Before We Were Free Book Report

Before We Were Free, written by Julia Alvarez is a historical fiction book based on a young girl who goes by the name Anita. Anita and her family live in the Dominican Republic on a compound along with her distant relatives. As the months go by, Anita starts to notice that her relatives are leaving the compound one by one except for her family. Papi, Anita's dad, starts attending secret meetings and readers later discover that he was planning to assassinate Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the country. Both Anita's dad and uncle who were involved in the assassination, were captured by the dictator's son who later rose to power. Anita and her mother fled the country to New York where her cousins resided and later found out that her dad and uncle had been killed. While in New York Anita gains a new understanding of what the word freedom is and how her father fought so desperately for her and her family to …show more content…
By creating a fictional character to narrate the story, it made it easy to grasp each situation as it chronologically went along. Being that the story is fiction it gave a family friendly environment to relate to versus if the story was non-fiction. Although an easy read, the book sparked questions regarding the real men who killed the dictator. Being that Anita's dad is not a real character in the story, who were the real men who planned and carry out the shooting of the dictator. When did they decide to take him out and how did each of their families feel about the decision? Were all the people involved in the assignation jailed and killed? These questions frequently arose during the reading of this book. Killing a person regardless of the all the terrible things they have done is a hard decision. Knowing the step by step emotions the men were going through would help shed light on the process it took to kill