“Before we were Free”

Reading Response

Rachel Willis. July 20, 2022.

Anita and her family’s struggle through hardship and freedom casts a glimmer of hope into the hearts and minds of any reader who has chosen to pick up this young adult novel, Before we were Free, by Julia Alvarez. However how positive and hopeful the outcome can be, Alvarez supplies enough realism for a child can handle, to make the point that the Anita and her family’s journey for freedom is not without real terrors. She has Sammy describing what he see in his own mind of the ways of which the SIM’s art torturing their prisoners. She allows Anita to work through the difficult situation for herself, all the while asking the questions she feels as though she needs the answers to, as to feel the satisfaction of not being treated like a baby, but as the young woman that readers get to see her blossoming into. Alvarez does not hide the realisms, but celebrates it, like Anita getting her first period, Lucinda being forced to run off to America because Mr. Smith spotted her at the party and has developed an interest in her, and Alvarez does a very good job in telling about the realities of death when their father and uncle are shot by the drunken SIM guards at the end. Nevertheless, with all of the hardships the family faces, they stick together and gather strength from each other when they must, and they keep on pressing…