August 25, 2009, is the publication date of Dedé Mirabal´s Vivas en su jardín ((Vintage Español Paperback). In this book, Dedé Mirabal, the only living sister of the famous Mirabal sisters, tells the story of Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa (Mate). The Mirabal sisters, also known as Las Mariposas [the butterflies] actively challenged Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship, an opposition that cost them their lives. It is described as “the moving story in first=person of the “butterflies” and the movement that defeated a dictatorship.” When asked, as she often is, why she was not killed, Mirabal explains, “I remained alive in order to tell the story.” And that she does.

In her introduction to the book, author Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) states that “Dedé speaks about her sisters as human beings— flesh and blood— making it clear that heroism can live in us all . . . but she does not mention what may seem more natural to us: her own heroism, which may be easy to overlook.”  Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina) stresses that Vivas en su jardín stands out for its courage, calling it “an intimate testimony, the story narrated from within, dictated by the memory [of the one] that lived it.”

Dedé Mirabal supported her sisters wholeheartedly but never became actively involved in the underground movement for various reasons.  Mirabal and her mother helped to raise Patria, Minerva, and Mate’s children. She runs a museum in honor of her sisters, Museo de las Hermanas Mirabal, in their hometown of Salcedo, Dominican Republic. Through the years since their assassination, she has striven to keep their memory alive in the minds of the Dominicans.

For ordering information, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0307474534/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

For more on the museum, see http://www.viajar.com.do/museo-de-las-hermanas-mirabal/