Guides to Happiness
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| THE FAST GUIDES SERIES | |||||
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| Open Letter to Isabel Allende |
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14th March 2005
When I was a young teenager my dream was to be a writer.
What I didn’t realize is that I was a writer, it’s just
that I didn’t have anything published. You were a Chilean woman, with everything that means and can only be understood by a Chilean woman. You were a Chilean woman and were making giant strides all over the world!! I was a Chilean woman and you made my dreams suddenly become a real possibility. One day, while living in Nottingham, England, my mum walked in with your book “La Casa de los Espiritus”. Oh, she was soooo excited! It was a brilliant book by a brilliant Chilean woman, my heart jumped. I took it from her hands, the cover had a haunting looking woman in a blue/purple background. The book was old and worn, hand me down from woman to woman for months or even years in the Anglo world. This was before Amazon.com or any other way to buy Spanish language books in England. Going upstairs to my room, door closed, I sat by the window and started reading… my heat slumped and tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know enough Spanish. The words teased me, beautiful and mysterious, speaking of a garden, a house, a woman. It was a devastating blow. Angry and thwarted I went back downstairs and gave the book back to my mother. She could tell I was upset. “Didn’t you like it?” “I don’t understand it mum, it’s got too many words I don’t know.” A few months later she gave me a little brown parcel, “I got this for you, I don’t know it it’s any good but it’s better than nothing and you should read it.” Ripping the paper, I discovered a colorful, brand new book, “The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende” Oh my god!!! Oh my god. I opened the page and there it was, all there, beautiful and wide open for me to understand. I devoured it in a day and a half. Here was a Chilean woman who’s book was in English and being sold in England. England, where most people didn’t know that there was a country called Chile and where they didn’t think anything better to say than if it was chilly in Chile. Yet they were buying the book. A book by a small, dark, beautiful woman who (even if they insisted she was Peruvian) was Chilean… like me. I carried on writing and sending stories out to magazines. They were all returned with long letters of encouragement. But not published. I became discouraged and kept my writing a secret. At 18 I got married and in the next few years had three wonderful children. Yet all the time I knew that I had a path to follow if I so wished. I carried on writing. And reading your books. In one of your books I read how you carried your novel around with you in a plastic bag, or was it one of your pupils? My writing was usually left behind. Moving from house to house, country to country, I would leave my work behind. One day a box of floppy disks with me made it into one of my suitcases. Then a CD. Now, wherever I go I carry a CD with my novels and books, stories and diaries with me. And I write. I read how you lost your daughter and I cried. I lost my mother in exile. A pain so deep nothing can fill it. My mother was a beautiful woman filled with dreams and romance. A singer, artist and writer, a teacher and friend. Gone. The only consolation is that I have a daughter, so the link goes on. Now I can read in Spanish and have read your books again. The magic is even greater. I keep growing and living, I keep writing, I keep moving. My children are grown, or nearly so, a girl and two boys. I believe in love and magical miracles. I believe in what you have done and inspired. And from one Chilean woman to another, all I can say is that I will try to follow in your steps. Besos y un gran abrazo, Inelia.
© Inelia Ahumada 2005 Feel free to copy and publish this article as long as it contains the copywrite message above and Author contact details : www.inelia.com              |
