How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Now after thirty-four years, the commemorations and interviews and presentations of posthumous honors have almost stopped, so that for months at a time Dedé is able to take up her own life again. (1.1.3)
After their deaths, Dedé is like the representative of her famous sisters. The simple fact that she is still alive makes her the automatic person to attend all of the different celebrations and remembrances that we human beings love to hold in order to remember the past.
Quote #2
Usually, if she works it right—a lemonade with lemons from the tree Patria planted, a quick tour of the house the girls grew up in—usually they leave, satisfied, without asking the prickly questions that have left Dedé lost in her memories for weeks at a time, searching for the answer. Why, they inevitably ask in one form or another, why are you the one who survived? (1.1.17)
Dedé willingly serves as the representative of the Mirabal sisters, but she tries to deflect any attention onto her. The dead sisters are trapped in the past, so she can use the physical objects that they touched, like the tree and the house, as substitutes for them. She doesn't let anyone into her present, though.
Quote #3
"I'll tell myself, Dedé, in your memory it is such and such a day, and I start over, playing the happy moment in my head. This is my movies—I have no television here." (1.1.39)
The interviewer woman asks Dedé a difficult question—how she can live with such tragedy surrounding her all the time. Her answer is something we think we might try when we're feeling down—she copes by going back and replaying a happy moment in her head. Her memory is her refuge, even though it can also be the thing that makes her sad.