Before We Were Free

by

Julia Alvarez

Mami Character Analysis

Mami is Anita, Lucinda, and Mundín’s mother. She’s a loving and caring person, but Anita finds her annoyingly strict and nervous; Mami consistently takes tranquilizers to help with her bad nerves. With her husband and family involved in a plot to assassinate her country’s dictator, Mami has a tough job: she has to keep her children safe and preserve as much normalcy for them as she can. Despite her efforts, odd and scary things keep happening to the family, and Anita has lots of questions about what’s happening that Mami refuses to answer—both to protect Anita from horrific information and because she fears that the house is bugged. While Anita initially believes that Mami’s main role in life is being a mother, she slowly discovers that Mami is just as involved in the resistance as Papi. Mami is a typist who is apparently writing revolutionary materials in secret, and her canasta group seems to provide an opportunity to share political information with other women whose husbands are involved with the resistance. While Mami fights hard for her family to stay safe and together, once Lucinda becomes a target of Trujillo’s lust, everything falls apart: Lucinda flees to Colombia, Papi’s coup attempt fails, Mundín hides out in an embassy, and Mami and Anita go into hiding with the Mancini family. Ultimately, Mami and Anita flee to New York, which Mami insists is temporary—until she finds out that Papi was murdered. With her husband gone and her family dispersed, she and Anita decide to build a life in New York. By the end of the novel, she and Anita become close like they were when Anita was very young, which Anita appreciates.

Mami Quotes in Before We Were Free

The Before We Were Free quotes below are all either spoken by Mami or refer to Mami. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Coming of Age and Political Consciousness Theme Icon
).
Chapter Two Quotes

“Are they really policemen?” I keep asking Mami. It doesn’t make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn’t we trust them instead of being afraid of them? But all Mami will say is “Shhh!” Meanwhile, we can’t go to school because something might happen to us. “Like what?” I ask. Like what Chucha said about people disappearing? Is that what Mami worries will happen to us? “Didn’t Papi say we should carry on with normal life?”

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Papi, Chucha
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Three Quotes

Not that I think of Sam as a boyfriend, which I’m not allowed to have anyway. Mami doesn’t approve of my being around any boys who aren’t related to me. But since my cousins moved away, the rules have both tightened and loosened in odd ways. I can’t talk about the SIM’s visit or my cousins’ leaving for New York City, but I can have Sam for a best friend even if he is a boy.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Sam Washburn, Carla
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Four Quotes

“Doris, put the lid on the sugar bowl, por favor. There are so many flies.”

I look around for flies, but there are none I can see. Lorena has just come out from the kitchen with a tray to collect the empty coffee cups. Perhaps she scared them away.

Then, just like that, it dawns on me: my mother is speaking to Mrs. Washburn in code. She’s saying: We are being overheard; be quiet. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a room I’m not supposed to be in—but now that I’m inside, the door has disappeared. I feel the same way as when Lucinda told me how one day I, too, would get my period.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami (speaker), Mrs. Washburn, Lorena
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

“Suddenly, you have to be a big girl—”

“I am twelve, Mami!” I sigh and roll my eyes. Recently, if anyone talks to me as if I’m a little kid, I get mad. But I also feel sad that I’m not a little kid anymore and that I know as much as I do. I’ve written about these confused feelings in my diary, too, but this is one confusion that doesn’t get any clearer by writing about it.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

“One last big favor to ask you, mi amor. No more writing in your diary for the time being.

“That’s so unfair!” Mami gave me the diary for Christmas. Telling me not to write in it is like taking away my only present.

“I know it is, Anita.” Mami wipes away my tears with her thumbs. “For now, we have to be like the little worm in the cocoon of the butterfly. All closed up and secret until the day...” She spreads her arms as if they were wings.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Eraser, Butterflies and Flight
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Anita’s Diary Quotes

Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.

So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.

It took her saying it for me to realize it’s true.

The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them out of forgetfulness, one by one.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Mrs. Mancini/Tía Mari
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Ten Quotes

Then one of them shook our hands and said, “Welcome to the United States of America,” and pointed us out of Immigration. And there was my answer to how I would survive in this strange, new world: my family was waiting for us—Mundín and Lucia, my grandparents, Carla, her sisters, and Tía Laura and Tío Carlos and Tía Mimí—all of them calling out, “Anita! Carmen!”

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Lucinda, Mundín, Carla
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
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Before We Were Free PDF

Mami Quotes in Before We Were Free

The Before We Were Free quotes below are all either spoken by Mami or refer to Mami. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Coming of Age and Political Consciousness Theme Icon
).
Chapter Two Quotes

“Are they really policemen?” I keep asking Mami. It doesn’t make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn’t we trust them instead of being afraid of them? But all Mami will say is “Shhh!” Meanwhile, we can’t go to school because something might happen to us. “Like what?” I ask. Like what Chucha said about people disappearing? Is that what Mami worries will happen to us? “Didn’t Papi say we should carry on with normal life?”

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Papi, Chucha
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Three Quotes

Not that I think of Sam as a boyfriend, which I’m not allowed to have anyway. Mami doesn’t approve of my being around any boys who aren’t related to me. But since my cousins moved away, the rules have both tightened and loosened in odd ways. I can’t talk about the SIM’s visit or my cousins’ leaving for New York City, but I can have Sam for a best friend even if he is a boy.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Sam Washburn, Carla
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Four Quotes

“Doris, put the lid on the sugar bowl, por favor. There are so many flies.”

I look around for flies, but there are none I can see. Lorena has just come out from the kitchen with a tray to collect the empty coffee cups. Perhaps she scared them away.

Then, just like that, it dawns on me: my mother is speaking to Mrs. Washburn in code. She’s saying: We are being overheard; be quiet. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a room I’m not supposed to be in—but now that I’m inside, the door has disappeared. I feel the same way as when Lucinda told me how one day I, too, would get my period.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami (speaker), Mrs. Washburn, Lorena
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

“Suddenly, you have to be a big girl—”

“I am twelve, Mami!” I sigh and roll my eyes. Recently, if anyone talks to me as if I’m a little kid, I get mad. But I also feel sad that I’m not a little kid anymore and that I know as much as I do. I’ve written about these confused feelings in my diary, too, but this is one confusion that doesn’t get any clearer by writing about it.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

“One last big favor to ask you, mi amor. No more writing in your diary for the time being.

“That’s so unfair!” Mami gave me the diary for Christmas. Telling me not to write in it is like taking away my only present.

“I know it is, Anita.” Mami wipes away my tears with her thumbs. “For now, we have to be like the little worm in the cocoon of the butterfly. All closed up and secret until the day...” She spreads her arms as if they were wings.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Eraser, Butterflies and Flight
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Anita’s Diary Quotes

Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.

So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.

It took her saying it for me to realize it’s true.

The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them out of forgetfulness, one by one.

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Mrs. Mancini/Tía Mari
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Ten Quotes

Then one of them shook our hands and said, “Welcome to the United States of America,” and pointed us out of Immigration. And there was my answer to how I would survive in this strange, new world: my family was waiting for us—Mundín and Lucia, my grandparents, Carla, her sisters, and Tía Laura and Tío Carlos and Tía Mimí—all of them calling out, “Anita! Carmen!”

Related Characters: Anita (speaker), Mami, Lucinda, Mundín, Carla
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis: