The Soul of a Woman
(Sprache: Englisch)
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes a passionate and inspiring meditation on what it means to be a woman.
"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a...
"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a...
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From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes a passionate and inspiring meditation on what it means to be a woman."When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.
As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between our teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.
So what feeds the soul of feminists-and all women-today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will "light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished."
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When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, even before the concept was known in my family, I am not exaggerating. I was born in 1942, so we are talking remote antiquity. I believe that the situation of my mother, Panchita, triggered my rebellion against male authority. Her husband abandoned her in Peru with two toddlers in diapers and a newborn baby. Panchita was forced to return to her parents home in Chile, where I spent the first years of my childhood.My grandparents house in Santiago, in the Providencia neighborhood, then a residential district and now a labyrinth of offices and shops, was large and ugly, a monstrosity of cement with high ceilings, drafts, walls darkened by kerosene-heater soot, heavy red plush curtains, Spanish furniture made to last a century, horrendous portraits of dead relatives, and piles of dusty books. The front of the house was stately. Someone had tried to give the living room, the library, and the dining room an elegant varnish, but they were seldom used. The rest of the house was the messy kingdom of my grandmother, the children (my brothers and me), the maids, and two or three dogs of no discernible breed. There was also a family of semi-wild cats that reproduced uncontrollably behind the refrigerator; the cook would drown the kittens in a pail on the patio.
All joy and light disappeared from the house after my grandmother s premature death. I remember my childhood as a time of fear and darkness. What did I fear? That my mother would die and we would be sent to an orphanage, that I would be kidnapped by pirates, that the Devil would appear in the mirrors . . . well, you get the idea. I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don t know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage.
Early on, I realized that my mother was at a disadvantage compared to the men in her family. She had married against her parents wishes and the relationship
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had failed, just as she had been warned it would. She d had to annul her marriage, which was the only way out in that country, as divorce was not legalized until 2004. Panchita was not trained to work, she had no money or freedom, and she was the target of gossip; not only was she separated from her husband, but she was also young, beautiful, and coquettish.
My anger against machismo started in those childhood years of seeing my mother and the housemaids as victims. They were subordinate and had no resources or voice my mother because she had challenged convention and the maids because they were poor. Of course, back then I didn t understand any of this; I was only able to do so in my fifties after spending some time in therapy. However, even if I couldn t reason, my feelings of frustration were so powerful that they marked me forever; I became obsessed with justice and developed a visceral reaction to male chauvinism. This resentment was an aberration in my family, which considered itself intellectual and modern but according to today s standards was frankly Paleolithic.
Panchita consulted several doctors trying to find out what was wrong with me; maybe her daughter suffered from colic or a tapeworm? An obstinate and defiant character was accepted in my brothers as an essential condition of masculinity, but in me it could only be pathological. Isn t it always thus? Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about. We had some psychologists in Chile, maybe even child psychologists, but in a time dominated by taboos, they were the last resource for the incurably mad. In my family, our lunatics were endured in private. My mother begged me to be more discreet. I don t know where you got those ideas. You will acquire a reputation of being butch, she told me once, without explaining what that word meant.
She had good rea
My anger against machismo started in those childhood years of seeing my mother and the housemaids as victims. They were subordinate and had no resources or voice my mother because she had challenged convention and the maids because they were poor. Of course, back then I didn t understand any of this; I was only able to do so in my fifties after spending some time in therapy. However, even if I couldn t reason, my feelings of frustration were so powerful that they marked me forever; I became obsessed with justice and developed a visceral reaction to male chauvinism. This resentment was an aberration in my family, which considered itself intellectual and modern but according to today s standards was frankly Paleolithic.
Panchita consulted several doctors trying to find out what was wrong with me; maybe her daughter suffered from colic or a tapeworm? An obstinate and defiant character was accepted in my brothers as an essential condition of masculinity, but in me it could only be pathological. Isn t it always thus? Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about. We had some psychologists in Chile, maybe even child psychologists, but in a time dominated by taboos, they were the last resource for the incurably mad. In my family, our lunatics were endured in private. My mother begged me to be more discreet. I don t know where you got those ideas. You will acquire a reputation of being butch, she told me once, without explaining what that word meant.
She had good rea
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Autoren-Porträt von Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Isabel Allende
- 2021, 192 Seiten, Maße: 13,3 x 19,6 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Ballantine Books
- ISBN-10: 0593355628
- ISBN-13: 9780593355626
- Erscheinungsdatum: 22.03.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Praise for the books of Isabel AllendeThe Sum of Our Days: A Memoir
[Isabel] Allende is a genius. Los Angeles Times Book Review
[Allende] executes this epistolary memoir with the same authenticity and poetry that grace her fiction. . . . Allende is a survivor worth reading and emulating. The Dallas Morning News
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
Charming and entertaining. The New York Times Book Review
A stunningly intimate memoir . . . Allende is that rare writer whose understanding of story matches her mastery of language. Entertainment Weekly
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
Allende s vivacity and wit are in full bloom as she makes her pronouncements. . . . Her book is filled with succinct wisdom and big laughs. . . . As always, her secret weapon is honesty. Publishers Weekly
Allende teases, tempts and titillates with mesmerizing stories. The Washington Post
Paula: A Memoir
Allende has an exciting life story to tell. Booklist
A magician with words. Publishers Weekly
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