Sex Sugar & Soul in the Dominican Republic
Discover the heart of the Dominican Republic through our curated reading list, exploring themes of passion, resilience, and history. From the gripping political drama of Mario Vargas Llosa's *The Feast of the Goat* to Julia Alvarez’s iconic *In the Time of the Butterflies*, this collection blends fiction and soulful narratives on sugar, struggle, and identity. Perfect for book lovers seeking powerful Dominican literature.
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In the Time of the Butterflies
by Julia Alvarez
Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republica in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.
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The Color of My Words
by Lynn Joseph
Twelve-year-old Ana Rosa is a blossoming writer growing up in the Dominican Republic, a country where words are feared. Yet there is so much inspiration all around her -- watching her brother search for a future, learning to dance and to love, and finding out what it means to be part of a community -- that Ana Rosa must write it all down. As she struggles to find her own voice and a way to make it heard, Ana Rosa realizes the power of her words to transform the world around her -- and to transcend the most unthinkable of tragedies.
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The Feast of the Goat
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.
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Azúcar!
by Alan Cambeira
AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar is a fictional novel that offers a gripping testimony to the unmasked brutality and decay of daily life on a contemporary Caribbean sugarcane plantation, Esperanza Dulce. Azucar, the intelligent and beautiful young girl, is the central character, but the omnipresent protagonist is her namesake, "azucar" -- sugar itself. Azucar?s story is a complex and hauntingly atmospheric tale of sustained intrigue, murder, revenge, forbidden love, and an unnerving journey into the mystical spirit world of Caribbean ritual. Even after Azucar?s fiercely determined grandmother arranges for her to emigrate to Canada -- with a most unlikely couple-- where she is dramatically transformed, she is still not completely free from the hypnotic pull of the distant Caribbean plantation. Azucar meets and falls in love with Lucien, whose own mysterious history shockingly brings them both back to Esperanza Dulce to confront the terrifying ghosts of an unknowingly shared past.
