Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined

- Everything I had read before of the dictatorship, it was from the male point of view, but I was interested in that female experience of dictatorship.

I thought there were only three Mirabal sisters.

And then when I came to find out about them, (Julia speaks foreign language) I said, "Who's Mamá Dedé?"

"Oh, she's the fourth sister."

I said, "There were four?"

(Jaime speaks foreign language) (bird twitters) - Dedé welcomes me in.

She gives me a limonada and she starts to tell me the story.

She bestowed that story to me.

I felt that it had been given to me and I had to carry it out and tell it.

(gentle music) (heels clicking) I went to the house where they grew up.

I saw the dresses they wore on the day they were killed.

I saw the little things that had been in their pocketbook.

I opened drawers.

I lifted the glass case in which the braid that Maria Teresa had been cut off, still full of little pieces of glass.

I touched it.

I smelled the place, it was just, I was possessed.

(dramatic music)