The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which is celebrated every year on November 25, was inspired by a novel and talks about it Julia Alvarez, the author of "Il Tempo delle Farfalle", who in 1994 telling the story of her sisters Mirabal, killed on November 25, 1960 for having participated in the resistance against the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, started a movement that today lights up the cities and squares of Italy and the rest of the world in red "I grew up obsessed with that story. We and the Mirabals, families of only daughters, but we were the surviving sisters, they were our shadow and what could have happened to us if we stayed. My father was part of the same underground network, but from a different cell.
We ran away in August of that year, I was 10 years old, and three months later the Mirabal sisters had died to free our country ", the writer tells ANSA from her home in Vermont:" I felt that someone had to tell their history.
When I learned that there was another surviving sister, and that, like me, she was the second of four, I felt that I had to do it. "
Dede ', her sister then still alive, contributed to the novel by telling the story from her point of view. Starting with the idea of writing a biography, Alvarez filled the gaps by reconstructing the characters of the other three. The curiosity was insatiable, Julia asked a thousand questions: "Even my father, when I began to write, opened up with me, I recommend myself to people he knew and they gave me access". It was then his mother, he continues, who brought the novel to the attention of the UN: "He worked pro bono at the Dominican mission and brought copies of my work to the Third Commission, the one that deals with human rights". It was then the Ambassador who took the credit, but in reality all the work was by 'Mami',when the draft resolution establishing the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women was approved in 1999 by consensus by the General Assembly.
After "the Time of the Butterflies", Alvarez has written other novels, many influenced by the experiences she lived in the first person. The latest, "Aldila '" just published in Italy by Black Coffee, tells the story of Antonia Vega, who has recently retired after years of teaching, like her, in a college in Vermont, whose life takes a sharp turn when her beloved husband Sam suddenly dies of an aneurysm in the aorta, the unstable and brilliant older sister Izzy disappears and a pregnant and undocumented Mexican girl knocks on her front door. "Beyond", after 15 years of books for young adults, marks a turning point for 71-year-old Alvarez who enters a segment of literature so far scarcely explored:fiction aimed at elderly readers struggling with all the problems of getting older. "It is an uncharted territory, in which the protagonist is an elderly woman. We all grow old but few become" elders ", the elderly of a tribe, a community. I wanted to understand, live and integrate these problems into my life before writing about them. because, as I explained to my editor, it took 15 years to do it ". (HANDLE).(HANDLE).(HANDLE).