A Foot Stool Away from Notoriety

A twenty-minute conversation with Isabel Allende was a pinnacle literary experience for me. In this blog, I'll tell you about that day and review her latest book, The Soul of a Woman.

The year was 1999 and I was working for Creative Associates, the first women owned international development company in the Washington, DC area. Charito Kruvant (CEO) and Mimi Tse (CFO), along with two other women, started the business in Charito's basement in the late 1970's with a vision of creating a better world, especially for disadvantaged women and children. Creative currently operates programs in 30 countries.

Charito was a mentor to me as I launched my international development career in education. I was inspired by her wisdom and kindness, as well as her management style (servant leadership), during the three years I directed the Equity in the Classroom Project. While petite in size, Charito Kruvant is a gentle giant in the development world especially where expertise is needed in gender and inclusion. Her Buddha like manner and sense of humor draw respect and friendship from notables in the political and social sciences fields, as well as her employees, whom she refers to as extended family.

That day in May, I was walking along-side her in the office corridor, seeking her advice on a project issue. I noticed an invitation in her hand to a reception for Isabel Allende, my literary idol, being held at the Mayflower Hotel. I let out an audible sigh. "Isabel Allende!!!! She's my favorite writer."

"Here, you go," she directed as she handed me the invitation.

Allende was to be given a Sara Lee Foundation award celebrating her literary achievements. She was invited to DC to receive the award and to speak on her most passionate topic, women's empowerment. I assumed it would be a huge crowd in an auditorium, Allende a dot on stage.

Over dinner that night, I discussed my excitement with my children, Bronwyn and Chas. My husband, Charles, was out of the country. I told the kids that I loved how Allende seamlessly blended magical realism into her stories, and ultimately made her readers believe that magic exists in everyday life when you are open to its presence.

"You should take a book for her to autograph," Bronwyn advised. That brought up a sore topic. In our transfer from Bolivia to Nepal, my husband Charles, had given away boxes of books that included my most treasured, a complete set of first edition Allende novels in hardback, because our baggage was problematically beyond our weight limit. I bemoaned this fact to the kids, but reasoned that I would not get anywhere close to her during the event.

"I do have a paperback copy of Paula, a memoir of the year she spent comforting and treasuring her daughter, who lay dying from a rare genetic disease in a Spanish hospital. I'll take that book, just in case."

When I arrived at the hotel, I was directed to a penthouse meeting room with spectacular views of the city. I counted only eight round tables, each elegantly set with silver and flowers on a white tablecloth. Quick math led me to realize that this was an exclusive event for less than fifty, not crowds in an auditorium as I expected. A podium stood in waiting for the "queen of magical realism."

I was handed a glass of champagne and offered hors d'oeuvres. Small clusters of women were chatting and we made introductions. I discovered that the other guests included board members from the National Organization for Women, other women's rights groups and women political and business leaders across the Washington, DC, landscape. I stumbled to make conversation. I was way out of my league.

Isabel Allende was escorted into the room by a Sara Lee Foundation executive who introduced her to some of the most distinguished guests, as they made their way around the room. To my amazement most of the women merely glanced up at Isabel Allende, smiled, and offered a laudatory comment, eager to return to their intense discussions with one another. I shook my head in disbelief. For them, this event provided a high-level networking meeting with other power brokers of the women's movement.

After the rounds, the foundation executive stood with Allende, attempting to make small talk while I watched from the periphery. In a bold move, I decided to go up and introduce myself. As soon as I told Allende how much I admired her work, the executive simply floated away, relieved that at least one person in the room wanted to talk to the honoree about her books.

Isabel and I laughed over my lost Allende library and shed a tear for Paula. As Allende autographed my worn paperback, she told me about her daughter who died an untimely death at age 29 and the foundation she started in Paula's name.

I told her about two novels I was writing, which also incorporated magical realism. As we talked, I glanced around to see if anyone else was waiting to speak to her, but there was no one, so I savored these twenty to thirty minutes, hanging on to her every word. She seemed to enjoy our conversation, but surely not as much I did.

Finally, the host told us that the brunch was served and over dessert, Allende would make a few remarks. I found my seat and enjoyed the meal, with my head in the clouds.

Allende was invited to the podium. A tiny figure, less than five feet tall, she would have been lost behind the speaker's stand. She laughed and asked for a foot stool. Her first words were, I often find myself a stool away from literary stature."

She talked about her childhood growing up in Peru and Chile, fighting the norms for what little girls should say and do. "I am proud to say that from childhood, I have always been an unrepentant bitch as are most of the protagonists in my fiction."

“I am a writer because I was blessed with an ear for stories, an unhappy childhood, and a strange family. With relatives as weird as mine there is no need to invent anything. They alone provide all the material for magical realism. Literature has defined me."

Isabel Allende is considered the most widely-read writer working in Spanish, having sold more than 67 million books. She was born in Lima, Peru, to Chilean parents. She was a second cousin to Salvador Allende, who was elected Chile’s president in 1970, and killed in Augusto Pinochet’s military coup three years later, a defining event in the life of a nation and the Allende family.

Allende published her first novel, The House of Spirits, as a farewell letter to her grandfather who was dying at age 100. The author, who lives in San Raphael, California, makes a ritual of beginning all her books on January 8, the date on the original 1981 letter to her grandfather. In thinking about that novel, she remarked, “This sounds very corny but my life has been determined by two things that have been extremely important: love and violence."

In her speech to us, she wove stories of joy and pain. She told us that suffering is real, but joy, solidarity, and love are equally possible. "There is sorrow, pain and death, but there’s another parallel dimension, and that is love.”

She shared a humorous story about meeting her husband, William Garden, on her first book tour to the U.S. Garden, a lawyer from San Francisco, followed her around the country and appeared at one book signing after another. She thought he was either a stalker or a potential lover. Turned out to be the latter. They married and she moved to his home in San Francisco.

She told us that cross cultural relationships really work. When she became angry with her American husband, she had to write down her argument before presenting it, because her English wasn't fluent enough for a fight. "By the time I translated it," she said, "I realized it wasn't worth arguing about." Thinking back on that first trip to America, she told us, "I came looking for something and found something else, like we all do."

When she stood before the audience at the Washington Duke Hotel, the memory of her daughter, was still omnipresent. She talked about writing her memories of Paula while sitting by her daughter's hospital bed. "Paula was an essential human being with nothing frivolous. In thinking about her, I realized that the years of her life are much more important than the eternity she is missing. And at the moment of her death, I realized that the moment life comes and the moment it leaves is the same."

Isabel Allende is a woman of profound thoughts, leaving so much delight and wisdom for her readers to savor. In my naiveté about my own writing talent, I wrote to her the next month, at the address she gave me, seeking her advice on publishing my works. I look back on her kind, handwritten response to me and feel a bit embarrassed, now realizing that she must receive countless requests for assistance from fledgling writers like me, all harboring some delusion that they have talent. She apologized that she was crazy busy with book tours and her own writing, and could not read my work. She did give me a suggestion or two. The letter is a treasure.

Isabel Allende divorced the gentleman from San Francisco and fell in love again in late seventies with her current husband, Roger. During the Covid-lockdown, she took time to review her life and the core foundation of who she is in her memoir, The Soul of a Woman, (Ballantine Books, New York, 2021).

In The Soul of a Woman, she talks about her passions at every stage of life, and reckons with getting old. She wrote, "Passion at my age is just as intense as in my youth, but now before doing something reckless I think about it for some time – let's say two or three days." The book is humor-stoked and enlightening to those of us who also spent 2020 looking back on our own life and hoping for good years yet to come. As Allende writes, "I don't want to allow caution, so often prevalent in later years, to destroy my passion for life. A safe and quiet life is not good material for fiction."

In the memoir, she also talks about her foundation to support women. Taking lessons from working in Nepal, India and other developing countries, she explores what women need to feel safe, to be valued, and to live in peace: to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all to be loved. She explains her ongoing commitment to "light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine, because there is much more to do to realize human rights for everyone."

Like so many of us who spent the Covid year reflecting on life, we learned that looking back prepares us for moving forward, more deliberately. In reading Allende's memoir, I found that much of what she discovered was relevant to my own life. What I learned when hearing her speak and from reading her memoir is that Allende doesn't need a foot stool. As a writer and thinker, she is above the tallest among us.

On that thought, I'll let Isabel Allende have the last word, quoted from her book: “It is a wonderful truth that the things we want most in life – a sense of purpose, happiness and hope – are most easily attained by giving them to others.”