Before We Were Free

"Before I can puzzle out what they're saying, Mrs. Farland call me away from the door. "Anita, sweetie, come over here and let Joey tell you about the inauguration for our new president."

I know all about how the Americans run their country because we have to study it at school. Every four years, they have a contest and whoever wins gets to be the jefe. But he can't just keep being the jefe. He can only win the contest twice, and then he has to give somebody else a chance.

We have elections,too, but there's only one person in the contest, Trujillo, and he has already been our jefe for thirty-one years. I once asked Mrs. Brown why nobody ran against him and she hesitated and said that perhaps it would be better if I asked my parents that question."

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Julia Alvarez

Alvarez was born in New York City, but her parents returned to their home in the Dominican Republic shortly after her birth. When she was ten years old the family fled back to the US because it was discovered her father was involved in a plot to overthrow General Trujillo. 

Alvarez's young readers work includes Finding Miracles, Return to Sender, and the Tia Lola series. She has received the Pura Belpre Award, the Americas Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. President Obama presented Alvarez with the National Medal of the Arts in 2013.

Synopsis

The thirty-one year rule of dictator General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic was a totalitarian nightmare marked by cruelty and loss of life - he was a man for whom no slight was too small for revenge.  In this fictionalized account of the last year of his rule, Anita's family suffers great loss in their opposition to Trujillo's regime. Once she arrives in New York City, Anita must discover what true freedom means.

"I guess I finally understand what she and Papi meant by wanting me to fly. To be free inside, like an uncaged bird. Then nothing, not even a dictatorship, can take away your liberty."

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World Relevance

There are so many ways in which Before We Were Free is relevant for this point in history!

The novel can be used in simply teaching the history and geography of the Dominican Republic, but the themes of civil disobedience, civic duty and personal sacrifice, and feminist resistance which run throughout the novel will challenge young adults' skills in critical analysis.

Learning Connections

• Dominican Republic: A Country Study, Haggerty, Library of Congress
  
• Educator's Guide: Before We Were Free, Vamos a Leer, Teaching Latin America Through Literature, Latin America & Iberian Institute, University of New Mexico (also available in Spanish)
  
• We the People Resource Center, Center for Civic Education, We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution - look for What Ideas about Civic Life Informed the Founding Generation
  
• What's My Civic Responsibility, Learning to Give
  
• The Mirabel Sisters, The Sisters Who Toppled a Dictatorship, Rejected Princesses
  

Young adult novel, 179 pages; In the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s, twelve-year-old Anita loses the only life she knows but discovers freedom when it is discovered her family is involved in the rebellion to topple the bloody regime of the dictator, General Trujillo.