In Julia Alvarez’s Afterlife, Antonia’s commitment to her family and willingness to support others highlights her selfless nature, even at the expense of her needs and desires. Antonia hesitates when one of Antonia’s neighbors, Mario, asks if his girlfriend Estela, an undocumented immigrant, can stay at Antonia’s house due to the precarious situation she may face. She explains that she cannot “handle something like this right now” because she is grieving the recent passing of her husband, Sam (Alvarez 29). However, she feels “too weak to hold herself up” and thus cannot muster the confidence to reject the opportunity (Alvarez 30). So, she succumbs and reluctantly agrees to house Estela after being pressured to make the decision. Antonia struggles to navigate her emotional limitations and the demands of those around her. Despite her best efforts to avoid the responsibility, she cannot resist helping others, even though she still needs time to grieve. The decision underscores her ingrained desire to help others and highlights her vulnerability, which prompts Mario to seek her assistance in the first place. Later in the novel, after Antonia undertakes another commitment by joining the rest of her sisters on their journey to track down their missing sister, Izzy, Antonia reflects on the effects these two major events had on her. She explains how every “self-help podcast advises her to take care of herself first” (Alvarez 166). Yet, she describes how the “objects in the mirror come closer” (Alvarez 166). Antonia’s metaphoric description implies that despite the advice to focus on self-care, the realities and responsibilities of life are pressing in on her, making it difficult for her to focus on herself. Much like the objects in the mirror, Antonia’s empathy with the needs of others looms larger and closer than anticipated, overshadowing her attempts at helping her well-being. Despite her need for space and time to grieve, she remains unable to escape the gravity of her obligations, revealing a universal issue of how duty and commitment often eclipse the importance of self-care.
Afterlife has its pros and cons. I thought Antonia acted as a robot designed to help people, but she was much more fleshed out than all the other characters. I also felt as if the pacing was uneven. The way it portrayed dealing with the death of a person close to you was accurate and relatable. If someone is dealing with the death of a close one, I believe they should read this book.