Iâve been putting my passport to good use for the last thirty years or so. Few things make me happier than showing up in an unfamiliar place â whether a village in Ecuador, a town in Ireland, or a city in Ghana â and trying to become familiar with the people, the customs, the food, all of it. But I suppose what I love most is a good story. During those three decades, Iâve also become a Professor of English at Arizona State University, where my research has increasingly focused on how artists and ideas move across geographical and cultural boundaries. In my latest book, License to Travel, these various interests come together.
Allende loves her Chilean homeland with a longing, a tenderness, an exasperation derived from the countryâs turbulent history and her long experience of exile and emigration in Venezuela and the United States.
This book made me fall in love all over again with the country, which I first visited a quarter century ago â and it will make you fall in love with it too, whether or not youâve ever visited Chile.
With a novelistâs imaginative flare, Allende travels through time and across borders, searching her memory to tell the story of her lonely childhood, her remarkable family, the tumults that forced her abroad (including the death of her fatherâs cousin, President Salvador Allende), and a long life lived at a distance from the place she still calls home, regardless of decades of displacement.
"A stunningly intimate memoir. . . . Allende is that rare writer whose understanding of story matches her mastery of language."-Entertainment Weekly
The revered New York Times bestselling author of House of the Spirits and A Long Petal of the Sea ponders the elements that led to her becoming a writer, including the homeland she lost and the one she found, and the family spirits, both living and dead, who haunt her life and work.
In this wondrous and intimate book, Isabel Allende explores the role of memory and nostalgia in shaping her life, her books, and that most intimateâŠ
Iâm a bestselling author of historical fictionâsome readers might recognize my pen name, Olivia Hawker, under which I wrote One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, along with several other novels. My greatest passion is literary fiction, especially when it intersects with historical fiction. Along with my books, I continue to explore new modes of storytelling and new uses for story in my podcast,Future Saint of a New Era.
I was first intrigued by Jodorowskyâs bizarre, unforgettable films. I only discovered his fiction later, but Iâm glad I did. Where the Bird Sings Best is a semi-fictional account of the authorâs family history, incorporating the magical-realism tradition of Latin American literature with factual details of one familyâs immigration and resettlement half a world away from their original homeland.As in Jodorowskyâs filmmaking, the images within his novel are haunting, weird, and leave the reader with the impression that she has only grasped one-tenth of the real meaning.
The magnum opus from Alejandro Jodorowskyâdirector of The Holy Mountain, star of Jodorowskyâs Dune, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, innovator behind classic comics The Incal and Metabarons, and legend of Latin American literature.
There has never been an artist like the polymathic Chilean director, author, and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. For eight decades, he has blazed new trails across a dazzling variety of creative fields. While his psychedelic, visionary films have been celebrated by the likes of John Lennon, Marina Abramovic, and Kanye West, his novelsâpraised throughout Latin America in the same breath as those of GabrielâŠ
Writer and essayist Agnes Borinsky called my debut novel The Seep, âA swift shock of a novel that has shifted how I see our world.â Here are five short, urgent novels that continue to live with me in the months and years after reading them. These are some of my most beloved books, all of which happen to be under 200 pages, which ache with the inner mystery of what is hidden, and what is revealed. These books are my teachers, each a precise masterclass in world building, suspense, and purposeful storytelling. Enjoy these âswift shocks!â
In this beguiling short novel just out from Tin House, Ferrara also examines the Pinochet regime, but through the eyes of a child. 7-year-old M sells tools to hardware stores with her salesman father, slowly realizing his downtrodden place in their society, along with dark secrets about the world around her. The dance of revelations through the young narratorâs perspective is poetic and effective. I read this in an afternoon, oscillating between feeling breathless and meditative. A high wire act, to say the least.
A San Francisco Chronicle and Southwest Review Best Book of the Year and A World Literature Today Notable Translation of the Year
âA dreamscape of a book. I adored this compelling, wise, and utterly unique coming-of-age tale.â âTara Conklin
For seven-year-old M, the world is guided by a firm set of principles, based on her father Dâs life as a traveling salesman. Enchanted by her fatherâs trade, M convinces him to take her along on his routes, selling hardware supplies against the backdrop of Pinochet-era Chile. As father and daughter trek from town to town in their old Renault, MâsâŠ
I've been a researcher, educator, and practitioner of domestic violence services for over 15 years, and am extremely passionate about this topic. After having worked in the domestic violence field, I then pursued my PhD to study this problem, which I now continue to research and teach about as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Moravian University. In our ever-globalizing world, I believe it's especially important for us to consider domestic violence from a cross-cultural perspective, and having studied this issue in Latin America and among Latina women in the U.S., I hope to spread that knowledge even further. More than ever, it is important for everyone to gain knowledge on this worldwide problem.
For a global perspective on domestic violence, Parson provides a comprehensive look at issues around domestic violence in Chile. She specifically follows the stories of several women and how they navigate through services and systems, facing further violence through the relentless barriers they find themselves up against.
Parson and I both graduated from the Rutgers Anthropology doctoral program and worked under the same advisorsâalbeit many years apartâand I am grateful to have had her excellent scholarship as a reference for my own.
The end of the Pinochet regime in Chile saw the emergence of an organised feminist movement that influenced legal and social responses to gender-based violence, and with it new laws and avenues for reporting violence that never before existed. What emerged were grassroots women's rights organisations, challenging and engaging the government and NGOs to confront long-ignored problems in responding to marginalised victims.
In Traumatic States, anthropologist Nia Parson explores the development of methods of care and recovery from domestic violence. She interviews and contextualises the lives of numerous individuals who have confronted these acts, as victims, authorities, and activists. Ultimately,âŠ
