First Muse, By Julia Alvarez

        First Muse is a poem written by Julia Alvarez about how she feels that she can't write due to her ethnicity. She hears an unnamed famous poet say "One can only write poems in the tongue in which one first said mother,". She is damaged by this, claiming that this person is correct and she needs to burn all of her English poems, as Alvarez speaks Spanish natively. She is feeling terrible about how her career has been ruined by this remark. As she is feeling her worst, a commercial comes on television advertising Chiquita Bananas. Alvarez suddenly gains an enormous amount of confidence, as the singing and dancing banana has a Latin American accent but is singing in English. Something clicks inside her and she gains confidence in writing in English because of this banana.
         The fact that the Chiquita Banana is obviously from Latin America, but is representing this company in America shows that Latin America and America can be connected perfectly and in harmony. The Chiquita Banana has shown Alvarez that you can fit in perfectly fine with the people of America.

Comparing "Hope", By Ariel Dorfman to "In the Time of the Butterflies", By Julia Alvarez

SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES!

        "Hope", by Ariel Dorfman is an extremely depressing poem that focuses mainly on the fact that the speaker's son has been kidnapped by what can be inferred is the police. He was tortured for five months after he was taken, that the speaker knows for sure. The speaker ponders how much he hopes that his son is still alive. A problem the speaker runs into is that he would have been tortured for eight solid months, making the title verbally ironic in that hope usually conveys something good.
        "In the Time of the Butterflies", by Julia Alvarez is more complex, as it is a novel. It focuses on the Mirabal rebellion as a whole. It follows the journeys of the sisters from different points of views. Two of the sisters, Maria Teresa and Minerva, were put in prison for a long time. This entire time, they were separated from their husbands and children.
        When you think about this aspect of "In the time of the Butterflies", It is very easy to make a connection between the two. Both people lost their children, but know that they are probably still alive somewhere else. They all wonder when and if they will get to see their children again. Both experiences are clearly defined in different ways that make you feel what they are going through as if it were not so bad. Thinking of it this way probably helps them to ignore the terrible feeling of losing a child.