2014 06:20:31 am

I found it interesting that you chose a quote from the first chapter. I really expected more people to choose quotes from the second chapter. It was an interesting significance to see it as sadness, not wonder.

Douglas Hunter link
1/10/2014 06:23:20 am

The connection to TKAM was unusual but a good one. Although racism was not the key theme of TTOTB the repression, but the themes still work together. Also the way that Dede feels obligated to keep the story of her sisters alive would be an interesting point to pursue. Good Job

Ethan Schnepp
1/12/2014 10:49:19 am

Jacob I really like the quote you chose since you are right, that quote basically tells the ending of the book before it even started. Your connection is also really strong since it was actually something that happened and I think it was great that you shed light onto this subject. Good job!

Alejandra Sandoval
1/14/2014 02:14:19 pm

Hey Jacob, I really like your connections a lot. They are really detailed and it is easy to understand your connection. Also, I agree with you on the last sentence of the Significance paragraph.

Celina Enriquez link
1/9/2014 08:02:47 am

"Dede," I said, so all three of us could go together. He pulled a long face. "If all my chickens go, what will become of me?"
"I thought he was joking, but his eyes had their serious look."

Significance:

The first two chapters in my opinion were very important while connecting to this book very much so because they are informing the reader about the four sisters, in which allows the reader to shadow others on what is going to be happening in the book. Chapter one is about getting to know about the four sisters, including their relationship with their father. In chapter two, Minerva was explaining her life at school, with some secrets about Trujillo also unfold in this chapter as well. The quote that I chose is about the Minerva sisters relationship with their father. It shows how much he loves them and how hard it is to see them grow up into mature ladies and leave home.

Connection:

I can make connections to the Holocaust. So many people think of Trujillo as there leader and as a hero in the book In the Time of the Butterflies, they tend to look up to him. No one can figure out nor knows the truth about the horrible actions that he is doing. Everyone tends to love Trujillo. The young Germans tended to get brainwashed and started to become hating the Jews, thinking of if Hitlers actions he was making was right. They never knew about the other side of the conflict, and were never really had a big impact on there education i which they tended to not know about how the Jews were treated.

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Jasmin Diaz
1/9/2014 09:02:14 am

Celina,
This looks very similar to the one Natalie Au wrote. Quote on quote what she wrote. Next time try to be more original with what you write because we want to hear your ideas, not other ideas that you took as your own.

Celina Enriquez link
1/10/2014 01:16:48 am

"I asked the talking board what I would be when I grew up, and it said a lawyer."
Significance- The first two chapters are very interesting that gives you a prediction of whats going to happen next. After Minerva had said this while playing this board game i was predicting that she is going to eventually end up becoming a Lawyer while having to move away to major as a Lawyer. In the first chapters it was giving us an explanation of the lives that the four sisters had went through. In the first chapters we are learning the connections that the four sisters have within there father. In the second chapter Minerva was explaining her school experience including the secrets behind the Trujillo case. This quote that she had said is explaining that being a lawyer is a big prediction of the future that she hopes to become.



Connection- I can make connections to when I had recieved a fortune teller from Panda express which had read that I will be something vaulable when I grew up by helping others, and it is very true I want to be a Nurse or in which an assistant Nurse when I grow up I enjoy helping people as much as possible.

Evan Mark
1/9/2014 08:25:00 am

Quote: Where they hit the windshield, they left blurry marks, until it seemed like I was looking at the world though a curtain of tears.

Significance: In these two chapters, you get a lot of the fear of Trujillo. I think this is important because it allows you to understand why no one had done anything about what he was doing. It also gave you a feel for what it is like to grow up as Minerva, with this fear in her stomach. We learned some of her fears, that we would find irrational, such as not being pretty, or things like that. They seemed ridiculous, but they greatly affected who she became.

Connections: There is a connection to Anne Frank, because Minerva was afraid for a long time at what Trujillo would to to her, her family, if they found out she knew what she learned from Sinita. Anne Frank was afraid that if the Nazi’s found them, of what they might do to her, to her family.

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Ashley Seymour link
1/10/2014 07:24:29 am

Hey Evan,
I really like how you brought up the fact about how like anne frank was a lot like Minerva, I also agree with you because she knew that if she got found she would have to go to concentration camp. I also like the quote you chose to talk about it's a very deep and it was a great connection between the quote and the connection and the significance you talked about

Johncontreras
1/15/2014 12:04:44 am

I really like your comment I like your story about you and your sister back in collage. I think you make an excellent point about she started to be scared back in chapter 1. I think you are a very good thinker.

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Macy Dillenbeck
2/18/2014 09:55:47 am

Quote: "And that's how I got free. I don't mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I'd just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country."
Chapter 2, page 13

Significance: I think what Minerva is really trying to say is that even though she's left her home (her smaller cage) that she's now found out about Trujillo and feels like she's in a bigger cage which is the Dominican Republic. I don't really think that Minerva wanted to be "free" I think she wanted more freedom, which doesn't mean the same thing.

Connection: The thing that really stands out to me in this quote is the cage part. It really reminds me of when I read an article about how the Israeli government tortures children by locking them in cages. I read this so long ago but it really stood out, now im not 100% sure that this is even true, but to think that's even an idea is really sad.

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Douglas Hunter link
1/8/2014 06:26:22 am

"“You and Trujillo,” Papá says a little loudly, and in this clear peaceful night they all fall silent. Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security."

Significance: The first two chapters are significant, because they set the story. This author gives a very good idea of how children are not taught about the true nature of Trujillo and neither are you, you know he is a dictator, but you really don't know how bad things are under him. You kind of start to grow with the sisters learning things as they learn, and coming to your own conclusions.

Connection: In this book I am reminded of George Orwell's book 1984 and how people say these simple jokes and realize afterwords that they could potentially be killed for what they just said as a simple joke. Obviously in this book the oppression is not as deeply rooted, but it is frighteningly close to the totalitarianism in 1984.

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Chase Leon
1/10/2014 06:00:39 am

Hello Doug!
Doug I thought your connection was very good, but also original. No one else came close to what you put as the connection so I thought your connection stood out to me, and it was probably a good connection for you too. So good job Doug!

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Dominic Dudley link
1/10/2014 11:24:20 am

Hey Doug.
I think that your quote was a really solid part of your piece. Your connection to the book was a very unique and relevant one, that fits really well with what you said. The significance part could be expanded upon a little bit though. Otherwise it is really strong!

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Bonnie May link
1/8/2014 09:56:19 am

Quote:

"A chill goes through her, for she feels in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn't want to be the only one left to tell their story." (Alvarez, 10)

Significance:

I think that the first two chapters are important because they set up the story and introduce us to the personalities of Dede and Minerva. I like seeing the opposite traits in the sisters. Dede seems more quiet and held back, while Minerva speaks her mind. Also, these chapters began to unravel opinions and stories of Trujillo and the things he has done to the people. It was interesting to me that everyone admired Trujillo and didn't understand what was going on behind their backs. The children growing up in the Dominican Republic think that Trujillo is their hero, and are not being properly educated or informed of their leader.

Connection:

While I was reading chapter two, I began to compare it to Hitler's rule during the Holocaust. German children were being educated to adore Hitler and hate Jews, and they weren't seeing both sides of the conflict or the destruction Hitler was causing. In the Dominican Republic, Trujillo was considered a wonderful man that the children were brought up to love, but he was murdering people and climbing his way to the top. What stood out to me from both of these events was the fact that people only knew one side of the story. At the beginning of the year, we read To Kill a Mockingbird and learned to "walk a mile in another man's moccasins before judging him." The people of these countries are not being given full perspective, and they are not seeing the damage of their leaders.

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Jasmin Diaz link
1/9/2014 09:10:19 am

Hey Bonnie!

You did very well explaining the first two chapters and talking about Dede and Minerva's different personalities. You talked about how people looked up to Trujillo, but didn't understand what he was really doing. That got me thinking about many other leaders in history who did the same things like Stalin and Hitler. You also did a great job in explaining what connections you saw between Trujillo, Hitler and To Kill A Mockingbird. Hitler was killing many people and so was Trujillo, but not many people saw that. The part where you talk about the book To Kill a Mockingbird also got me thinking about the connections between this book and that book. I didn't see it before, but you really opened my eyes to new connections. Overall, you did a great job explaining your ideas and connections! Good job Bonnie!

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Natalie Au link
1/10/2014 07:00:29 am

Bonnie!

You did really good explaining the first two chapters. I really like how you stated your opinion about what you found interesting in the two chapters that we read. You said that it was interesting to you how everyone admired Trujillo and didn't know what was going on behind their backs. This made me wonder how Trujillo hides it so well. It also made me think that obviously some people know that he kills innocent people, and why a rumor hasn't spread yet. On a different note, your connection was really strong as well. I connected it to the Holocaust too, and I really like how you compared it to To Kill a Mockingbird as well. I never thought about connecting it to To Kill a Mockingbird and so it opens up new possibilities of connections for me, so thank you!

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Natalie Boyle link
1/10/2014 07:12:55 am

Hello Bonnie. I agree with Jasmine, you did a great job summarizing the first two chapters. I also agree that it is similar to Holocaust. I really like the connection you made between To Kill a Mockingbird and Trujillo. I feel like you really opened my eyes to a connection across time. TKAM was set in the 60's and INTOTB in the 90's. You did a great job relating different time periods! :)

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Aaron Nguyen link
1/8/2014 10:23:58 am

Quote: “Untie her, Perozo,” he ordered Sinita. But when she reached over to work the knots loose, he grabbed her hands and yanked them behind her back. He spit these words out at her: “Use your dog teeth, bitch!”

His lips twisted into a sinister little smile as Sinita bent down and untied me with her mouth.



Significance: In these two chapters, the main characters and their families are introduced, and you really get to find out their way of life. It seems like in the household that they grew up in, Trujillo is very praised and almost worshipped. However, I feel like the most significant part of the chapter was with the quote above, because not only does Minerva already have sour feelings towards Trujillo, (because of Sinita’s story) but to see how brutal he can be in reality should really spark a bitter hatred towards him. This part of chapter 2 stands out the most because I feel like it was a really hard slap into reality for Minerva. After growing up with a false idol, she should finally realize his cruelty after the event. What I feel matters the most about these chapters is that they are the few storybuilder chapters, the chapters that draw the reader into the book and hooks them with the story. These first two chapters do an excellent job of bringing the reader into the world of the book and stepping into Minerva’s shoes.


Connection: I can connect this part of chapter two to how Kim Jong Un rules North Korea. Even though he is obviously much more wealthy, and sees his people as disposable, the people of North Korea worship him as a god. In the book, the people all love Trujillo and see him as an idol, even though he lives in a rich house and lives the life while the people suffer in poverty. I can almost relate myself to Dede because she is much more of a listener than a talker. When the interviewer came to talk to her, she was very calm, and she only spoke enough to answer the reporter’s questions. When I meet someone new, I tend to see how much the other person is willing to talk and share with me before I spill all of my information to them.

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Nidhal Dawood
1/10/2014 07:20:30 am

Hello Aaron :)

I really enjoyed reading your connection to the quote and your relationship to when you first meet people, I feel like I'm the same way. I'd much rather listen than talk and so then I can just absorb all the information from the other person and give them advice or the caring they need. If a person wants to be a closer friend with me than that person needs to show that they earned my trust. I also know what you are talking about when you mentioned Kim Jung Un because I studied North and South Korea as my conflict and I can totally agree with you when you say he thinks hes better than everyone else just because he has authority (not for the right reasons, but he still has it) and is wealthy.

Overall, great job with the content, keep up the good work!

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Natasha Oslinger link
1/8/2014 10:34:11 am

Quote:
“From the back of my drawer where I had put it away in consideration for Sinita, I dug up the little picture of Trujillo we were all given in Citizenship Class. I placed it under my pillow to ward off nightmares.

Significance:
These two chapters are important because they introduce the girls set the scene. We find out about the very different personalities of each of the girls and see how quickly things can change. In the first chapter, we find out about Minerva’s high ambitions and wanting to become a lawyer. She then decides to go with her sister to school to become a nun, where she meets Sinita, and discovers the truth about Trujillo. Before going to school, Minerva, and probably most other people, see Trujillo as a god. They see him as being of the same rank as Jesus. But, because if Sinita, Minerva discovers the truth, showing how deception will play a large role in the chapters to come. Yet, somehow, after all the horrors Minerva learnt about Trujillo, she still places a picture of him beneath her pillow, as to ward off nightmares, showing just how brain washed people are when it comes to Trujillo.

Connection:
The first connection I can make in relation to this book and a past event is the Holocaust. Before and during the Holocaust, people were being brainwashed to love Hitler. Much like Trujillo, he was held in very high respects, to some people, he was even seen as a savior, a beacon of light to help fix Germany. But, what people weren’t seeing was the other side of the situation, in both cases. Hitler’s followers weren't fully aware of all the evil he was doing, and the people of the dominican Republic weren't seeing all the killing and wrong Trujillo was doing. One specific connection I made was from the quote I chose, how Minerva still look back at Trujillo for hope, even after all she knew about him, which reminded me how in Night, Elie said he had more faith in Hitler over anyone else because Hitler is the only one who has kept all his promises.

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Johana Guatemala link
1/10/2014 06:22:41 am

Hey Tasha,
The connection you made with Hitler and Elie is a strong one simply because there are similar situations. Sometimes I wander if like Trujillo, Hitler, or any other dictator current, past, or future truthfully they are doing good to their people/country or if it is BS that they carefully think out in order to get power or revenge for a personal tragedy. I also wrote about Minerva growing up and realizing Trujillo's true colors. Do you also question what things we have seen the reality behind but fail to stop believing it is good? For example, in this country during Pearl Harbor we put away Japanese people even if they wanted to fight for the USA, at any point did Americans realize that discriminating Japanese people was wrong and we should stop and if they did why did they keep quiet for a long time?

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Zach Schroeder
1/12/2014 11:05:45 am

Natasha,
I liked the quote, and your connection. Its really true how similar that Trujillo and Hitler are. There followers are brainwashed like Josh said. And was is all the evil isn't there. They are blind to all the bad and evil that is around them. Really good job natashaaaa

Dominic Dudley link
1/8/2014 11:22:28 am

Quote: The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn’t believe in the hammer.

Significance: These 2 chapters show the characters of the book and sort of set the tone for the rest of the book. It begins to show who Trujillo really is and the measures he would take to remain in power, such as killing an entire family and almost killing a schoolchild. Even with that people still liked Trujillo because they weren't personally affected by him, much like a nail that doesn't know about a hammer until it is hit.

Connection: I can connect this book to the book Incarcageron, where, people try to joke around, but could be killed for just speaking out of line. It is also similar like in North Korea as well, where people have been brainwashed through propaganda and lies that their ruler is great, and the ruler of the greatest country ever.

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Tanner Ragan link
1/9/2014 06:21:07 am

Dominic,
I believe your connection to North Korea is accurate and it's true how north koreans get brainwashed by propaganda and believing that their leader is the best. Just like Trujillo. I also like how you connected to Incarcageron in terms of death penalties by speaking out of term even if you didn't mean what you said. I truly think Trujillo has a nasty personality and his reasons for killing. But I think Trujillo was good at one point when he was young. Why do you think Trujillo is the man he is today?

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Natasha Oslinger link
1/10/2014 06:16:47 am

Wow Dom, your connection between the quote is VERY STRONG. But, I think you could put in a couple more sentences about the significance of the quote in relation to the book. The connection you made between North Korea and the Dominican Republic is good too, Trujillo is a lot like Kim Jong-Un with their role in the government, as is Hitler. Overall, you could have elaborated a bit more on each subject but the content that you gave was strong.

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Sophie Godarzi link
1/11/2014 11:29:50 am

Dominic,
I really like your quote, it really compliments what message you trying to portray in your two paragraphs. I like how you worded the significance paragraph. Although, I agree that you should lengthen your response to the quote. Good job!

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Gabriela Schnepp link
1/8/2014 11:23:33 am

"Don Enrique’s daughter says it’s about time women took over the government. Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much."

SIGNIFICANCE: These two chapters are important because they introduce us to the characters and sort of gives us a background so that we are able to grow closer to them throughout the book. To me, the parts that discuss the brutality of Trujillo stand out the most because it almost foreshadows what going to happen to the main characters later on in the book. The parts where we can eel close and really learn about the characters during these chapters shows me that this book is valuable. And book that makes you feel strongly in a certain way is valuable. It is important for us to study what's happened in the past and discover our opinions and feelings on the subject.

CONNECTION: I can connect the rule of Trujillo to almost all the dictators in history, as well as some kings. For example, the Pharaohs of Egypt considered themselves to be Gods, and their people worshiped them as such. As I read the first few two chapters of this book, I noticed how much the people loved Trujillo. Dedé's family has pictures of him in their house, they throw a party in his honor, and Dedé notes how some people compare Trujillo's rise to power with bible stories. Parts of this book, when Trujillo is accused of killing off people, can be connected to the book Night, where Elie describes how the Nazi torture and ill people for little to no reason at all.

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Chase Leon
1/10/2014 05:56:17 am

Hello Gabriela,
When I read your connection, I really got the connection oh how you made the connection and I think the connection you made really made sense. So I think It was a good thing to connect it too. So good job!

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Sol Manuel Garza
1/11/2014 07:40:05 am

Gabriela.
I like how you connected Trujillo to the Pharos in Egypt. I find it interesting how people still regarded their dictator a god-like person thousands of years after the Pharos. I think that whenever people are living under a king or dictator they are bound to believe the propaganda around him. They do not have a realistic idea of who he is and so they wouldn’t believe that he was doing bad things. For example, when Sinita tells Minerva that Trujillo is killing her family, it does not compute with Minerva. Also, I agree with you that this quote foreshadows the ultimate demise of the Mirabal sisters.

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Tanner Ragan link
1/8/2014 12:17:26 pm

Quote:
"A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn't want to be the only one left to tell their story."

Significance:
What felt vital during these two chapters are Trujillo's stories because it has already been told that the Mirabal Sisters have been killed by him. I feel like I need to know if Trujillo killed them for a special case or because of how everyone else acted. A part that stood out is when Sinita told Minerva about her losses caused by Trujillo because witnessing murders at such a young age can seriously effect you in negative ways. One other important part in these chapters is how Sinita pointed a bow and arrow at Trujillo during a play because that can lead to many causes of what Trujillo can do to her in the future. People should care about this story because this story needs to be recognized worldwide. There are way too many people who do not know about what Trujillo did and how many people he killed.

Connection:
We can connect this to the Paraguayan War when Francisco killed a multitude of his citizens. There were two books that I read in the past. One of them was Night by Elie Wiesel because millions of people died because of one man in power just like Trujillo. Another book I read in the past was called Swordbird by Nancy Yi Fan because I remembered that the antagonist leader of an army killed his own troops if they fail to do tasks. I am ninety percent sure this relates but roman emperors do punish those who violates the law but the death penalty is far too extreme for the action of the crime.

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Sol Manuel Garza
1/9/2014 11:12:53 am

Hey Tanner!
I agree with you that this story is worth reading because it shows the truth about Trujillo. In chapter 2, we see how Minerva and many other Dominican citizens under Trujillo's rule did not even know that he was a bad man. If somebody under the dictatorship of Trujillo did not know the truth about him then people living outside that country would probably have an even more unrealistic understanding of Trujillo.
I think your connection to the Paraguayan war is accurate. I never even thought about that connection! I find it a bit scary how many times dictators have risen to power time and time again. Lopez, the dictator of Paraguay, ruled in the 1800's while Trujillo ruled in the 1900's. It seems that Dictators rise to power all the time.

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Lizzy Young link
1/8/2014 12:23:18 pm

Quote:"So Trujillo shipped Lina off to a mansion he'd bought for her in Miami where he knew she'd be safe.She lived all alone now, waiting for him to call her up. I guess there was a whole other pretty girl now taking up his attention... We were quiet, thinking of this sad ending for our beautiful Lina."

Significance: I think the first two chapters are important because the main antagonist, Trujillo, is introduced and you get a first impression of him in the first two chapters based on the information given in the story. I think this quote stands out of the second chapter because it sets the mood for Trujillo character, so we know what kind of person he is. The setting and all of the main characters are also described and introduced at this time in the book and it's a crucial point as far as how the reader perceives the mood and plot of the book as well as the mood of the characters. Already in the first two chapters, I can tell that this book is set in a dark time and that the story we will be following will be quite dark. Since we are told by the narrarator(s) that in this story three sisters go away to school together and that there is a powerful man that seems to be evil, I am lead to believe that this story is about family working together through hard times. That, to me, is very valuable.

Connection: This story can be connected to current events because there are stories similar to this, of families having to fight for survival. For example, the civil war in Syria. There are thousands of families that need to help each other in order to stay out of danger. This is also a story involving an evil man of power, Trujillo. He is a president, not a dictator however, the way that he is killing his way to the top in this story can easily be connected to plenty of past dictators, who used force and inflicted pain to gain their power.

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Zoha Rashid
1/10/2014 07:09:08 am

Lizzy,
I definitely agree with you when you say that you think the book is going to be on the dark side, that's what I was also thinking. Also, I think you have a very strong connection to the Civil War in Syria this situation definitley seems to remind me of that!

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Andres Testas link
1/8/2014 12:49:01 pm

Quote:
"But when we got to this part, Sinita kept on stepping forward and didn't stop until she was right in front of Trujillo’s chair. Slowly, she raised her bow and took aim. There was a stunned silence in the hall"
Significance: In these two chapters we learn about the characters and about their families. It also set the scene so we knew where we were. We also found out that Trujillo was trying to show people that he wasn't a bad person but he really was bad. We also learn that no matter all of the bad thing that he does people still worship him and keep him under their pillow to keep them safe from nightmares.
Connection: This kind of reminded me of the hunger games when she shot the arrow at the apple in the pigs mouth. I chose the quote because she must have been very strong and had a very strong will to try something like that to a man with such great power and authority.

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Daniela Ronaldo link
1/10/2014 05:58:40 am

I like how detailed your significance paragraph was even though it was short. You wrote a lot of important stuff that most people wont really notice. I also like your quote because not that much people used it and it was an important one in chapter 2.

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Gabriela Schnepp link
1/11/2014 03:26:20 am

Hey Andres.

I really liked how you made a connection to another piece of well-known literature. I agree that the connection between the two scenes is very strong, and and your thoughts on choosing this connection are thoughtful as well.

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Jacob Fikes
1/11/2014 08:30:27 am

Andres,
Good, unique, interesting connection to the Hunger Games. I don't think I could have come up with that myself. I like how you go in detail in the significance part of your response as well.

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Zoha Rashid
1/11/2014 09:17:22 am

Andres,

I really, really like your connection to the hunger games, I feel like that was so unique and I probably would've never thought of that! It was a good connection because Hunger Games is such a popular and famous book so most people would understand the connection you made.

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Ashley Seymour link
1/8/2014 01:09:55 pm

Quote: “I’ll tell myself, Dedé, in your memory it is such and such a day, and I start over, playing the happy moment in my head. This is my movies—I have no television here.”

“It works?”

“Of course,” Dedé says, almost fiercely. And when it doesn’t work, she thinks, I get stuck playing the same bad moment. But why speak of that.


Significance:
I think the first two chapters in this book are important because it sets the setting and explains to us what happened to the Mirable sisters and who killed them, which was Trujillo. This quote came from the first chapter. I chose this quote because I thought it was really sweet how Minerva talked about how she plays the good memeories in her head about her family as a movie but tries to push out all the bad meormeries. I like this because even though so much evil has happened to Minerva and her family she tries to forgot about it and just think of all the positive instead of dwelling on all the negative. We learn that In the first chapter Minerva wants to become a layer but then we learn that she wants to become a nun, then in the second chapter we read that she moves away to go to a boarding school to become a nun. A part in the second chapter that stands out to me is when Minerva is being lectured on personal hygiene, this stands out to me because it's kind of like a sign about her becoming independent and learning how to take care of her self.

Connection:
I feel this story can be connected to a lot of events that have occurred in the past and the present. For an example, we learn that trujillo is a dictator and he reminds me of Hitler and how he killed people to get his way and make the people believe that he is a good leader so that they keep following his orders. I can also relate this event to the Cro Magnon war because the dominance craved in this war is much like how Trujillo wants to dominate over his people

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Josh Chiero link
1/9/2014 01:02:10 pm

Hey Ashley,
I really agree with your connection and the one with Hitler is very clear and I'm glad that you pointed that out and I thought it was cool how you connected it to your conflict from exhibition.

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Natalie Boyle link
1/10/2014 07:15:55 am

I really liked the quote you chose. I like how descriptive it is of where she lived. I really liked how you related this to an event a very long time ago. I feel like it is very hard to see situations over a large time gap but you did. Great job Ashely! Way to go :)

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Alejandra Sandoval
1/11/2014 04:20:38 pm

Hey Ashley, I really like your connection with Hitler. I think we have similar thoughts about Minerva and her family. Your connection to the Cro Magnon was is really simple but detailed and I can easily tell where your coming from with this.

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Zoha Rashid
1/8/2014 01:18:28 pm

Quote:
"“Trujillo is a devil,” Sinita said as we tiptoed back to our beds. We had managed to get them side by side again this year.

But I was thinking, No, he is a man. And in spite of all I’d heard, I felt sorry for him. iPobrecito! At night, he probably had nightmare after nightmare like I did, just thinking about what he’d done."

Significance: I think that the first two chapters were almost like fillers, we were told how these girls, along with many people, saw Trujillo, compared to how he really was. We were showed how these families live in their everyday live and how they see Trujillo. I think that one of the most significant quotes was the quote above because she's saying that she feels sorry for this man even though she knows all the bad things that he's done. She was told that he kills people for almost no reason and she has heard and comforted her close friend who is weeping over something that he Trujillo had done to her family. Yet for some reason, she still feels sorry for him. Maybe it's because she thinks that since he's done so much wrong in his life, he fears that eventually it will all come back to haunt him, almost like karma. Within these first two chapters I feel like a lot has already been said about Trujillo and how he is as a person, I also think we've learned that this story might end up being a somewhat dark/sad book. One thing that really stuck out to me was Trujillo's son's behavior. I think that he is and will always end up as exactly like his father.

Connection: I can connect this book, so far, to my conflict the Korean war/conflict for two reasons. One, the current ruler of North Korea Kim Jong Un, treats his people absolutely terribly, he himself lives buried in riches and does whatever he wants. Even though he doesn't show his people the love and support they deserve, for some reason they still worship him and look up to him, like they're happy that he's the ruler. Likewise, in the book, Trujillo treats his people with zero respect, killing anyone who badmouths him, and he doesn't listen to what they have to say. Still, girls keep his pictures and use them as protection form nightmares, and many swoon over him and his son. The second connection I can make is that in North and South Korea, hundreds of thousands of children died, along with everyone else. It seemed as if neither countries had had enough guilt to put a stop to this mass murder. In the book, Trujillo does the same to his people, killing them and doesn't show any mercy.

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Sandra Mendoza
1/9/2014 07:14:54 am

I really like the quote you choose because it shows how Minerva still doesn't really know how Trujillo really is. I also like how you connected this book to the Korean war because not a lot of people did that so it was unique.

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Lizzy Young link
1/12/2014 12:51:52 pm

Hi Zoha,
I strongly agree that Trujillo is perceived a certain way by his people. It is very common that dictators are seen as good people because of the lies they tell and the promises that they make, but in reality are committing great acts of evil. I also think that Trujillo's son will grow to follow in his father's footsteps because of the way he was raised.

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Anna Ryburn
1/8/2014 01:29:17 pm

"It wasn’t just my family putting on a big loyalty performance, but the whole country. When we got to school that fall, we were issued new history textbooks with a picture of you-know-who embossed on the cover so even a blind person could tell who the lies were all about. Our history now followed the plot of the Bible. We Dominicans had been waiting for centuries for the arrival of our Lord Trujillo on the scene. It was pretty disgusting."
SIGNIFICANCE:
The events in these two chapters are really significant because they already are showing the graveness of the situation. In the first chapter, we already know that three of the four sisters were killed, and in the second, we learn a lot about the dictator behind their deaths, Trujillo. We learn that he cheated his way into power, that he is married yet has multiple affairs, showering his mistresses with lavish gifts to win them over, and he wants to be worshiped by his people like a god. He also has those who oppose him killed quietly, and is unnecessarily brutal and cruel. He himself is extremely rich, while others, especially the ones whose families he's taken away, are struggling. I think this book will be valuable because it will teach about the
CONNECTION:
I can compare Trujillo and his relatives to the aristocrats in the French Revolution. They abused their power and treated the poorer people like dirt, while they themselves had parties and celebrations, and spent money pointlessly. They also ruled with fear, just like Trujillo, only they used the guillotine as a symbol of fear. It also relates to the Holocaust, because Hitler forced people to obey his rules using fear. Also, the Holocaust started out as something that people didn't take very seriously, and so they ignored it and few actually discussed it. By the time it got really bad, it was too late. And again, the Nazis gained wealth and power while the people they controlled suffered.

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Nidhal Dawood link
1/8/2014 01:32:45 pm

Quote: “But do you love him?” Sinita asked Lina one time. Sinita’s voice sounded as disgusted as if she were asking Lina if she had fallen in love with a tarantula.

“With all my heart,” Lina sighed. “More than my life.”

Significance: This part of chapter two is important because Lina is being blinded by love and I can connect that to now in days how people don't know who to trust anymore because their feelings or hormones blocks their sanity. Lina fell for Trujillo and she ended up miserable because she found out he has many other girlfriends and wife, right after Lina got pregnant. People should care about this because its happening lot now in days people don't care about their future anymore, or set boundaries they can care less to fall for someone as long as their wealthy or connected to fame and that's completely wrong. Love should be so strong you see over the materials of this world because you could be starving or sick but none of that matters as long as your with the one you love because he or she makes you happy. Love cant be easy it's just not like that you have to be able to take risks however by knowing what your getting yourself into as well. You never know who you might end up with, Lina obviously didn't know any better and fell for the first guy to tell her she was pretty. That's what happens when you don't know the person you "think" you love well enough.

Connection: This same situation happens to a lot of people in America, the divorce rate is very high and it all leads to that because you think you know a person and you gave everything for them yet, he or she wasn't the person you thought you loved. I can also connect this to some past articles I've read on how couples end up torn apart and both lonely and lost, that's why its so great to learn from others mistakes so I can live a better life. They just proved that humanity needs to be aware that love is not a game and we need to be careful for who we let in, in our lives by trusting. I feel sympathy for the way Lina is living because as a teenager sent off to Miami, raising a child as a single mother is going to be very hard, but now when her kid grows up she can tell her all the mistakes she made in her life so her daughter or son wont live through the same pain.




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Loren Li Cloes link
1/9/2014 10:38:23 am

Hey Nidhal
I really like the quote you picked and I agree with you that love is blinding. Its like that song from The Great Gatsby Love is Blindness by Jack White. Also Your right all teenagers up to young adults have a problem with falling in love to quickly. Also I like how you put a little suspense in your writing by saying " you never know who you might end up with." And by saying that I think you end on a good point no to have high expatiation and just enjoy your life that you are given.

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Celina Enriquez link
1/11/2014 09:44:31 am

I really liked the way that you had not only put yourself into Patria's shoes but, you were able to relate and know what she was going through because different articles have been able to teach you the different aspects on living and learning from others mistakes in which you had said that her daughter will hopefully learn from her mother s mistakes.

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Josh Chiero link
1/8/2014 01:35:26 pm

Quote: “You still don’t get it? Minerva, don’t you see? Trujillo is having everyone killed!”

Significance: The first chapters of this book are very important because it establishes the setting, characters, and other facts. It also establishes the character of Trujillo who we learn to be a controlling man who has killed many people. This quote stood out to me because he is emphasizing on how having a daughter is very tough especially in the story. Women were much different than men and were often treated differently, with less say and power.

Connection: I can connect this story to a few past and present things going on in the world. One thing that comes to my head is the situation in North Korea where citizens are being lied to and convinced to believe ridiculous things. It works and these people worship their leader although they are being lied to. Another thing that this is very similar to is the Holocaust. Millions of people were brainwashed into believing Hitler and caught onto his opinions and rules not realizing what he was doing was so evil. Another thing In my life can connect this to is bandwagon. Today we see a lot of bandwagon and we see kids following it although they don't realize what they're doing and how bad this actually is

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Sam Klein
1/11/2014 10:38:12 am

Hey Josh,
I really liked the way you summed up the first two chapters. I think the quote you used was really strong also. I really liked the quote. I also really liked all the connections you made I think it was cool how you connect more the one thing that's going on.

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Zach Schroeder
1/12/2014 10:54:48 am

Josh,
I really liked how you introduced Trujillo. I had the same opinions. You did a great summary of it all. I like how you connected it to North Korea. I liked your connection on how hitler and how no one really realized that he was doing evil.

Chase Leon
1/8/2014 01:41:48 pm

Quote: “I’ll tell myself, Dedé, in your memory it is such and such a day, and I start over, playing the happy moment in my head. This is my movies—I have no television here.”

Significant: Within the two chapters that happened, is we learn about what happened to Dede’s family and sisters, and we learn all about Trujillo and how we first get to meet him and first impressions of how he is. I think they are important because this is the first part of the story and you learn all about the characters and who is going to be in the main parts. What part stands out for me is when Dede is talking to the lady and it seems like the conversation is right next to me and i'm listening it in real life. It’s just such a realistic conversation that you would have with a lady. What matters about these two chapter is that it’s the first part of the story so everyone needs to know the main characters and how this all happens. I think the whole two chapters give away that its her telling how she lived her life. Why people should care about this story is because Dede talks about something new every page and its really interesting what is going to happen next. I think this is relevant to everyone because I think everyone has opinions on everything and I think it’s a good book for everyone.

Connection: How I can connect this piece is to current events is because there is people today just like this but there isn't much people like Dede. The only personal connection I could make to the two chapters is on my quote and it’s because sometimes in real life can rewind itself in your mind and be like a movie over and over because you just can't forget about it. These characters don't remind me of anyone. For me personally I can't think of anything that I can connect to in learning. I think this kinda connects to in Night where she in the concentration camps, but also when Trujillo kills people just like nothing. The connections that I can draw is when people are in Germany they are so clueless of what to do now, it kinda connects today like the North Korean Leader, Kim Jong Un does to people in North Korea.

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Nidhal Dawood
1/10/2014 07:26:13 am

Hey Chase!

I can agree with you about how Trujillo can have somebody killed in the blink of an eye and not care about their lives or if they have family's to support at all. It too reminded me of Hitler and how he treated the Jews and simply the people he did not like or didn't reach his standers to be human. Hitler and Trujillo both are having commoners fooled into thinking that hes the best and hes right for the power that he has because hes going to make life better for others which is a complete, lie. They are blinded by propaganda and titles.
So good job you really got me thinking chase!

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Miranda Vega link
1/8/2014 02:21:12 pm

Quote:
“From the back of my drawer where I had put it away in consideration for Sinita, I dug up the little picture of Trujillo we were all given in Citizenship Class. I placed it under my pillow to ward off nightmares.

Significance:
In the first two chapters the book introduces the dictator, Trujillo, and everyone is showing their thoughts of him.I also learned the very different personalities of all of the girls. Sinita tells Minerva terrible stories about Trujillo, but Lina Lovaton gets the girls to think differently about Trujillo. She loves him. Every time she sees him she gets a different gift from him. He writes her poetry and gives her a ton of attention. She is merely blinded by love. Suddenly Minerva, along with the other girls, has changed her thoughts about Trujillo. She had went from feeling sick to her stomach from all of the stories about Trujillo, to putting a small picture of him under her pillow to keep nightmares away. It’s like she feels that he will protect and comfort her even though she has been told the horrible truth about him. These first two chapters have shown that even though Minerva has heard awful stories about Trujillo, she was easily persuaded to think otherwise. This shows that Minerva’s personality doesn’t really have a strong opinion and things in her head can change very quickly and easily.

Connection:
The first connection that comes to mind for me is the Holocaust. Hitler had people wrapped around his finger, adoring him and loving him even with all of the mass killings and suffering everyone was going through. He found ways to make lies sound like the truth. He had people on his side who believed in him but also did the work for him. Just like Hitler, Trujillo took control by force. He had people who supported him. He had tons of women who loved him and would be with him even though he was married and had multiple girlfriends. He was a person who was torturous and cruel but some people were okay with that because of the fact that they were blinded by love.

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Jasmin Diaz link
1/8/2014 03:02:17 pm

Quote:

“People who opened their big mouths didn’t live very long,” Sinita said. “Like my uncles I told you about. Then, two more uncles, and then my father.” Sinita began crying again. “Then this summer, they killed my brother.”

Significane:

The first two chapters are important because we start to learn about the sisters and learn about all the events leading up to when three of the sisters die. The first chapter is all about getting to know the four sisters, Minerva, Dede, Patria, and Maria Teresa. The second chapter is about the experiences Minerva went through from 1938 to 1944. I chose this quote because I learned that Trujillo was not a trustworthy man and he killed anyone that was against him. He didn't like to be told what to do, so anyone who was doing wrong in his eyes had to be killed. Sinita's uncles didn't like having Trujillo in power and they wanted to get rid of him, but soon Trujillo heard about their plan and ordered them to be shot on the spot. Then he shot her two other uncles and her father. Then finally they killed her brother who was seeking revenge on Trujillo.

Connection:

One way I can connect this book is to the conflict of Stalin's Russia. I learned about it during the Romeo and Juliet project and saw some connections between this conflict and the book. Stalin was a dictator and he ran everything by himself, and from what I have read so far it seems as if Trujillo is a dictator himself. Stalin also got rid of his competition for being in power, just like how Trujillo was doing. Stalin even killed people who were against his ideas and how he ran things. Trujillo killed people who didn't like him or his ideas too. So I can really connect this book to the conflict of Stalin's Russia because of the similarities between Stalin and Trujillo. I can also connect this to the Holocaust because many people looked up to Hitler, but they were oblivious to how horrible his actions were. Trujillo also had many people look up to him, but not very many people knew about his bad actions. Hitler killed people who were against them and so did Trujillo. As you can see, I can see many connections between this book and the past, and I'm interested in finding out what will happen next so I may make more connections.

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Bonnie May link
1/9/2014 06:23:45 am

Yay Jasmin!

I really liked the way that you laid the similarities of Stalin, Hitler, and Trujillo side-by-side. You were able to point out the things that they were doing wrong that their people were oblivious to. I think it is very interesting how many former leaders and dictators have had similar tactics in leading their people. In short, many leaders kill off those who oppose them so that there is no threat to their power. However, there were also good leaders in the past who controlled their people through kindness and humbleness. I believe that treating your people with respect is the best way to lead. Reading about leaders like Stalin, Trujillo and Hitler now make me wonder why and how they were so respected and so successful for so long. I can't fathom why leaders would be so evil and cruel to their own people, but it all seems to boil down to greed and the need to feel powerful.

Natalie Au link
1/10/2014 07:27:07 am

Hi Jasmin!

I really like the way you explained the quote you chose, and how you described Trujillo as a not trustworthy man. I also like how you compared Trujillo to Stalin, and how they both were dictators and killed anyone who were against them. It was also really cool to see how you connected Trujillo to Hitler as well. This makes me think how many dictators in the past such as Trujillo, Hitler, Stalin, Mau etc. has ruled their countries in such similar ways and how history seems to keep repeating itself. I also studied Stalin during our exhibition project and I realized that Stalin actually started off with good intentions for Russia and just wanted to make Russia stronger. It makes me think that all of the cruel dictators in the past started off with good intentions for their people, but their greed for power seems to have got in the way of them doing good for their country.

Nikki
1/9/2014 06:22:36 am

Miranda,
The connection you made with Trujillo and Hitler is dead on. Hitler's behaviors and tactics as a dictator are similar to the way Trujillo is starting to work at the beginning of this novel. It's super scary to think that people were ok with the great evils that these men did! I wonder if the Jews living in Germany today, who haven't lived under his rule even question what was going on mentally through their ancestors and what would cause Hitler's (& others) to think that was ok. Minerva seems to be so influenced by the love Lina has with Trujillo that she forgets her own perception of Trujillo. What she truly believes him for. This makes me ponder what would I do in their situation? Would I be like the men in the milligram's experiment, and take authority over what I know is morally right or would be indifferent to the whole thing?

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Nikki
1/9/2014 09:29:30 am

Miranda,
The connection you made with Trujillo and Hitler is dead on. Hitler's behaviors and tactics as a dictator are similar to the way Trujillo is starting to work at the beginning of this novel. It's super scary to think that people were ok with the great evils that these men did! I wonder if the Jews living in Germany today, who haven't lived under his rule even question what was going on mentally through their ancestors and what would cause Hitler's (& others) to think that was ok. Minerva seems to be so influenced by the love Lina has with Trujillo that she forgets her own perception of Trujillo. What she truly believes him for. This makes me ponder what would I do in their situation? Would I be like the men in the milligram's experiment, and take authority over what I know is morally right or would be indifferent to the whole thing?

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Aaron Nguyen link
1/10/2014 06:04:55 am

Miranda,

Your post is a lot like mine! I talked about Kim Jong Un having his nation praising him and seeing him as a god, even though he kills lots of people and is cruel. It's weird how people can be blinded by the things around them. For example, people in North Korea are so used to the cruelty, they become numb, and then they teach their kids to praise or worship him, just like with hitler and Trujillo.

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Nadia Kireyko
1/10/2014 06:56:47 am

I like how you go deeper and you explain what you really saw and thought. You seemed to understand it good and you knew what you were talking about. Nicely written

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Lizzy Young link
1/12/2014 12:43:20 pm

Hi Miranda!

I totally agree with you. I think that Minerva is still very young and naive and is easily persueded. She is still young and hasn't quite made up her mind about her feelings on certain topics such as this. I think it will be really interesting to see how her character grows and how her opinions change.

Love you!

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Loren Li Cloes link
1/8/2014 03:02:31 pm

Quote:
"We can all be killed. Its the secret of Trujillo."

Significance:
The first two chapters of the book we really get to know two out of the three sisters. Also the two chapters were significant because they went into detail about how people can get along even thought they believe and care for opposite sides of most politics. In the second chapter it was very interesting how the young lades argued both sides of the conflict. The quote is significant because it give the book a little suspense on what some people think of Trujillo. Also the quote is significant because it opens a lot of doors to connotations that can be made.
Connotations:
When reading the quote for the first time I automatically thought of the Holocaust because during the Holocaust there was a lot of secrecy, and blood shed. An example of the secrecy was Ann Frank and her family because very few people knew where they where hiding. Also during the Holocaust people would secretly sell gold, silver and other goods while they where working with Hitlers men. Not only was there secrecy but there was blood shed, and many burning bodies, that where dumped into mass graves, and most victims knew something that Hitler did not wan't them to know. Hitler did not wan't the world to know how many lives where taken and how every person was forced to go through inspection, without a fair evaluation. Hitler just wanted the world to know that he was doing something good by clearing the earth of Jewish people.

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Scot Wade link
1/10/2014 01:05:53 pm

I really like your connection to Anne Frank and her hiding. I Kinda thought about your connection, and I was surprised you didn't include anything that had to do with Trujillo and Hitler being alike. They both had a lot of brutal power.

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Daniela Canseco link
1/8/2014 03:29:36 pm

Quote:“Look, Minerva, one of Trujillo’s girlfriends lives there, your old schoolmate, Lina Lovatón.”“Lina?!” My breath felt tight inside my chest as if it couldn’t get out. “But Trujillo is married,” I argued. “How can he have Lina as a girlfriend?”

Significance: I thought this quote was a very important quote in this story because it talks about one of Trujillo's many horrible things he had done. This one was about kidnapping basically, because he made a girl fall in love him then he basically locked her up and she no longer had freedom. Further in the second chapter it talks about how Lina was lonely and sad and this explains how Trujillo didn't have to physically hurt somebody or kill somebody to make there life's miserable and horrible. This shows how much power Trujillo had and how he felt he could do whatever he could because nobody could stop him. Something else I found in this quote was the last sentence that Minerva said which was "But Trujillo is married,how can he have Lina as a girlfriend?” I thought this last quote was significant because it shows how a child's mind could easily be confused and how a childhood could easily be ruined. Because when your a child you expect a husband to have a wife and that's it and, when you hear about things like this that he had girlfriend while having a wife you get confused and frustrated and wonder how people could actually do that to somebody they "love".

Connection: I think this quote connects to the Holocaust just because of the dictatorship in general. In the Holocaust Hitler had so much power and nobody could stop him so he did what he wanted. Sadly, what he wanted was to kill and trap Jews and take their freedom away from them. And because nobody stopped him and he had the power for a long time he did many horrible things to the Jews, just like Trujillo. Because Trujillo was 30 years in power before he was stopped and in those 30 years he made so many lives miserable.

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Sandra Mendoza
1/9/2014 05:23:25 am

I like how you connected it to the Holocaust. You really explained how it connect and it was really detailed. I also really like the quote you picked because it is unique.

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Andres Testas link
1/10/2014 06:06:49 am

I like how you connected it to an event that happened in history like the holocaust. You explained it nicely and smoothy.

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Sophie Godarzi link
1/11/2014 11:50:19 am

I really like how detailed your paragraph is. Yet, it is still the writing still flows and keeps me intrigued. I really like your connection to the Holocaust, it provides many facts.

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Alejandra Sandoval
1/11/2014 04:23:19 pm

Hey DC,

I really love the quote and the significance because I think similar to you also. The connection you made to the Holocaust was really detailed and I understood everything you said. And I never thought of how Trujillo basically kidnapped Lina until you brought it up, so you made me think another way. Good job :)

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Nikki Jimenez link
1/8/2014 03:50:31 pm

Quote:

"And that’s how I got free. I don’t mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I’d just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country."

Significance:

The first two chapters are important because they set up the whole image of what this novel is about. It gives us a background so that we are able to grow closer,connect, to the ideas, emotions, and people throughout the book. As if the the book is giving us a face to the name. It is a totally different feeling when you are able to identify and synthesis with a person then reading or hearing about them as a number. For example, if you followed just one jewish person's life in the holocaust you wouldn't feel the indifference others would feel if you were to hear the statistic of 11 million people died in the holocaust. I pulled this quote out because it shows how by being able to put "a face to the name" we get a new perspective on humanity and our world that happens around us.


Connection:

Even in these first two chapters, we can start to see the heat of Trujillo being in power, the adolescence and the confusion of "finding oneself" through the sisters, and how the sisters respond to the events in their lives. Minerva especially reminds me of my mom. They are both confident and very passionate about her opinions. And they both seem to take initiative and make the best for themselves. For example, Minerva saw the opportunity to get herself into school too so she spoke up and included herself in the school boarding. My mom has had the opportunity to better her career conditions and she took the initiative and took the schooling and is currently becoming a legal translator.

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Johana Guatemala link
1/10/2014 03:04:42 pm

Hey Nikki,
The quote you chose is a really strong one because Minerva looses her belief in the BS she was taught and comes to realize the truth behind Trujillo's policies. Sometimes I wonder if if dictators truthfully believe that they are doing good for their country or just searching for power or vengeance? It is scary to think many dictators rise to political power and no one realizes until it is to late. Do you ever wonder if we are blinded and do not see the BS behind people we trust and believe? It is really cool that you connect Minerva to your mom. It is very good for your mom not to pass up a better option.

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Miranda Vega link
1/11/2014 12:42:02 pm

Nikki,
I love your whole significance paragraph! I hadn't comprehended that the book is using multiple characters perspectives to tell the story. Now that I do know I agree that it is great and important that the book does this. I also like how you compared your mother to Minerva based on characturistics and personality traits you have learned about her so far. Great writing!

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Sandra Mendoza
1/8/2014 04:15:24 pm

Quote:
"He lifted an eyebrow, intrigued. And then, like a hero in a storybook, he helped me up. “Untie her, Perozo,” he ordered Sinita. But when she reached over to work the knots loose, he grabbed her hands and yanked them behind her back. He spit these words out at her: “Use your dog teeth, bitch!” His lips twisted into a sinister little smile as Sinita bent down and untied me with her mouth."

Significance:
This two chapters are important in this book because we are getting to know Dedé and learning how Trujillo really is. The part that stand out to me the most is when Dedé and Sinita act their play in front of Trujillo and his son get really mad that he even treats Sinita really bad. It really stood out to me I never expected Sinita to do that and for the son to act that way. I think that what matters the most in this two chapters so far is that we are getting to know some of the characters in this book. This quote just really stood out to me because I never thought Sinita was going to do that. Also, the son was very rude to her and I didn't think he was going to be so rude like that.

Connections:
I can connect this quote to Night. When Elie's father asked to go to the bathroom and they just slapped him really hard. I think they both connect because the Nazi and Trujillo's son were both being really mean to them. They were also treating them very badly like if they were animals or worse. I can connect this book to the Holocaust because the Germans thought of Hitler as their idol and as a nice person when really he isn't. Like Trujillo people seem him as an idol but really no one really know that he isn't a good person as they think he is.

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Daniela Canseco link
1/10/2014 06:25:55 am

I really like the quote you chose because it basically explains what happened in the play. I also like what you thought about the first 2 chapters. I also agree with you when you say that you think its good that we are getting to learn about new characters. I also like your connection because I also connected it to Hitler and the Holocaust.

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Ethan Schnepp
1/12/2014 10:36:48 am

Hey Sandra I really like the connections you made to the holocaust and I like how you give proof of how it is connected to Night. Also your significance is very descriptive in what was the part that really stood out to you. I also was very surprised when Sinita did the to Trujillo, it was a very shocking moment. Great job!

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Johana Guatemala link
1/8/2014 04:37:51 pm

Quote:
“A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn’t want to be the only one left to tell their story.”

Significance:
The thing I feel that is most important in these two chapters is Minerva growing up and seeing the reality behind Trujillo and how he runs the country. These two chapters matter because they give an introduction to how the girls home life and school life worked out with Trujillo in charge. It also shows some of the horrifying things Trujillo did and the effects it had. In the first chapter it talks about the girls dad saying what he predicts would be Dede’s future and cannot go on with his other two daughters because mother disapproves and later Dede gets a chill of fear of being the last one left, this gives clue to the value of the book because it hints at later events in their family. People should care about this story because it gives a sense of how the smallest grain can tip the scale. This piece of the book is relevant to those interested in learning from the past and putting it to use now. This piece of the book is irelevent to people who change cannot happen.

Connection:
I can connect this piece to Michael Jackson’s song Man In The Mirror because Sinita takes a bold move and points the arrow at El Jefe trying to create change. I can personally relate to Minerva growing up and realizing what she believed in was a lie. These characters, specifically Trujillo and Sinita, remind me of the laws that help immigrants get their papers and the protesters pushing for these laws to pass since some of my family are immagrants and I know people that are out there in the protest. This book also connects to a book titled Of Mice And Men because these two traveling workers, one healthy and average sized and the other mentally ill and large, cause a stir at the farm they work at against the boss’s son to stop abusing his power and in the end one dies and one is left.

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Scot Wade link
1/8/2014 05:27:52 pm

Quote:
"How do you keep such a tragedy from taking you under? I’m not sure I am explaining myself?”Dedé sighs. Yes, the woman is making perfect sense. She thinks of an article she read at the beauty salon, by a Jewish lady who survived a concentration camp."

Significance:
I think what really stood out to me was the fact that the first chapter of this book is basically introducing the character. How all of the characters act. They focused on the 4 main girl characters, and how they reacted to things through a few year time period. When the book goes into the 2nd chapter things start to get a slight bit heavier. In the book they also talk a lot about Trujillo, and how violent he could turn things into.
Connection:
I connected mine, to segregation in the 60s. Black people were brutally hurt, and some times had to bottle that fear inside. Even quite a few people still today had to live through that but have to keep that deep inside. I also connected it back to that because of the fact that Trujillo WAS the government. He could pick what he though was right, and thats kind of like the thinking of a white male at the time.

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Nadia Kireyko
1/10/2014 07:06:25 am

I like the connection you made, how you connected it to the segregation in the 60s. I like how you found a connection between the two. Overall, nicely written and thought out.

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Sol Manuel Garza
1/9/2014 12:09:19 am

Quote:

“…she realizes that hers is the only future he really told… A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn’t want to be the only one left to tell their story.” ( Alvarez 10)

Significance:
This quote is from the last paragraph in chapter 1. Dede refers to her father’s playful prediction about his daughter’s futures. She reflects on what he said about her future. She realizes that he said she would bury the rest of her family. This prediction makes her feel scared. The reason a chill goes through her is because “she feels the future is beginning” and if her father’s prediction is correct, she will be “the only one left” because all her sisters will die. In the last part of the quote, Dede fears that her destiny is to be a witness of something horrible and to have to be the one to tell that sad story.
This quote is significant because it relates to Dede’s journey of becoming the story teller. In this novel, Julia Alvarez uses Dede’s character to state how important telling the story of what actually happened is. At the beginning of the story Dede does not want to be the story teller and have to cope with all the tragedy. However, by the end of the story Dede comes to accept her role as the story teller. As Dede says at the end of the book “after the fighting was over and we were a broken people… that’s when I opened my doors and instead of listening, I started talking. We had lost hope and we needed a story to understand what had happened to us.” (Alvarez 313) Julia Alvarez is trying to communicate that stories have the power to help us understand ourselves. I think this is why she started the whole novel with herself, a “gringa Dominicana”, going and interviewing the only remaining Mirabal sister. From the very beginning she is looking for the story to understand her own family.
Connection:
The idea that Julia Alvarez is beginning to develop in In the Time of the Butterflies about the importance of the survivor living to tell the story is similar to the theme of Night. Both of these stories are about real events that happened to real people. Elie Wiesel felt an obligation to tell people about what happened to him in the Holocaust. By the end of the book, Dede feels that same obligation. She knows the way she will make a difference is to tell the story. In both novels, the main characters do not die for something but rather live for something.

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Peter Fisher link
1/11/2014 11:48:20 am

I am very impressed with your connection! Yes, Dede and Elie Wiesel do have very similar stories; they are both the lone survivors of the wrath of dictators, and both felt an obligation to make their stories known. I also think that, in your quote, there is a very strong example of foreshadowing. Overall, excellent job.

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Peter Fisher link
1/9/2014 12:24:37 am

Quote":
"Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch … (Alvarez 10)"

Significance:
These first two chapters do an excellent job of introducing what seems to be all of the book's characters. We have the four sisters, each one more quiet, or obstinate, or defiant than the others; we are shown Mrs. Mirabel's stubbornness and frustration, and Mr. Mirabel's rather drunken manner; chapter two gives us Elsa, Sinita, Lina, and Lourdes. We are also introduced to Trujillo and Ramfis' cruelty. In addition, I think that chapter two has a bit of foreshadowing: Sinita tried to make her defiance known to Trujillo, and the Mirabel sisters will do the same later on. This book as a whole is powerful because, even in the first two chapters alone, it shows the power of children to take a stand and make a difference in society. As the book goes on, it will show the four sisters, young though they might be, taking a stand and making a difference.

Connections:
I chose my quote because it can be connected to almost any case of oppression. Because I have been studying the Rwandan Genocide recently, I will choose to connect this book to that historical event. The Rwandan Genocide began because of a murder; Trujillo's rule began because of the many murders of the people with more power than he had. The Hutus took control of the government and began the killing. Trujillo did the same, as seen in Sinita's life. Finally, the Hutus were unseated when the Tutsis rose up and took over Rwanda. In the case of In the Time of the Butterflies, Trujillo was unseated by a revolution lead by the four sisters.

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Zach Schroeder link
1/9/2014 01:00:19 am

“Look, Minerva, one of Trujillo’s girlfriends lives there, your old schoolmate, Lina Lovatón.”“Lina?!” My breath felt tight inside my chest as if it couldn’t get out. “But Trujillo is married,” I argued. “How can he have Lina as a girlfriend?”

I like this one because of how he can destroy someones life without having to actually kill them, If he wanted to he wouldn't even have to lay a finger on anyone. My conniption is with Stalin and Hitler. Both of them hd massive genocides, but didn't lay a finger on anyone

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Sam Klein
1/9/2014 01:07:28 am

"I guess I even improved upon her lie"

I think the main significance in these two chapters would have the be the way they are setting up the story. Its starting to almost be as if you are living through it the way the story is written so far. It also talks about some of the bad that Trujillo has done.

I would connect mine to the segregation times because back then the whites were able to make most of the decisions and gave no word to the blacks. I thinks its almost the same if you imagined Trujillo as the decision maker and makes everyone listen to him or you could be hurt.

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Nikki
1/9/2014 09:43:46 am

Sam,
Your connection of Trujillo & segregation is really cool! It brings back the perspective of how blacks pretty much got brainwashed by propaganda and believing that their life is not their own and this is how life will always be. Trujillo basically did the same thing through his dictatorship. I also really like how you phrased the how "you are living through it the way the story is written so far." It sparks the question in me, what in the book makes you feel this book so strongly? What new perspectives can we grasp from just two chapters of people's lives?

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Josh Chiero link
1/9/2014 01:11:51 pm

Hey Sam,
I also really like the connection that you made with the 1960 civil rights movement. I can see it very well because blacks basically had no say or power in the community. They were controlled by whites and weren't allowed to do many of the things whites could do. This is similar to the book because Trujillo wants things his way and doesn't like when people do something differently or out of his rules

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Ashley Seymour link
1/11/2014 08:11:16 am

Sam,
I really like the way you connected this book to the segregation times about how the whites treated the blacks. I also agree with you about how the book seems like you living it specially by the way the narrater wrote this book. I think you made a great connection.

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Zach Schroeder link
1/9/2014 01:09:40 am

Quote.... “Look, Minerva, one of Trujillo’s girlfriends lives there, your old schoolmate, Lina Lovatón.”“Lina?!” My breath felt tight inside my chest as if it couldn’t get out. “But Trujillo is married,” I argued. “How can he have Lina as a girlfriend?”

Significance.... This shows how twisted people can be. It shows how Trujillo is a deceiving scary figure in this book. He can hurt without physically connection. He knows how to destroy life without death. You can kind on see how he feels, that he can do anything without anyone to stop him, which makes him even more evil.

Connection.... I think of Trujillo as Stalin and Hitler. There were two big people in world history. They both killed millions and millions of people. But yet never put a single finger on one of them. They knew how to kill in mass but they didn't kill a single person with there own selves. But they knew how to ruin lives, and they never knew any of the people they killed. They just destroyed there lives, and didn't lay a finger on them

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Eli Steria link
1/9/2014 01:20:22 am

Quote: Sinita drew herself up so proud she looked like Liberty all right. “It’s not for him. Our play’s about a time when we were free. It’s like a hidden protest.

Significance:
In these chapters, it does a great job introducing a few of the charters and how they act. Focusing on the girl that sisters have died really stands out cause that is horrible tragedy that she had to deal with so she is a girl that has been through a lot. I couldn't imagine what I would do if my two brothers have died and I think the girl is strong about it.
These two chapters it gives you a feel what it would be like in the book, and where everyone will be throughout the book. When the girls says that Trujillo killed his brother and his relatives was really big part and stood out to me. It shows that young girls take a stand and can make a difference. This act could be a good example to a lot of people that you can make a difference.

Connection:
There has always been a fight for peoples right and there will always be a argument. I think standing up for what you want to say and believe in is important in life. They don't remind me of anyone in my life. This is what we study in school, is that everyone is equal rights. From small stories to books we learn how nobody is different just because of there skin color. This is reminds me of the To Kill a Mockingbird book because he stood up for what he believed in. These two chapters a lot has happened and all I see out of it is a lot of bad experience in the girls lives and they want to make a difference. Similar to the Mather Luther King speech.

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Josh Chiero link
1/9/2014 01:15:17 pm

Eli,
I really like how you pointed out that standing up and fighting for what you want to say because this is very true. WE have seen many examples in history of this and many of the times people don't get what they want but end up making some kind of change or inspiration

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Tyler Gange
1/9/2014 04:21:13 am

Quote- Papa laughed, his eyes flashed at me proudly. Others said I was his favorite.

Significance- People should read this novel because its important to know what people have been through and have lived to tell the story, and how harsh dictatorship can be. People should realize that innocent people have been tortured, just for speaking up.

Connection- I can connect it to the civil rights movement because people spoke up, and were tortured by others

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Tanner Ragan link
1/9/2014 06:25:20 am

Tyler,
I think you have a strong connection in terms of torture caused by others speaking up. How do you think Trujillo tortured their citizens? Is the torture more severe the higher the "crime" is? I also agree that people should know about this book because there are too many people who don't know about this tragedy.

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Miranda Vega link
1/11/2014 12:52:27 pm

Tyler,
I agree with your significance paragraph. I also think it is very important that people are able to look back and see what hardships people had to go through for things that are simple and everyday to the present generation. Books are a great souse of information and the fact that the author used more that one persons opinion to tell the story was a great way to show what each character had to go through. Great point!

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Ethan Schnepp link
1/9/2014 04:32:40 am

“According to Sinita, Trujillo became president in a sneaky way. First, he was in the army, and all the people who were above him kept disappearing until he was the one right below the head of the whole armed forces.”

I thought that this quote that Sinita said was very interesting since the beginning of their lives, they were told the Trujillo was the best ever and he was an amazing person but now Sinita is saying that this is all lies and he is a horrible person. I thought that from around this quote to the end of the chapter, you get to see the true personality of Trujillo and his horrible actions and what he does to people and I thought it was really interesting how Sinita has a really close connection to Trujillo but in the bad sort of way and she is changing the way he friend Dede to now doubt the government which she always believed to be perfect. These chapters were about Dede going back in time and remembering the time of her childhood and the events that was linked to Trujillo. It talks about how she went to a nun school and met a friend that really hated the president Trujillo since he killed her uncles and her brother and now Dede is starting to doubt Trujillo and the government because of what Sinita said. I think something that was really important was the story that Sinita gave to Dede because it is almost like now the real story starts and before that was just getting plot and setting down and Sinita talks about all the horrible stuff Trujillo actually did. I think this represents to the images that we saw on tuesday one of them being that if you repeat lie often enough, it becomes politics. This relates to this quote and book since Trujillo came into power by lying and bending the truth and being sneaky so this relates to that image since that is what Trujillo did and that is how he became president.

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Peter Fisher link
1/11/2014 11:37:34 am

Ethan,

I really like how you connected the reading to our activities in class. I think that your connection was quite unique in that it did not relate directly to history. I also think that there are a lot of places that your connection can go. For instance, the quote you connected Trujillo to was coined by Hitler's right-hand man. Hitler got into power in a very similar way to Trujillo's method, which you described, and his men were all followers of his who helped him obtain his power. Your connection is very strong. Good job!

(Also, be sure to watch out for those run-on sentences!)

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Nadia Kireyko
1/9/2014 05:13:43 am


Quote: “The Mirabal sisters are not known there, for which she is also sorry for it is a crime that they should be forgotten, these unsung heroines of the underground, et cetera.”
Significance: I think it is a good thing how they explain that Dede is the only one left of the sisters and how that one lady wanted to talk to her. She is lucky that she has survived. I like how they went back in time in the second chapter and explained what happened and talked more about Trujillo..
Connection: This reminds me of the Holocaust because they look up to their leader Trujillo, like the Nazi’s looked up to Hitler. They look up to their leader and have no clue about the wrong things he is doing. They love their leader. Hitler brainwashed the Germans and made them think that what he was doing was great. Same with Trujillo, the people didn’t realize it. They never knew what Trujillo was doing.

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Douglas Hunter link
1/10/2014 06:27:47 am

I would disagree with your connection that people did not know what Trujillo was doing because only the children were gullible enough, to believe the lies spewed by the textbooks in school. Plenty of people knew what Trujillo was doing and that was why when the Mirabel sisters were killed Trujillo was assasinated.

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Scot Wade link
1/10/2014 04:31:15 pm

I like how you connected Hitler and Trujillo. I though of the sam thing when I thought of A connection, but chose different. I like that you talked about their thinking about the 2 leaders.

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Gabriela Schnepp link
1/11/2014 03:30:50 am

Hey Nadia.

I think your connection between the book and the Holocaust is a strong one. The two situations have many similarities, including the brain-washed people. However, going off what Doug commented, some people didn't buy Trujillo's stories and knew what he was doing. But then again, there were people who knew what Hitler was doing as well.

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Sophie Godarzi link
1/9/2014 12:10:12 pm

Quote: "It wasn’t just my family putting on a big loyalty performance, but the whole country. When we got to school that fall, we were issued new history textbooks with a picture of you-know-who embossed on the cover so even a blind person could tell who the lies were all about. Our history now followed the plot of the Bible. We Dominicans had been waiting for centuries for the arrival of our Lord Trujillo on the scene. It was pretty disgusting."

Significance:
In the two chapters multiple issues are introduced such as noisy interviewers, the death of the sisters, the old dictator, and Sintia's risky step towards liberty. All of these issues may begin to build on one another and these past chapters have merely introduced them. One part that stood out was when the main character forced herself into worshiping the ruler, because her family members and peers believed him to be holy and good.

Connection:
I can connect this piece to the book, "Night" because the attacks lead by Hitler started small and were rarely talked about, but only by the people who experienced it or related to the killings strongly. Then as time went on the killings grew larger.

Supposition:
I predict that the next chapters will be going into detail about Sinita's choice in shooting the arrow at the dictator. Maybe Sinita and Dede's family members will result poorly from this action.

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Dominic Dudley link
1/10/2014 11:30:21 am

Hi sophie!
I really liked your connection to world war 2, it really fits into what you were trying to say. Your supposition seems like something that would happen in the book, which is a good thing. You could try to find a shorter quote, to make it read more smoothly though. Overall it is good!

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Jacob Fikes
1/11/2014 08:25:23 am

Sophie,
I like the connections that you made to Night. I would have probably connected it to something a little more general, but I can see where you got that from. Anyways, good job on that connection and how the quote you chose was significant.

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Alejandra Sandoval
1/11/2014 04:13:12 pm

"'The night Sinita told me the secret of Trujillo I couldn’t sleep. All day I hadn’t felt right, but I didn’t tell Sor Milagros. I was afraid she’d stick me in the sickroom and I’d have to lie in bed, listening to Sor Consuelo reading novenas for the sick and dying. Also, if Papa found out, he might change his mind and keep me home where I couldn’t have any adventures.

I was lying on my back, looking up into the white tent of the mosquito net, and wondering who else was awake. In her bed next to mine, Sinita began to cry very quietly as if she didn’t want anybody to know. I waited a little, but she didn’t stop. Finally, I stepped over to her bed and lifted the netting. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

She took a second to calm down before she answered. “It’s José Luis.”

“Your brother?” We all knew he had died just this last summer. That’s how come Sinita had been wearing black that first day.

Her body began to shake all over with sobs. I crawled in and stroked her hair like Mama did mine whenever I had a fever. “Tell me, Sinita, maybe it’ll help.”

“I can‘t,” she whispered. “We can all be killed. It’s the secret of Trujillo.”'"

Significance: In these two chapters, what I feel is important is that Dedè helps out Sinita. Also, I feel that an important part of these chapters was when Sinita tried to tell Dedè about Trujillo and how he wants to kill everyone. I think this is important because Dedè doesn't want anyone to experience or feel what she was experienced and felt. Some parts that stands out to me is when Sinita points the arrow at Trujillo and also how Trujillo's son treats Sinita after she did that. They stand out to me because I didn't know Sinita would be so daring like that and how she didn't think that Trujillo will not go after all the women and girls in her family. What matters in these two chapters is that Sinita is afraid and that after what happened to Lidia, hopefully Dedè starts to realize how Trujillo really is. I don't feel quiet yet why the book is valuable because I don't know much about what happened to them yet, so I think I am gonna wait to see if I figure it out in the future. People should care about this story so that history won't repeat itself and so that people can realize that sometimes someone isn't who everybody thinks they are and they can take advantage of their power. I don't think this piece is relevant to everyone because not everyone was there at the time when Trujillo ruled and not everyone experienced treatment like how Trujillo's son treated Sinita.

Connection:
I can connect this piece to Hitler because he also killed people and treated them poorly, like how Trujillo is killing every man in Sinita's family and how his son treated Sinita. When I was in kindergarten a kid pushed me up against the basketball pole and he punched me, so when I read about what happened to Sinita and how Trujilllo's son treated her, it reminded me of that memory. This piece also connects to when we read Night by Elie Wiesel because we got to read what it was like when hitler ruled and how badly they were treated. This also connects to a book I read a long time ago called A Child Named It because an innocent child gets poorly treated by his own mother and Sinita gets poorly treated by Trujillo's son. This piece also connects to the time when slaves were around because them too were treated like this only because they weren't "high class" and it is sad to think and know what people STILL get treated like this all around the world and it is really unfair.

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Daniela Canseco link
1/12/2014 11:57:40 am

Chapter 3 and 4

Quote:" Sunday, July 20, Oh Little Book, We all just got back from the cemetery burying Patria’s baby boy that was born dead yesterday."

Significance: In these past two chapters the main characters were Maria Teresa and Patria. Chapter 3 which is about Maria Teresa writing in her little book, talks about what Maria Teresa lived mostly everyday. She talked wrote in it when she was sad, when she was happy, and when she was mad. Chapter 4 was about Patria, and it basically talked about what she went through and felt when she lost her baby, and how her child's death affected her and changed her. The quote I chose is significant to both chapters because it explains what was talked about in both chapters. Because in chapter 3 Maria Teresa talks about it and talks about how sad she was. In chapter 4, Patria talks about what she felt when she gave birth to a dead baby. The quote is also significant because it is an example to people who often judge others. If Patria was walking on the street, with messy hair/ tears on her face, people would judge her by the way she looks. They would say bad things about the way she looked without knowing why she looked that way, which was because she felt so much pain from loosing her baby.

Connection: I could connect this quote to a current political event that is going on right, which is abortion. This quote connects to a abortion because it is about a dead newborn baby. But in this case the baby died and was not aborted. I feel that when people abort most of them are really sad to do it but might have a reason to do it. The reason might not be good but they know why they do it.

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Celina Enriquez link
1/14/2014 10:15:13 am

Hey D.C. ,
I really enjoyed reading the connections that you had made with abortion. I have to agree on how when Patria loses her baby it tends to have a connection within abortion. Overall this was a great topic to bring up while reading about Patria's loss of her baby including the overall fact that we have been talking about the occurrence of Abortion today.

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Gabriela Schnepp link
1/14/2014 02:12:46 pm

Hey Daniela!

I really liked your connection to abortion. I felt like it was a strong way to compared the two. I also liked how you compared the differences between them, and your feelings.

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Gabriela Schnepp link
1/13/2014 07:10:21 am

"I should have desisted, I should not have seen what I saw. My child, a bundle of swarming ants! My child, decomposing like any animal! I fell to my knees, overcome by the horrid stench."

SIGNIFICANCE:
In these two chapters, we learn more about the other sisters and their thoughts on the problems they face. I feel like they are important because it brings me closer to the characters and helps me understand the conflict.

CONNECTION:
I can connect the diary entries to other books that I've read, including Anne Frank's diary. They both give us insight into the life of a young girl. Also, these two chapters teach us more about conflicts and loss, which are subjects that we've studied and are still learning about.

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John Contreras
1/14/2014 08:24:35 am

FIRST POST
“Minerva is burying all her poems and papers and letters. She says she hadn’t meant to read my diary, but it was lying around, and she noticed Hilda’s name. She says it was not really right to read it, but sometimes you have to do something wrong for a higher good. (Some more of that lawyer talk she likes so much!) She says we have to bury you, too.” (Chapter 3)

Maria Teresa has to bury her book because it was read by Minerva because the secrets in the book are no longer secret. Maria thought that the Dominican Republic was an unfair country. Hilda tried to escape the convent and got arrested. This shows that someone is trying to find the diary. It also shows that someone wants to get rid of poetry that is bad about the Dominican Republic. Maria Teresa probably buried the diary because it had something that politicians’ military personnel of The Dominican Republic want and will destroy it.

Connection: In my life I do not have the same fears that they do. I don’t have the same fears because we have different rights. For example, freedom of speech, and our police and military have to have search warrants. This is important to me because this is our home. At home we should feel warm, not frightened, and comfortable. Freedom of speech is important because we get to say what we want about politicians and ideas that politicians don’t like.
Supposition: It is possible that the military can come take the diary by force. Their military doesn’t need search warrants that can allow them to just barge in the family’s home. This would be not good for Maria Teresa because the military will force its way into her home and she would probably be punished. The punishment would probably not be fair.

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Gabriela Schnepp link
1/14/2014 02:16:22 pm

Hey John!

I loved how you made connections to your own life and gave examples about the wonderful things our country has to offer. You make a strong point in comparing the differences between Maria's situation and yours.

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Alejandra Sandoval
1/14/2014 02:21:45 pm

Hey John, your connection is really strong. It has a lot of detail and I can tell what where your coming from in your connection. Maybe next time you should add a bit more detail on your Significance part. Good job :)

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Faris Livingstone link
1/26/2014 10:14:33 am

Quote: “By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn't want to be the only one left to tell their story.”

Significance: In this first chapter we learn that Dede is the only Mirabal sister left to tell the story. We are also introduced to the rest of the family, Minerva, Maria Teresa, Patria, Mama, and Papa. In chapter 2 we get to learn more about Trujillo’s regime, through Sinita’s secrets. Put together, these two chapters give us a brief idea of what the story is going to be about by introducing us to some characters and problems that have already erupted.

Connection: The first connection that came to my mind was with Trujillo and Stalin. It was interesting how Trujillo was a very powerful man who was interested in many young women and could attract them by just giving them really big presents whereas other people like Stalin were only really interested in one lady and didn’t really care too much about their “love’’ life. It made me wonder what the dictator’s actually wanted and what they were focussing on more. Another connection I made was with Sinita and Katniss from The Hunger Games. I made this connection when Sinita pointed her bow and arrow at Trujillo. It reminded me of the time when Katniss shot her arrow into the apple in the pig's mouth as a sort of rebellious sign.

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Miguel Mendoza
2/10/2014 01:45:37 pm

Quote:"So Trujillo shipped Lina off to a mansion he'd bought for her in Miami where he knew she'd be safe.She lived all alone now, waiting for him to call her up. I guess there was a whole other pretty girl now taking up his attention... We were quiet, thinking of this sad ending for our beautiful Lina."

Significance: I feel like this was one of the quotes that really stood out to me because it shows what El Jefe is really like. This quote really foreshadows all the events about to come in the book as it already shows one of Trujillo's bad deeds, (cheating on his wife).

Connection: I cannot find many connections to this quote but I can say that from movies I have seen, the bad guy always goes around and does whatever he wants, thinking that it is okay. I find it really interesting how something so generic and cliche as a role of a bad guy is really played out in real life.

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