In the following essay, Echevarria criticizes Alvarez's book for monumentalizing the Mirabals' story, for not making their characters complex enough, and for not connecting the period of the Mirabals to broader Latin American history.

Hispanic writers in the United States have published several novels of unquestionable merit, the most recent success being Cristina Garcia's "Dreaming in Cuban". Most deal with the pains and pleasures of growing up in a culture and a language outside the mainstream. If becoming an adult is a trying process under ordinary circumstances, doing so within varying and often conflicting expectations can be even more bewildering and alienating. It makes growing up, which is by its very nature self-absorbing, doubly so. A person can emerge not a harmonious blend, but simultaneously two (or more) selves in conflict. This predicament is much more dramatic when people speak two or more languages, for the inner...