In the book, Before We Were Free, Anita and her family are afraid of the Trujillo regime who were persecuting people in the Dominican Republic. The diary was a gift from her mother, but at one point her mother doesn't want her writing in it because she's afraid that someone will find it and read it and something that Anita has written in it could be misconstrued and used against them. Later, when they are in hiding, though, her mother tells her to write as much as she wants thinking that if something happens to them that maybe the diary will live on to tell others what happened to them.
