Connect Five Friday – Set in Dominican Republic

 

It’s time once again for Connect Five Friday,  hosted at Book Date by Kathryn – the meme where we share five book/reading things that connect in some way.

I just finished reading Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acveido and loved it. It involved two girls, two countries and a lost father. I have never been to the Dominican Republic but know many who have. I then wondered how many books were set in the Dominican and found that there are quite a few.

Here are five books set in the Dominican Republic, books I hope to read : (Book summaries from Goodreads)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

“Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss.”

 

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

“In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

 

In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

“Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story of the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.  From the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents comes this tale of courage and sisterhood set in the Dominican Republic during the rise of the Trujillo dictatorship. A skillful blend of fact and fiction, In the Time of the Butterflies is inspired by the true story of the three Mirabal sisters who, in 1960, were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government. Alvarez breathes life into these historical figures–known as “las mariposas,” or “the butterflies,” in the underground–as she imagines their teenage years, their gradual involvement with the revolution, and their terror as their dissentience is uncovered.”

 

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

“Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters – Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia – arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind. What they have lost – and what they find – is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premier novelists of our time.“

 

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

“Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic – and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million people. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail.”