Today’s Video: Isabel Allende

We end this week’s video theme of Latin American women and literature with Chilean author Isabel Allende.

“The House of the Spirits”, “Of Love and Shadows”, and “City of the Beasts” are just a few of the novels written by Allende who is certainly one of the best-known novelists in all the Americas. In 1996 Allende created a foundation in honor of her daughter, and Allende became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2003.

The video is from Allende’s appearance at the 2007 TED conference; her impassioned speech calls for us to stop the injustices against women and to become more active in changing the world for the better.

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Previous videos this week:

• Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni
• Mexican "Renaissance woman" Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
• Dominican author Julia Alvarez

Sources- isabelallende.com, Wikipedia, Google Video, Isabel Allende, TED

Today’s Video: Julia Alvarez

We continue this week’s theme of famous Latin American women in literature with a look at Julia Alvarez.

Alvarez- who is of Dominican background- has written numerous acclaimed books of fiction and poetry. Despite this, her 1991 novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents” has been the subject of controversy after a South Carolina school board recently banned the text. In an interview published last month Alvarez noted how the book’s outlawing of her book reminded her of her childhood under infamous dictator Rafael Trujillo.

The following video clip is another interview of Alvarez discussing her most recent book on quinceañeras. Alvarez explains why she wrote on the subject despite her initial reluctance as well as “what writing is all about”.

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Previous videos this week:

• Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni
• Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sources- SFGate.com, The Latin Americanist, Wikipedia, YouTube, Independent Weekly, Vivirlatino