Resumen de The Good, the Brave, the Beautiful': Julia Alvarez's Homage to Female History
Julia Alvarez has been acclaimed in numerous critical works for her first and third novels, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and ¡Yo! (1997), which focus mainly on the Latina identity and experience in the United States. Her second and fourth novels, however, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) and In the Name of Salomé (2000), have not been granted the critical attention they deserve. In these two novels Álvarez has paid homage to real women who have contributed, in one way or another, to the official history of the Dominican Republic. Within the tradition of Latin American testimonial literature, and through a renewed autobiographical discourse, In the Time of the Butterflies and In the Name of Salome contest the official version of history. This essay analyzes the role Álvarez confers upon the Dominican woman in the recent history of her country. In these novels the writer fictionalizes real women whose personal courage and passionate commitment to both their families and beliefs lead them to fight for their country. Thus, Álvarez provides a new, female-based unofficial version to stories that until now had been known only as popular legends or that had been written from a male viewpoint. The writer's artistic value lies in the fiction she creates departing from mythic and legendary figures—the Mirabal sisters and the poetess Salomé Ureña—who will appear demystified and stripped of their glorious popular luster. Álvarez exorcizes the evils of myth and legend by presenting the reader with Dominican women whose merit resides in their humanness, integrity, and defense of family and national pride.
