Everything of ours--from lives to literature--has always been so disposable, she thinks. It is as if a little stopper that has contained years of bitterness inside her has been pulled out. She smells her anger--it has a metallic smell mixed in with earth, a rusting plow driven into the ground. Around 1844, the Dominican Independence War gave the Dominican Republic freedom from Haiti. Years later, the Dominican President would turn the country over to Spanish rule. Disorder was inevitable. A revolution to save la patria ensued. This forms the backdrop for this book of historical fiction about family; how each generation is affected by the choices and lives of the ones before it.Just as song unchains the soul, so does poetry. Poetry is song. Verse is liberation. Tears are the ink of the poet.At the center of it all, is the young poet, Salomé. It was time for poetry, even if it was not the time for liberty. Sometimes I wondered if this didn't make sense after all. The spirit needed to soar when the body was in chains.Imagine poetry as the voice of liberty. Salomé Ureña was a pioneer of poetry in the Dominican Republic during the 1870s. At a time when women were not trained to read or write, she was publishing poems at age seventeen, and later, she would open the first center of higher education for young women in the Dominican Republic. The fictional character in this book takes her bearings from this feminist hero. There is only one way to make it stop, a way which Papa has been trying to teach me, and that is to sit down and think of the words for it all, then write them up the verses my mother copies neatly into her letters to my father.Salomé's daughter, a college professor, pays homage to her mother's work and life through the present narration. But oh how I wish the young Salomé had been the narrator. How I wish the breaks and intersections of the narration had disappeared through Salomé's recount of Cuba's fight for independence, Santa Domingo's fight for liberty, the women's movement of that time, the fight against censorship…How I wish I had learned about these important time fractions through a more cohesive structure, minus the fragments of time, place and space. How I look forward to reading, In The Time Of Butterflies for a firmer grasp of that place and time.
In recent years, literary authors and publishing houses have published dozens of fictionalized accounts of historical figures, with Joyce Carol Oates' BLONDE (Marilyn Monroe) and Russell Banks' CLOUDSPLITTER (John Brown) being prime examples of this genre. Because I'm tiring of such fiction, I never would have bought IN THE NAME OF SALOME if I had known Alvarez had joined this literary trend - and I would have missed out on a fabulous book as a result. Yes, this may not be Alvarez's best work, but the literary standards and emotional impact are still higher than most novels published today. This deeply imaginative portrait of the Dominican poet Salome Urena and her daughter Camila captures the people behind the revolutions in the Dominican Republic and Cuba without idealizing them, without relegating them to mouths spouting political dogma. As Salome says to her young husband when he chides her for writing a non-revolutionary poem, "I am a woman as well as a poet." This is exactly what Alvarez accomplishes: an adept melding of the public and private sides of her characters to give her book real heart.This novel spans over a hundred years, from the 1850's (the beginning of Salome's story) to the 1970's (the end of Camila's story.) Because the two stories are interspersed and are not told chronologically, the time and place can sometimes be confusing despite the chapter headings meant to give the reader his bearings. Don't let this frustrate you; the story is well worth this flaw. My advice is just to give yourself up to Alvarez's skill and let her take you where she wants.I think most of Alvarez's fans will not be disappointed, and I believe she will gain a few more with this novel, perhaps enticing these newcomers to read her earlier work.
What do You think about In The Name Of Salome (2001)?
this is, if i remember correctly, the first book I ever read with a lesbian subplot. other lesbian books and authors i've read since are Hard Love, Cherríe Moraga, Adrienne Rich, and Dorothy Allison. it's been quite some time though since i've read a book with a lesbian in it. if i don't remedy this quick i might turn into an insensitive bastard :P mental to do list for summer: a) figure out why i've never finished Dorian Gray, b) learn more about the Oscar Wilde trials, and c) read some good lesbian fiction. i just went to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category...) and there are a lot of writers to look into.
—Teresa
This book was not an easy, quick read, so the fact that I endured to the end tells me I liked it a lot. Salome Urena was the poet laureate of the Dominican Republic in the 1800s, and she began the first school of higher education for women in her country. She married a revolutionary who later was President of D.R. for four months. The history of the ongoing revolutions and constant governmental changes (about 30 in 50 years) is fascinating. The book goes back and forth between Salome's life and her daughter Camilla's life. Salome died when Camilla was three and much of the book is Camilla's process of discovering who her mother was. Camilla was raised in Cuba and became a professor at Vassar. One of her brothers became a Norton lecturer at Harvard. The confusing part of this book is that it starts in the mid-1800s with Salome, and unfolds forward to her death in 1897. Meanwhile in alternating chapters, it begins in 1960 when Camilla returns to Cuba after her career at Vassar, and works backwards by decades. I had to go back to piece things together. In spite of this, the history of women and families in the D.R. and Cuba provides interesting material. Of note, it mentions the invention of the Barbie Doll, which was based on a doll from Germany that was a harlot, used as a sex toy and hung from men's rear view windows.
—Lorri Coburn
In the Name of Salome is the story of two women, a mother and a daughter. It is written by interweaving the mother and daughter's stories between the chapters: one chapter tells the mother's story, the next comes back to the daughter's world, etc. I have read books like this before, and each time I get confused between the characters. I found the mother's story to be more enthralling, and was annoyed when the chapter ended. However, this may be the author's intent, because she wrote the mother's story in first person, and we get a better idea of her life and persona. This is a historical fiction novel, which focuses on Cuba's struggles with revolution and Castro. The author included many historical details that I appreciated, because I am not acquainted with much Cuban history, yet I found the historical context hard to follow from my lack of knowledge. I had read In the Time of the Butterflies in the 8th grade, which I belive is by the same author. That book also revolved around Latin American struggles, but it's story and tone were much richer than In the Name of Salome. However, I did like that the book revolved around powerful women. It showed how women were a large part of Cuba's independence as well.
—Anna
