“Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own.”
—The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende, Translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin
My first copy of La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits) was a gift from a Chilean friend whom I met in the Dominican Republic the first time I lived abroad. I read it in the original Spanish, and it was the most challenging novel I’d tackled to that point as a Spanish major in college. The story was captivating—it drew me in, and I devoured it. It was part of that unforgettable summer of stretching my wings, exploring new horizons, and coming into my own as a Spanish-speaker. It was a novel about women who create, against and despite the odds, about generations of women who make and tell their own stories. There is Clara, who communes with the spirits and writes down important and trivial happenings, her daughter Blanca, who creates fantastical clay crèches, and Blanca’s daughter, Alba, who pours through all the family documents to string together the narrative of her family and country’s histories. They are all creators, with Allende weaving these various threads together as the master creator.
The genesis of this, Allende’s first novel, has always held a certain fascination for me. I’ve heard and read about how she was living in exile when she learned her grandfather was dying in Chile. Unable to return, she sat down to write him a letter about all the family stories she remembered. She knew he would never receive the letter; rather, it was a link to her grandfather, her family narrative, and to the past that now seemed so distant. She kept writing, and by the time she had finished, she had interwoven other stories—“spirits” or “ghosts” as she calls them—and what had begun as letter was now a novel.
I had a grandfather much like that—one who told me stories and whose stories have often fueled my own as a writer. And I come from a long line of women creators—a grandmother who quilted and made the best homemade bread, a mother who gardened, sewed my dresses, and made decorated cakes for birthdays, a great-aunt I never knew but who was said to write poetry, one aunt who could paint, and another who could crochet and tat. They created practical and beautiful things, usually from nothing, and through those creations, they told their own stories. Looking back, I see that, like Allende’s Alba, those stories have often given me the strength to face and overcome my own difficulties.
The 2023 National Women’s History Theme is “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.” According to the National Women’s History Alliance, this “timely theme honors women in every community who have devoted their lives and talents to producing art, pursuing truth, and reflecting the human condition decade after decade.” For me, this is what La casa de los espíritus does so well, and it is what I hope to achieve by recognizing the women in my own family and community who have been creators and storytellers in a variety of ways.
On the inside cover of my copy of La casa de los espíritus, my friend wrote an inscription all those many years ago. The spine is cracking from so many readings, but her words are still part of my own story as reader, writer and creator. They are part of the same story of women who create with words, and I leave you with them: “It was lovely to meet you. You’re leaving, I’m staying, but we’ll see each other again on some bright and pure day. Until then.”
Julie A. Sellers
Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables
Website: julieasellers.com
IG: @julieasellers
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