This month, we are celebrating the birthday of Chilean American author Isabel Angélica Allende Llona. Allende was born August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru. Allende’s father, Tomas was a first cousin of Salvadore Allende who became the President of Chile from 1970-1973.
Tomas left his family in 1945, and Allende’s mother moved to Santiago, Chile with her three children and married a diplomat in 1953. The family moved often because of his profession. Allende and her siblings attended an American private school in Bolivia and an English private school in Lebanon. She completed her secondary studies in Chile where she met and married a young engineering student, Miguel Frias. They married young (Allende was 20) and had two children, a son, and a daughter. At home, she was a devoted wife and mother. In public, she became a television personality, a dramatist, and a journalist for a feminist magazine. For a time, she translated romance novels from English to Spanish. She was fired for making changes to the story to make female characters seem more intelligent and instead of the typical fairy tale endings, she presented opportunities for female characters to grow and become more independent.
After Salvadore Allende was ousted as president in a coup by General Augusto Pinochet, Allende worked to help family members and political allies of President Allende find safe passage out of Peru. When her name was added to Pinochet’s “wanted list,” she was forced to flee to Venezuela where she remained for thirteen years.
During this time, she and her husband briefly separated. They got back together, but finally divorced in 1987.
She wrote her first novel, The House of the Spirits in 1982 while still in exile. According to Allende, leaving Chile allowed her to become a serious writer because it freed her from family obligations and their expectations. Her family was very traditional and expected her to behave as a subservient Latin American woman. The themes of many of her novels revolve around a woman’s struggle for acceptance and independence in a patriarchal society. Allende worked as a columnist for a Venezuelan newspaper.
While in California on a a book tour in 1988, she met her second husband, Willie Gordon, a California attorney, and author.
In 1994, Allende became the first women to be awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit. She lives in San Rafael, California. Her son and his family live nearby. Allende’s daughter died in 1992. In 1996, she started a foundation in her daughter’s memory to fund programs to promote and preserve women’s and children’s fundamental rights to be empowered and protected.
In 2006, Allende was one of the eight flag bearers for opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. She and Willie Gordon divorced in 2015. She married Roger Cukras in 2019.
Allende’s books have been translated into 42 languages and have sold more than 77 million copies.
She has received several awards including a National Prize for Literature and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (awarded in 2014 by President Barack Obama).
Happy Birthday, Isabel Allende!
Works by Isabel Allende:
Fiction:
The House of the Spirits (1982) La casa de los espíritus
The Porcelain Fat Lady (1984) La gorda de porcelana
Of Love and Shadows (1985) De amor y de sombra
Eva Luna (1987) Eva Luna
Two Words (1989) Dos Palabras
The Stories of Eva Luna (1989) Cuentos de Eva Luna
The Infinite Plan (1991) El plan infinito
Daughter of Fortune (1999) Hija de la fortuna
Portrait in Sepia (2000) Retrato en sepia
City of the Beasts (2002) La ciudad de las bestias
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2004) El reino del dragón de oro
Zorro (2005) El Zorro: Comienza la leyenda
Forest of the Pygmies (2005) El bosque de los pigmeos
Ines of My Soul (2006) Inés del alma mía
Island Beneath the Sea (2010) La isla bajo el mar
Maya's Notebook (2011) El Cuaderno de Maya
Ripper (2014) El juego de Ripper
The Japanese Lover (2015) El amante japonés
In the Midst of Winter (2017) Más allá del invierno
A Long Petal of the Sea (2019) Largo pétalo de mar
Violeta (2022)[56]
The Wind Knows My Name (2023)
Nonfiction:
Paula (1994) Paula
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1998) Afrodita
My Invented Country: A Memoir (2003) Mi país inventado
The Sum of Our Days (2007) La suma de los días
The Soul of a Woman (2021) Mujeres del alma mí
Image of Isabel Allende:
By City Club of Cleveland - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq6K5uF5i0s, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62292985