Caroline Mckusick/JINHA

NEWS CENTER - Writer Julia Alvarez, author of "In the Time of the Butterflies" and other works, spoke to JINHA on the occasion of November 25 about the role of storytelling in helping women find a way out of oppression.

Julia Alvarez was born in the United States and raised under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, a period she took up in her novel "In the Time of the Butterflies." The novel follows the lives and resistance of the Mirabal sisters, whose murder at the hands of the regime in 1960 provided the occasion for November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Julia, a graduate of Middlebury College with a Masters in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, has written poetry, children's books and nonfiction. JINHA spoke to Julia on November 25 about women's resistance against violence, her activism, and the role of storytelling in resistance.

"Often we enter activism through some personal experience of violence or personal connection to someone who involves us," said Julia, noting that few become mobilized by abstractions. "So it makes perfect sense that many women around the world who experience daily oppression and repression in their own bodies, families, communities begin to push again these constraints…. What have they got to lose? Additionally, biologically, women are the creators of life: their sons and their daughters are the fodder for wars, the victim of violence. So even at a cellular level, we, women, have a lot at stake."

Julia recalled reading the Arabian Nights as a child (given to her by an aunt) as an event that gripped her imagination.

"The idea that a girl who looked like the girls around me (not a blonde, blue-eyed fairytale princess, but an olive skinned, dark-haired, dark-complected girl who could have been Dominican)-that she could save herself and all the women in her kingdom from a misogynist sultan who was killing all the women simply by telling her stories was amazing," said Julia. "It put in my head a luminous little piece of information: That stories have power, that they can transform and save people. Imagine reading this in the middle of a repressive dictatorship, and subliminally, since I was too young to really understand what was going on, feeling this great ah-ha of power and possibility. I think that story made me want to be a storyteller."

She noted that Scheherazade spent her time in her father's library learning the stories that gave her the capacity to resist.

"Education was important, access to the patriarchal stores in order… to understand the patterns that entrap us, in order to reframe them," said Julia. "We have to realize that from the moment we are born, we imbibe certain societal, familial narratives, about being female, about what our role and how the plot of our lives must go.

"Many of these old narratives are quiet, bloodless ways of killing the females in the kingdom, oppressive paradigms that keep women down as an underclass. But we can tell new stories, open up wild possibilities." Julia referred to the idea of the "Girl Effect," noting that educating girls was shown to be the most effective way of breaking cycles of poverty.

"Stories definitely saved me, gave me a way out of the training I had received as a female in a traditional family and Latina/Catholic culture in a repressive dictatorship," Julia said. "But I tell you, Scheherazade planted that seed in my imagination, and as I became a reader I found other storytellers that kept watering the seed. I see that happening all the time among my students and fellow activists."

She provided the example of the Arab Spring, saying that it was the story of Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest to the indignity he had experienced that inspired people.

Since 2012, Julia has been involved in the Border of Lights action at the Haitian-Dominican border. The action-including lighting up the border, panels, oral testimonies, and discussions-began on the 75th anniversary of the Haitian Massacre of 1937. She noted that the action was inspired by her reading of a book, Michele Wucker's history of the island of Hispaniola "Why the Cocks Fight."

"There, I learned a history that I had never been taught in school: the roots of the conflict between these two neighbors. I also learned that what I had been taught-fear of our 'enemies' the Haitians, who wanted to invade and kill us-was a xenophobic distortion of the facts," said Julia. It was this story that moved herself, Michele Wucker and others to start the cross-border action.

"Some people have criticized BOL for going back to the past, 'rehashing the negative.' But the problem is if you never address the atrocities that happened and if instead you silence/censor the story, history will repeat itself-as has happened with the Haitian massacre," said Julia.

"We can shed light on what happened and use that knowledge and self awareness to ensure that such violence is not repeated. The next step is, to quote Toni Morrison, 'the function of freedom is to free someone else,' to continue the work and for me as a storyteller, to continue to tell the story, open minds and imaginations to other possibilities."

(cm)