Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer whose work has been translated into thirty-five languages, with more than seventy million books sold, she is considered the most widely read Spanish-speaking living writer in the world, and is the daughter of diplomat Tomás Allende Pesce, cousin of chile’s former president, Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in the military coup on September 11, 1973.
Through her writings, Isabel Allende revealed the sublime beauty contained in the feminine and magically invoked these generally repressed and latent qualities of her readers. In times of political turmoil, she chose literary activism against patriarchal ideological guidelines and offered women a broad manifesto about their personality. Wake up.
- With incredible sensitivity Isabel Allende was able to convey an unconditional love for beauty.
- For the beauty of the world and for people.
- Reading or listening to his works is an act that in itself raises the mind.
A woman committed to making this place a better place, a writing activist whose weapons are love and beauty, today we are going through her life and part of her work in what is supposed to be a small tribute to this great woman who gave us so much.
He was born in Lima, Peru, where he lived while his father worked as a diplomat. After the separation of her parents, Isabel went to Chile with her mother and siblings. For a while, they lived in their maternal grandfather’s house. an authoritarian figure who gave Elizabeth very important aspects of her life.
After completing her studies, she married her first husband, Miguel Frías, who was the father of her two children: Paula and Nicols.
In 1967 Isabel became editor-in-chief of the women’s magazine Paula. Her articles, which focused on the role of women in Chilean society, were hilariously ironic and therefore caused much controversy. It was a time of great change in Chile, characterized, by the modernity and liberation movement of women within a Catholic, conservative and patriarchal society.
“There was a time when it wasn’t considered sexy to be a feminist. Was patriarchy very adept at creating the stereotype of the feminist who doesn’t shave?Isabel Allende-
It was after the military coup that Isabel Allende was forced into exile in Venezuela, where she spent nearly 13 years working in a newspaper and a school, and during her stay in Venezuela she received news of her grandfather’s very serious health.
Unable to return to Chile to be with her grandfather, Isabel began writing a letter that would eventually become an unprecedented literary success for a Latin American woman: The House of Spirits. In 1993, this work came to the cinema by the hand of Bille August with great success.
Following the success of her first novel, Isabel Allende wrote two other books that were once again an absolute success in the world of lyrics: Love and Shadow and Contos de Eva Luna. Shortly after the publication of her third book, Isabel decided to quit her job at school and devote herself entirely to writing.
After her first husband’s divorce, Isabel married William Gordon, an American lawyer, and moved to the United States, where she has lived since 1988.
In 1992, her daughter Paula tragically died at the age of 28 in a Hospital in Madrid, a fact that profoundly affected Isabel, who fell into a state of sadness and despair from which she took a long time to leave.
During this long and painful period, Isabel wrote the novel Paula, a reflection of the childhood and youth of her beloved daughter, a tribute of love to her daughter that has established herself as another bestseller in which many women have recognized therself.
Paula is a novel that, like The House of Spirits, began as a letter, a declaration of love and, at the same time, a journey to accept the death of her daughter. The writing began in the hospital, with her daughter. looking at her little by little. This really indicates that Paula is not only a letter to her daughter, but an autobiographical story in which the author tells her family’s story.
In the context of his country’s situation, family dramas and travel, Allende has stripped himself of the soul of this novel. On many occasions, Isabel Allende has commented on the healing power of writing to face the great dramas of life. See how the author he he or she accepts the circumstances and death of her daughter. A novel that, in a way, was a therapeutic exercise and an awareness of reality.
With the money raised from Paula’s sales, she created the Isabel Allende Foundation in honor of her daughter, who had worked as a social educator and psychologist in marginal communities in Venezuela and Spain.
Four years later, overcoming her deep depression, Isabel writes Aphrodite, a book that has become an exaltation of being alive and an appreciation of the senses, is considered a song of life dedicated to gratitude and sensuality, written with the same sensitivity that is found in all. his previous work.
All of Isabel Allende’s work reminds us of Dante’s beloved muse, Beatrice (Bice), who consolidated the stereotype of the “ideal woman?”So idealized by the male. The woman who, simply because she exists, improves her lover. Women who reflect those who love them, big one? By which they connect with the divine nature itself. The fountain behind the mirror from which creativity, inspiration and the best aspects of yourself emanate, rising beyond human potential. The “mirror woman” just like Dante saw Beatrice.
Personally and professionally, Isabel Allende has been able to transmute this traditional archetype of the “ideal woman” that we have learned from Dante and created, with her literature, a new mirror in which women who reflect are recognized and falling. in love with themselves.
Throughout Isabel Allende’s work there are countless female leaders, different women and different backgrounds, as is the case in reality.
Thus, for example, we have The City of the Wild Gods, a work in which, although women are not the main protagonist, it has a fundamental role. It should be added here that the woman of The City of the Wild Gods is old age and yet nothing stops her.
Another important feature of the Chilean writer is his reflection of Latin America, its customs, traditions, existing duality and indigenous tribes. Isabel claims the beauty of people and the world in every corner, in any society, however remote.
“Perhaps we are in this world to seek love, find it and lose it, many times. With each love, we are born again, and with every love that ends, we gain a new wound. Am I covered in scars of pride? Isabel Allende