Esteban Trueba continues to haunt me.
Since the day I devoured the richness of its mystery of Isabel Allende’s debut novel in high school, i would still find myself still sneak in to The House of the Spirits once in while pay a visit to Senator Esteban or. imagine how it was like to live in the world of Clara. The Trueba family saga so enthralled me that I became a fan of clairvoyance, Nivea brand, and the name Alba is music to my ears. My hero Esteban, maybe a cold-blooded villain in his prime to some, but his inner strength and determination all throughout his life, inspires me to dream and believe it can come true.
May be my Spanish ancestry and growing up in Iloilo speaking borrowed Spanish added to my fascination with Allende and other Spanish-speaking writers.
Isabel Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea, set in Haiti before the Caribbean country was ravage by a powerful tremor, is another exciting addition to The Stories of Eva Luna.
The book, which debuted in Spanish last year and just came out in English in the United States, follows Zarite Sedella, a slave in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) at the end of the 18th century who had the good fortune to avoid working on sugar plantations or in the mills, because she was always a domestic slave.
It has been a best seller in many Latin American countries and is already a best seller on Amazon.com. It took Isabel about four years of research and another year in writing.
The 67-year-old author originally considered setting the novel in New Orleans, but her research took her to Haiti.
"I noticed that the French flavor of New Orleans, the cooking, the voodoo, a lot of the customs come from 10,000 refugees who fled Haiti during the slave revolution at the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s ... and many of them came to Louisiana."
"So I began investigating the circumstances that forced them to leave and that's how I got into the Haitian Revolution, which is fascinating."
Although Island Beneath the Sea takes place 200 years ago, Allende says, "the theme of slavery is one that is horribly alive today."
"There are 27 million slaves in the world today ... and we're not just talking about girls who work in Cambodian bordellos, but people who are in indentured servitude, sometimes for generations; entire villages that work in agriculture, in the fishing industry, logging and all sorts of sweatshops."
Allende is one of the best-known contemporary women authors in Latin America, who sometimes writes based on her own experiences, weaving together myth and realism. Her books, which have been translated into more than 27 languages, shift between autobiographical and historical and are usually focused on women.
"I don't invent women. I've worked all my life with women and for women. I know them well and if you ask me where are there weak women, I wouldn't know, because the majority of them have had difficult lives and are for the most part very strong," said the author of "Eva Luna," "Of Love and Shadows" and "Ines of My Soul," who was born in Peru and raised in Chile and now lives in California (she became an American citizen a few years ago).
Allende, who has endured personal tragedy — she shared the loss of her daughter in her memoir "Paula" — says she is grateful for the life she's led.
"I think very few people pass through life without suffering. And my suffering is no different from that of others and it's not greater," she says. "I celebrate each day."
Since the day I devoured the richness of its mystery of Isabel Allende’s debut novel in high school, i would still find myself still sneak in to The House of the Spirits once in while pay a visit to Senator Esteban or. imagine how it was like to live in the world of Clara. The Trueba family saga so enthralled me that I became a fan of clairvoyance, Nivea brand, and the name Alba is music to my ears. My hero Esteban, maybe a cold-blooded villain in his prime to some, but his inner strength and determination all throughout his life, inspires me to dream and believe it can come true.
May be my Spanish ancestry and growing up in Iloilo speaking borrowed Spanish added to my fascination with Allende and other Spanish-speaking writers.
Isabel Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea, set in Haiti before the Caribbean country was ravage by a powerful tremor, is another exciting addition to The Stories of Eva Luna.
The book, which debuted in Spanish last year and just came out in English in the United States, follows Zarite Sedella, a slave in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) at the end of the 18th century who had the good fortune to avoid working on sugar plantations or in the mills, because she was always a domestic slave.
It has been a best seller in many Latin American countries and is already a best seller on Amazon.com. It took Isabel about four years of research and another year in writing.
The 67-year-old author originally considered setting the novel in New Orleans, but her research took her to Haiti.
"I noticed that the French flavor of New Orleans, the cooking, the voodoo, a lot of the customs come from 10,000 refugees who fled Haiti during the slave revolution at the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s ... and many of them came to Louisiana."
"So I began investigating the circumstances that forced them to leave and that's how I got into the Haitian Revolution, which is fascinating."
Although Island Beneath the Sea takes place 200 years ago, Allende says, "the theme of slavery is one that is horribly alive today."
"There are 27 million slaves in the world today ... and we're not just talking about girls who work in Cambodian bordellos, but people who are in indentured servitude, sometimes for generations; entire villages that work in agriculture, in the fishing industry, logging and all sorts of sweatshops."
Allende is one of the best-known contemporary women authors in Latin America, who sometimes writes based on her own experiences, weaving together myth and realism. Her books, which have been translated into more than 27 languages, shift between autobiographical and historical and are usually focused on women.
"I don't invent women. I've worked all my life with women and for women. I know them well and if you ask me where are there weak women, I wouldn't know, because the majority of them have had difficult lives and are for the most part very strong," said the author of "Eva Luna," "Of Love and Shadows" and "Ines of My Soul," who was born in Peru and raised in Chile and now lives in California (she became an American citizen a few years ago).
Allende, who has endured personal tragedy — she shared the loss of her daughter in her memoir "Paula" — says she is grateful for the life she's led.
"I think very few people pass through life without suffering. And my suffering is no different from that of others and it's not greater," she says. "I celebrate each day."
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