Excerpt from In the Time of the Butterflies Audio Guide
Reed: Neko Case
Case: It's easy to kind of just take Dedé for granted from the beginning to the end because we know she's not going to die and thank goodness she was left.
Reed: Junot Diaz.
Diaz: The story is only possible because of her presence. The story is only possible because of her advocacy. The story is only possible because she herself continues to remind not only the Dominican Republic but the Americas as a whole of the heroism of these very, very young women.
Reed: Ilan Stavans.
Stavans: Think to yourself, what if one of your siblings had been the Mirabals. What if your sister, living under a dictatorship, had decided in spite of herself to speak out. And you in some ways were connected to that act of rebellion, your sister is no longer around, and you are speaking for her.
Reed: Junot Diaz.
Diaz: Dedé is the caretaker to the legacy of her family and that legacy is one of survival, of struggle for liberation, and of tremendous pain.
Reed: Julia Alvarez.
Alvarez: What happened ironically when she lost her sisters was that she was the one left behind, not only to raise the family but to keep the story alive. And to speak truth to power. So I think that was something—a role that she's really grown into. It's as if she's become all four of them folded into one.
Adriana Sananes reads from In the Time of the Butterflies...
Usually at night, I hear them just as I'm falling asleep. Sometimes I lie at the very brink of forgetfulness waiting as if their arrival is my signal that I can fall asleep. But tonight is quieter than I can remember. Concentrate, Dedé, I say. But all I hear is my own breathing and the blessed silence of those cool clear nights under the anacahuita tree before anyone breaths a word of the future. And I see them all there in my memory as still as statues, Mamá and Papá and Minerva and Mate and Patria. And I'm thinking something is missing now. And I count them all twice before I realize it's me. Dedé. It's me. The one who survived to tell the story.
