The best novels for understanding the Dominican Republic

What I love most about Danticat’s writing—this is a very long list—is the way she evokes the inherent dignity of characters in almost unspeakably tragic situations. In this case, her subject is a pair of lovers and their community whose lives are upended by the 1937 massacre of Haitians and Dominico-Haitians living along the Dominican side of the border with Haiti. The mass killing is an inflection point in the two nations’ shared history, which individual human stories are essential to understanding.

A novel based on the real-life story of the three Mirabal sisters, known as las mariposas (the butterflies) who became national heroes for their resistance to the dictator Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. The murder of these three courageous women by Trujillo’s henchmen helped to catalyze his downfall after more than 30 years of iron-fisted rule. When my publisher sent her an advance copy of my book in 1999, Julia sent me a lovely hand-written note that began more than two decades of friendship. Readers particularly interested in the contemporary relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti will find her non-fiction book, A Wedding in Haiti, well worth a read.

A dark, brooding novel by a giant of Latin American fiction, the Peruvian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Vargas Llosa appropriately placed a female protagonist, Urania Cabral, front and center in this book about a dictator who is remembered in part for his abuses of young women. Another storyline involves the men who conspired, with CIA support, to assassinate Trujillo. Vargas Llosa includes real historical characters, like Trujillo’s right-hand man and successor, Joaquín Balaguer, often with fictionalized aspects; and fictional composites bearing witness to the experiences of the Dominican people under their rule.

A central theme in all of Díaz’ work is his critique of toxic machismo in Dominican society, which extracts a heavy emotional toll on men as well as women. That’s why it’s such a delight that the protagonist of this award-winning multi-generational novel is a chubby science-fiction-loving nerd who dares to challenge the hyper-masculine norms. Set in New Jersey—where Díaz grew up—and the Dominican Republic, this novel is the story, in part, of Oscar’s doomed quest for love with a Dominican sex worker. Its larger theme is the way Oscar—and Dominicans by extension—is caught between the US and the DR and between the shadow of the past and fantasies for the future. The narrator, Yunior, who also appears in many of Díaz’s short stories, is the author’s alter ego.

The title of this novel took me back to 1989, when I was living in the Dominican Republic they year and Juan Luis Guerra and his band 4-40 released their hit song, "Ojala que llueva café", an homage to rural Dominicans and their hopes; and another iconic song, "Visa para un sueño" (Visa for a Dream). This book is about the Dominicans in those songs: a family saga and the historical and contemporary realities that shaped their lives, aspirations, and disappointment. Its backdrop, unlike the other novels here, is mainly the post-Trujillo era: the brief presidency of Juan Bosch, his overthrow, and the revolution and US invasion that followed, catalyzing a wave of emigration that persists today.