My Invented Country
Isabel Allende
January 25, 2009
Isabel Allende, in her memoir My Invented Country, takes the reader on a journey through her past, in Chile, after Chile, and in the present, where she resides in California. Allende, who was raised in Chile yet lived most of her life outside it, considers herself ultimately a Chilean with a penchant for travel and emigration.
Allende is my favorite writer and a big part of the reason I chose Chile for my thesis concentration. Allende shows us the Chileans, a modest group of hard working citizens who have a tradition in democracy that was uprooted by several years of a severe dictatorship. Allende states she can spot a Chilean anywhere: “it’s difficult for me to define us in writing, but from fifty yards I can pick out a compatriot with one glance” (p33).
A few things I noticed from the book that may come out as perspectives I can photograph for my thesis:
• The Mapuches are a small native Indian tribe that has taken up a fight against those who wish to build a dam on the Bio Bio River, because it threatens the land they live on.
• Chile’s undying Patriarchal Society is an issue Allende brings up to reveal what Chilean society is like. Allende shows that men have power or influence over most every sector of society (political, economic, literature). Women have made enormous strides in this country where “there is so much testosterone in the air that it’s a miracle women don’t grow beards.” (p52). I would to look specifically at how Chilean mothers are bringing up their daughters- are they really, as Allende states “abettors of machismo”, bring up their daughters to wait on future husbands, yet at the same time fighting tirelessly for women’s’ rights?
• Allende states that “anyone who wants to know a Chilean’s true character must use public transportation in Santiago and travel across the country by bus” (p 118). I think this would be a very interesting contemporary face of Chile- those who ride public transportation (as it is different in every country).
• Those in were in exile who returned to live in Chile. What is their life like now? What is their children’s life? How have they moved on and how have they not been able to let go of the past? (Exiles by Pablo Neruda in Cantos Ceremoniales p 165). Allende describes how she made up a country called Chile, a country she belongs to, where some memories were exaggerated and others left out, so she has a perfect place she can call home, her invented country, which is not Chile, but is only in her mind. Is that where many of these exiles live? Or have they returned to reality?
• Chilean distribution of income is one of the worst in the world, close to African countries such as Kenya and Zimbabwe (p 168). Where are these people and where do they live? Are they readily visible? Chileans have a history of covering up poverty and during the dictatorship, social programs were basically eliminated from the government budget. Are the poor doing better these days? Allende asserts that the average Chilean laborer earns 15 times less than his equivalent in the US (p. 168).
