What Do I Read Next?
- Like In the Time of the Butterflies, Alvarez's first novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), revolves around the lives of four sisters. In this semi-autobiographical work, she depicts their struggles both as Dominican immigrants to the United States and as women.
- Something to Declare, published in 1998, is a collection of personal essays by Alvarez. She discusses several aspects of her life, including her search for information about the Mirabal sisters in "Chasing the Butterflies" and the impact of Trujillo on her family in "Genetics of Justice."
- The Woman Warrior (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston inspired Alvarez. This acclaimed work is based on Kingston's experiences. It foregrounds Chinese cultural expectations, such as the imposition of gender restrictions and the perceived dangers of storytelling, with which contemporary Chinese-American women must contend.
- Edwidge Danticat's 1998 novel The Farming of Bones employs fiction to portray the impact of Trujillo's 1937 massacre of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.
- In her poem "Parsley," Rita Dove evokes the horror of Trujillo's 1937 massacre and constructs a psychological portrait of the dictator. She focuses on the test Trujillo's men used to determine who would be killed: a person's ability to properly pronounce the Spanish word for parsley.
- The Inhabited Woman by Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli tells the story of a successful woman, Lavinia, who is influenced by the spirit of a female Indian warrior to rebel against both gender restrictions and her country's military dictatorship. This title was translated by Kathleen March in 1994.
- Gabriel García Márquez's novel The Autumn of the Patriarch is a psychological study of a cruel, lonely, and paranoid Latin American dictator. Employing a complex structure and a "stream-of-consciousness" style, the book is challenging to read. The first U.S. edition appeared in 1976 and was translated by Gregory Rabassa.
- In his famous work The Prince, which appeared in English in 1907, Niccolo Machiavelli details the means of sustaining political power. The work is known for its disregard for abstract rights and morality in favor of practical, brutal solutions to political problems.
- Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (translated as My Battle) before he rose to power in Germany. The book provides a frightening insight into racial hatred and Hitler's prescription for maintaining an authoritarian society.
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