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Shelly Zallis Chairwoman TFQ
Janet Garufis President & CEO Montecito Bank & Trust
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IsAbel Allende Comes to s.B. “I
seek truth and beauty in the transpar- What inspires you? What inspires me? What I ency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect hear people talking about, traveling, experiform of a seashell on the beach, in ences, things I read in other books and watch the curve of a woman’s back, in the texture in movies. But to make the decision to write of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elu- about a particular novel, that happens in sive forms of reality,” ways that are mysterious writes internationto me. ally acclaimed author Isabel Allende in her How does it feel to have your 2000 novel Portrait in work read and instructed in Sepia. Finding beauty schools around the world? and viewing the world Interesting, because with a unique perspecwriting is such a private by Gabriel Tanguay tive is what Allende job, and I am alone in does best; as such, silence in a little room her books are used in typing, and then the school curricula worldwide, particularly her book goes out there and touches people who critically acclaimed 1982 debut novel, The I will never meet, goes into languages I will House of the Spirits. I was bewitched by Allen- never be able to read, and has a life of its own. de’s fascinating realm of magical realism in When I get feedback of what’s happening with my sophomore year of high school and have the book, it’s always such a huge surprise. I still yet to find another author who so astutely remember very clearly the first book I wrote explores the effect of politics on society under and the feeling that no one was ever going to a metaphysical influence. read or publish it. Everything that has hapAllende was born in Peru and raised in pened with my books is like a miracle. Chile. She fled to Venezuela in the 1970s after dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew What is your opinion of the current political situher cousin President Salvador Allende in ation here in the United States? I’m absolutely a military coup. Her novels, which explore horrified. I’ve seen before what it is when the universal themes of isolation, civil unrest, deterioration of democracy begins and where and humanity’s capacity for love, have been it can end. I have lived it. I lived it in Chile, translated into more than 30 languages. and I lived it in Venezuela. And we think we Over the phone from her home in Northern are immune in the U.S. We think our instituCalifornia, Allende kindly shared with me her tions are so strong that they can withstand positions on writing and the nation’s current any assault, and that’s not true. Look at history. Look what happened in Spain, in Italy, political situation. Germany— we had governments that were Germany You began your writing career at 39. Did you write as a disaster for humankind, and so things that a younger person, even if it was purely for yourself? can happen in the U.S. now, we can’t even I was very busy supporting a family with foresee the consequences. So I am terrified. three jobs, and I was a journalist. Journalists in Chile don’t make much money. So I What do you hope for in terms of the future? I had to juggle working at a magazine, on TV, hope for a reaction. I hope for unity and for doing lots of things in order to make a living. people who will ask, “What are the values Then we had the military coup in Chile in we stand for? Let’s get back to those values September of 1973, and I had to get out of my and work toward them.” … I have seen in my country. In Venezuela, I could not find a job lifetime how the pendulum of politics goes as a journalist, and I started working in things back and forth from one extreme to the other that had nothing to do with literature. When until eventually it sort of stops in the middle. I started my first book in 1981, I had all these We can still live many years in a disastrous stories inside that I needed to tell, and that was government until the pendulum goes back my first experience with fiction. to the middle.
AcclAImed WrIter Makes rAre AppeArAnce
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UCSB’s Arts & Lectures presents An Evening with Isabel Allende on Wednesday, April 19, 7:30 p.m., at the Granada Theatre (1214 State St.). Call 893-3535 or see artsandlectures.ucsb.edu. 50
THE iNDEpENDENT
april 13, 2017
independent.com