Isabel Allende is not only the world's most widely read living Spanish-language writer, but also a self-declared and outspoken feminist. So it is not surprising that her most recent book, “Mujeres del alma mía”, arrives in the United States on Women's History Month, just days before the premiere of a miniseries about her life.
In her first non-fiction book in over a decade, available in English under the title "The Soul of a Woman" (Ballantine Books), Allende reviews her relationship with feminism from childhood to the present, remembering those women who marked her, from her mother Panchita and her daughter Paula, to the literary agent Carmen Balcells and the writers Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood. He also reflects on the #MeToo movement, recent social unrest in Chile, and the current global situation.
"The year of the pandemic has had everything paralyzed and much of what women have done has been to take to the streets to gather and protest," said the Chilean author in a recent interview with The Associated Press via Zoom from her home in California .
“A woman alone is very vulnerable, women together are invincible… But I don’t think things have gone backwards or stopped,” she added, “things are still moving forward.”
Her first 50 years of life are dramatized in “Isabel: The Intimate Story of the Writer Isabel Allende,” a three-episode series premiering March 12 on HBO Max, starring Chilean actress Daniela Ramírez.
The miniseries, produced by Megamedia Chile and directed by Rodrigo Bazaes, frames the story with the death of his daughter, who died in 1992 at the age of 29 in a deep coma and with severe brain damage due to a porphyria crisis (according to the Allende herself in her 1994 book "Paula").
“It made me cry out loud because it starts with Paula in the hospital and ends with Paula's death. We saw it with my son (Nicolás) and we both had to stop because we were crying hard at the first scene. But then it gets better in the sense that it is no longer so emotional for us, "said the writer, who was extremely pleased and impressed with the result.
Allende usually starts a new book every January 8th. Last year the confinement allowed him to finish not one but two: “Mujeres del alma mía” (Vintage Spanish), and a novel titled “Violeta” that begins with the 1918 pandemic (“that really started in Chile in 1920”, limits ) and ends the pandemic now. "It is the life of a woman at that time," he advanced without giving a publication date for the moment.
During the AP interview, Allende recalled the origins of her feminism and also spoke of her experience as a "newlywed" in confinement (the 78-year-old author married third nuptials in July 2019 to New York attorney Roger Cukras). "It's like an extended honeymoon that never ends," he said with a laugh.
The questions and answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
AP: You have said and written that since you were a child you were bothered by injustices against women and that it was something you saw in your own family. But when and how did you realize that you were a feminist?
Allende: Darling, there was no such thing as a word! When I was a girl, in Chile, imagine the 40s, in a conservative, catholic, patriarchal family, my mother had been abandoned by her husband and we lived in my grandfather's house. All men, my uncles and my grandfather. And my grandfather was the absolute patriarch. He was a very good man, I adored him, but he was the highest authority, he was like God. What my grandfather said was not questioned. I grew up with the feeling that my mother was in a situation of injustice, in a situation of inequality, of vulnerability. My mother lived in the same house and I suppose my grandfather paid for school and all that, but my mother never had money, she never had freedom. Being a separated woman at that time, in that society, my mother was very frowned upon; she had to take great care of her reputation, for which she was also very limited. And when did I come to realize that this anger that I felt had a name? It was not, I think, until adolescence, because there were no references. And I couldn't realize that there really was a movement, and that I could belong to that movement, until I was 20 at least.
AP: And did you feel liberated or accompanied in any way? How do you remember it?
Allende: I remember when I read "The Eunuch Woman" (1970) by Germaine Greer, which was a book with humor, with intelligence, with a way of saying things that was so direct and so obvious. I felt all those feelings, but I had not expressed them, I did not know how to articulate them, until I read that book. I remember that moment. And I remember later, when I was already talking about feminism and looking for magazines and books on the subject.
AP: “Mujeres del alma mía” is your first non-fiction book in more than a decade. What led you to write it at this time?
Allende: It wasn't my idea. I gave a speech in Mexico City a while ago and the speech was a viral phenomenon. The publishers in Spain thought they were going to publish it as such a little book. I read it and said, "this question is totally outdated, old-fashioned", because in a short time the #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, the protests of women in the street, the theses in Chile, so much that had happened It happened that of course she was not mentioned in the speech. I said "no, this is useless." Then I started to think about my own trajectory and what my life had been and how I have lived the movement, because it has been almost simultaneous, do you notice? The women's liberation movement is very old, but it really began with the pill in the 60s, when women were able to control their fertility for the first time. That created a space that there was not before, a space that of course my mother did not have; my mother was married for four years and had three children.
AP: You started writing it just as we were starting to lock ourselves up for the pandemic. What do you hope will happen now with the women's movement?
Allende: The year of the pandemic has had everything paralyzed ... But it is not that I think it has regressed or stopped, things continue to move forward. And feminism has joined other movements that are also on the street like Black Lives Matter, which is a subversion against the establishment, against a racist system. But also that same system, a macho system, is what gives the male gender supremacy over other women, over other races, over people who have no power, over children, etc. So we have a lot in common. By challenging the power of the establishment, we have so much in common that we can march together… The time has come when we must thoroughly shake up the society where we live and try to establish a different, sustainable, fairer and better new normal for all.
AP: How has the pandemic treated you since we last spoke?
Allende: Good, because what we need for a writer is time, silence and solitude, and that is what the pandemic has given me ... I am just married and look, the pandemic has been a litmus test because it is like an extensive moon of honey that never ends (laughs). But in this honeymoon we have learned a lot that perhaps it would have taken us years to learn ... I think that what happens to me as a couple, as a family, can be extrapolated to humanity, and that is that we are forced to live together in a fragile planet, in a limited place that has to be sustainable, that we have to keep it orderly and clean, otherwise we will perish. That we need patience, tolerance, compassion, kindness. We need resources to reach everyone. Fair enough, no more is needed.
AP: How do you feel about the upcoming series about your life?
Allende: When they told me about the project, I never thought they were going to do it from the start, so I didn't give it much importance. One day they called me and the thing was practically done. All I asked of them is that they have a lot of respect with the other people who appear in the series, because look, I have written memories about my own life, I have spoken up to the elbows, so that I have nothing private and not I have the right to claim no privacy. But the people around me, who have private lives, you have to be respectful with them; those stories don't belong to me. But they did well, because they respected my ex-husband, my children. I really liked the end result. I found it to be very worthy.
AP: What did you think of the leading actress? Did you feel well represented?
Allende: The actress Daniela Ramírez plays a role. I think it is difficult to imitate another person, to try to be the other person. And also that we do not resemble each other physically, because she is a very young and beautiful woman. But look, they did even the hairstyles, the dresses. There is a necklace of mine like with silver coins and each of those coins is different, a jewelry made for me especially. They imitated it identical! And like that, many details of what the house was like, of the children, Paulita comes out the same as what it was. It is truly exciting.
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