In the Time of the Butterflies Podcast #2

LeÓn, Concepción De. “In Praise of Julia Alvarez.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/books/in-praise-of-julia-alvarez.html.

This article is about a family to leave the DR to escape Rafael Trujillo. The article speaks about how the sisters were considered revolutionary heroes who had opposed the fought against Trujillo. It talked about how the rules were strict for the girls on the Island, and how the DR were worried that they were going to lose their girls to America. I guess this goes into the idea of possession. How the men wanted to keep the women to themselves for their own personal desires.

Nwanevu, Osita. “In the First Forty-Eight Hours of the New Congress, a Mixed Triumph for Nancy Pelosi.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2019, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/in-the-first-forty-eight-hours-of-the-new-congress-a-mixed-triumph-for-nancy-pelosi.

This article was about Nancy Pelosi to be the first women speaker in the house of representatives and the people that were voting for her. This made a huge impact because women never get as much recognition and able to hold that much power and its sad in our society and country as a whole and she represents females in today's society. But they are basically saying that she is a great person and women and a mother of 5 kids. This is connected to our book because the women at the time didn't hold such spaces either and the dictator Trujillo had relationships with any women he wanted and killed anyone who spoke of him badly. 

Roberson, Blythe. “Disney Princes Reimagined as Feminist Allies.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 9 Nov. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/disney-princes-reimagined-as-feminist-allies

This article went over different Disney movies and the common theme that the storyline is revolved around a male character. In a way, this relates to my novel since each of the characters have a love interest and the main conflicts are regarding those relationships. Something that the author of this article tried to accomplish is switching the place of the princes of the movies into making them feminists. This is where they tackle the typical male ideology and instead are imagined to say things that are the opposite of the typical stereotypes. This brings up the question of how the plot of the story would be if the male characters were feminists since the characters of ¨In the Time of the Butterflies¨ have that mindset of women doing domestic roles and being there for physical appearance. Something that the book does is show the rebellious side from these women whether it is fighting for their political beliefs, it shows that women do have power.  In a sense, both of these writings have a similar goal to tackle the stereotypes that are placed upon women.

Schulman, Michael. “The 2018 Golden Globes: Oprah Leads a Decisive Feminist Takeover.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2018, www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-2018-golden-globes-oprah-leads-a-decisive-feminist-takeover.

This article was about the female presence at the 2018 Golden Globes. A lot of the women wore black and a #MeToo pin to show their solidarity with the victims of sexual violence. I associated the solidarity in this movement to the solidarity shown in our novel. Through the feminist lens, I saw that a lot of the men in the story look down on the women for speaking up for themselves and how they believe the country should be run. It was as if a woman was not smart enough to give her opinion on government or Trujillo. But it seems like the women feel stronger when they have people to stand with them and go against the higher power.

Tunzelmann, Alex von. “Reel History | In the Time of the Butterflies: Feisty but It Doesn't Really Fly.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 Mar. 2010, www.theguardian.com/film/2010/mar/18/reel-history-salma-hayek.

The lens that we chose to focus our book, In the Time of the Butterflies, was the feminist lens. The main point of this article was writing what happens throughout the whole movie, while bringing up how it relates to the book. There is also a part where she explains the final scene that may have triggered Trujillo's response/attitude towards the Mirabal family. There's also a part brought up that explains that the movie chose to portray Minerva as more sassy and less upfront than she really was in the actual novel. This provides more insight to our novel and literary lens because it seems that the producer thought it'd be more appealing to make Minerva seem less outspoken in the film. It was a creative decision to make her seem like since Trujillo is chasing after her, instead of rejecting her and her saying that she doesn't believe in his political views, she just reacts in a "feminine" way by smacking him. The movie should've shown how much of an activist she really was and how she wants to make a change.

Comments (13)

Colin Taylor-McGrane (Student 2019)
Colin Taylor-McGrane

Even without specifying what lens you were using, it was clear that you were using the feminist lens. I feel that you had great commentary, and gave a decent amount of background information on the book. However, the echo with each person's voice is extremely distracting.

Boubou Magassa (Student 2019)
Boubou Magassa

They connected the feminist lens to the rebellion empowered by woman. The background music is nice and for some reason the echo doesn't bother me at all it actually sounds good. (Also, I know that the echo is from a Soundtrap error)

Sofia Powers (Student 2019)
Sofia Powers

They used the lens to investigate the roles of women in the family and in their society and how they are limited. They also connect to present day rights of women. 3. I liked the music and that it was concise. I think the reverberation was a little distracting though.

Matthew Milligan (Student 2019)
Matthew Milligan
  1. You guys used the feminist lens to explain the choices that characters made in your story, like women choosing to join the rebellion.
  2. I liked the music you guys had throughout. It kept a good vibe but wasn't too distracting.
Leah Bradstreet (Student 2019)
Leah Bradstreet
  1. They used the Feminist Lens to create a book dynamic between the characters which worked really well because the book had a lot to say about the relationship between men and women where they are.
  2. I liked how they used emotions in the book to theorize why the characters felt such ways about those around them. I also liked how the members continuously asked each other questions about why the characters were doing what they were doing. The podcast was very opinionated and very inquisitive.
Ariana Flores (Student 2019)
Ariana Flores

Ho do they use the literary lens? - You guys clearly addressed how the man is seen as the head of the household, which hinders the women from truly speaking their minds. I found the part where you talked about the government sending prostitutes to a church to be quite fascinating and showed how the people in power blatantly disrespect women.

What did you like about the production? - I really like the music, and I appreciated that the volume was lowered enough so that it wasn't too distracting while listening to your thoughts.

Catherine Long (Student 2019)
Catherine Long
  1. Using the feminist lens they were able to explain the book and the situation of the characters really well.
  2. Asking at a lot of questions was a nice touch, as well as keeping the intro music as background music while they talk about the book.
Eli Zimmerman (Student 2019)
Eli Zimmerman

They use the feminist lens to explain what occurred in the novel and why/ how it happened in such a way. I like the constant background music especially given the poor location of your recording and how there was an echo. It's a smart solution to an unfortunate situation.

Rebecca Snyder (Student 2019)
Rebecca Snyder

They use the literary lens to explain many concepts in the novel. The whole patriarchal society the characters live in reflects on the ways that the women in the novel act and are seen. They also explored concepts of sisterhood in times when women were looked down upon. As far as the production of the podcast, I really enjoyed the subtle music throughout, it made a nice rhythm for the conversation.

Sean Johnson (Student 2019)
Sean Johnson

Through the feminist lense you guys recognized the imbalance between the men and women in the book and compared it with real life. You guys incorporated it well into your conversation

The production was decent too

Btw. Why everyone sound so angelic?

Brendan Barnes (Student 2019)
Brendan Barnes

The intro music is lit, you guys did a good job at making sure everyone had their chance to speak. I loved that they were even asking each other questions in the podcast, it made it feel like a real book club group finally meeting back up to talk about the book.