Author Isabel Allende challenges anti-immigrant rhetoric, book bans and going ‘backward’ on women’s rights

The internationally acclaimed bestselling author spoke about book bans, women’s rights, Latin America and the fate of the erotic novel she didn’t dare write when her mom was alive.

By By Albinson Linares and Noticias Telemundo

On April 3, 2024

Isabel Allende likes to start the day very early. She says that in the early dawn her senses awaken and she organizes her thoughts to write about the imaginary worlds that she, for more than 40 years, has created for millions of readers around the world.

“Before, I could write for 10 hours straight and, when I got up from my chair, all my bones hurt, even my teeth hurt. Now I can’t do that,” said Allende, laughing and speaking in her native Spanish with Noticias Telemundo from her home in California.

At 81, Allende says that she has seen it all in a life marked by challenges, exiles, creative bets and a wildly successful career: A winner of multiple literature awards, Allende is widely considered one of the most read Latin American authors in the world, with over 70 million books sold.

From her first novel, “The House of the Spirits,” which became an international bestseller, to memoirs like “Paula” (about her daughter’s illness and death), Allende’s stories revolve around recurring themes such as love, violence, justice, redemption and friendship.

“There are certain things that move me a lot. Solidarity, those people who are capable of sacrificing everything to help another. That moves me tremendously and appears in many of my books,” she explained.

Allende, who was a journalist before starting her literary career at age 40, is a keen observer of current events. Sometimes, she doesn’t like what she sees.

“There is an anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and in the world, because there are more and more people who have to be displaced. They leave their countries of origin due to extreme violence or extreme poverty. And it is a problem that is growing right now,” she said.

“There are more than 110 million refugees in the world and the majority are women and children. This is a problem that is not going to be solved by putting guards on the border or barbed wire. It is going to be solved when the circumstances that force people to leave improve in their countries of origin,” Allende said.

Allende has lived in the U.S. since 1988, more specifically in California, her home after a long journey: She left her homeland of Chile following the rise of the late dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose military regime would result in more than 40,000 victims registered as missing, killed, tortured or politically imprisoned. Allende went to Caracas, Venezuela, where she lived for over a decade from the mid-’70s to the late ’80s and where she worked as a freelance journalist for the El Nacional newspaper.

“When I left Chile as a political refugee, I went to Venezuela, which was a country that welcomed immigrants and refugees from all over the world, an open, generous, hospitable and rich country,” she said. “Today, there are almost 6 million Venezuelans who have left the country for the same reasons that other people came to Venezuela before. The most notable case is Colombia, where so many Colombians came to Venezuela and now it is Venezuelans who go to Colombia.”

‘The country needs immigrants’

Speaking about the changes she’s seen in the U.S. regarding immigration, Allende said that “precisely because the numbers have increased so much, there are many more restrictions and much more anti-foreigner sentiment. Anyone who comes from somewhere else is frowned upon, especially if they’re a person of color. Now, if they were white people from Scandinavia in the U.S., I’m sure they would be better welcomed than us Latinos,” she stated forcefully.

“I think there has to be a global policy, a national policy and a cultural policy so that people understand that immigrants contribute much more to the country than they receive,” said Allende, who’s been a U.S. citizen since 2003. “This is a country made of immigrants, and the second generation, the third generation, they are already citizens and they contribute a lot to the United States.”

Allende believes previous periods in history could offer solutions.

“There are many jobs in the United States that no American wants to do for any money in the world. There are many industries that are very difficult, besides agriculture. … There should be work permits like there were in times past in which people came, worked for a season, sent money to their families, and [they] could enter and leave the country. There could be a system with some openness for people who come to work,” she said.

On the upcoming U.S. presidential election and candidates’ proposals on immigration, Allende said: “[Donald] Trump considers that immigrants are not people and he has expressly said so; I mean, it’s not something that I’m inventing right now. So any policy of theirs is going to be even more draconian than separating children from their parents, for example. And you have to be very careful with that. I believe that the country needs immigrants.” 

She warned against the adoption of discourse that’s anti-immigrant or against people of color or poor people. “When social media and social networks, the press and politicians speak this discourse, logically we can fall into a very grave fascist regime,” she said.

Asked if literature can provide a different perspective on immigration, Allende said it can bring us closer to people.

“If they tell me that there are 100 million refugees in the world, it is a number and means little until I meet one; when I know his story, his name and everything that has happened to him, then I can put myself in his place,” she said.

Allende then spoke of her book “The Wind Knows My Name,” about a blind girl who is separated from her mother at the border.

“When they talk to me about the thousands of separated children, they are also numbers, until you think of a certain child and know that it could be your son or his grandson,” she said. “Everything changes when you can personally relate to something. Literature makes us see things from an angle we had never expected, and that is wonderful. That is why literature will always exist.”

Book bans, women’s rights and ‘not losing hope’

Last year, two of Allende’s novels, “The House of the Spirits” and “In the Midst of Winter,” were on a list of books removed from schools in Orange County, Florida. Allende said it’s happening now because of “this thing between the religious and extreme right, of banning books.”

But Allende added it’s “almost an honor that they at least notice that the book exists. It doesn’t affect me at all.”

She added that “The House of the Spirits” was banned several years ago, first in Chile and later in North Carolina. “Because all it takes is for a parent to complain and they will remove the book from the library. But one teacher who defends it is also enough for the book to return to the library, and that is what happened then,” she said.

Allende has always been outspoken about women’s rights and feminism, and it’s one of the objectives of her foundation.

She said gender parity, where feminine values have the same weight as masculine ones, “is the ultimate goal, and to achieve it is a relentless fight that will take much longer than the years of my life. I’m not going to see it and maybe my granddaughters aren’t going to see it, but here we go. There is more education and the young generations no longer endure what our grandmothers or mothers endured.” 

But, she said, “you always have to be vigilant because there is no excuse for everything to go backward. What has happened in the United States is that the right to plan your family, that is, not only abortion but also contraception is on the chopping block. … And this is something that directly affects women and the entire society.”

But she said some things have gotten better.

“When I left Chile, 50% of the Latin American population lived generally under a military dictatorship, very repressive, in which people disappeared and there was massive torture,” Allende said. “Now we’ve known decades of weak and often conditional democracies, but democracies. And I believe that these authoritarian and fascist tendencies come and go with the law of the pendulum. The same is happening in Europe. And in my 80 years I have seen a lot, so I don’t lose hope. I think we are moving forward, not going backwards.”

These days, the author has decided to take on the challenge of writing children’s books, and every Tuesday and Thursday she receives a visit from a demanding literary critic: Camila, a 4-year-old girl to whom she reads what she writes.

“It was a beautiful challenge because when Camila goes to the house for me to read to her, I can see how she falls in love with the characters,” she said. The first of three illustrated books that she’s writing, “Perla, la Super Perrita” (“perrita” means female dog), is scheduled for publication later this year.

She acknowledged that young people can be scared of books because they’re used to screens, so it’s harder to get them to read, “but literature has a function and even if the medium changes, even if you hear it on audio, even if you read it digitally, it still has a function and continues to exist. And the proof is that now more books are published than ever and all those books are sold somewhere. There are readers who read in a hurry, but they read.”

Allende also offered a glimpse of what may be left for her to write.

“I always said I wanted to write an erotic novel, but as long as my mother was alive, I couldn’t do it. And my mom lived to be 98,” Allende said, laughing. “So by the time I was free to do it, I no longer had the hormones, and frankly, the topic doesn’t interest me that much now.”

This piece was republished from NBC News.