Play Book Tag discussion

This time last year I was shocked on reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to discover how totally ignorant I was about the Dominican Republic and the horrors of the Trujillo regime. This book was a welcome opportunity to find out more, and provided lots of detail about the pressure to comply and the dangers faced by those who did not. The author fled the Dominican Republic as a child with her parents and her own three sisters the same year the ‘Mariposas’ were killed for daring to resist the regime.

This is the type of historical fiction that I really like: a blend of fact and fiction that provides an in-depth examination of what it feels like to live in a particular time and place, focusing largely on what drives particular individuals to make the choices they do. I enjoyed reading about these four very different sisters and how their personal journeys unfolded. The edition I read had a postscript by the author, explaining her decision to imagine the sisters as fully human, scared, and fallible, reclaiming “the sisters of legend, wrapped in superlatives and ascended into myth” to prevent us from “dismissing the challenge of their courage as impossible for us, ordinary men and women.” I felt that she achieved this goal beautifully.

I read that same or addition, or one that also had the p.s. by the author and I was glad to have the opportunity to read her thoughts. This was my first experience with the DR and I also was lacking any knowledge of the horrors that took place there. I really became attached to the sisters while reading. Happy to see you had a good read with it too!

Nikki, I read this book quite a few years ago and loved it so. It was so sad to read about these beautiful sisters.

Glad to see that others enjoyed this one too!