Social Sciences
![Isabel Allende - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000APY7B8.jpg)
The Soul of a Woman
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes "a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more" (Associated Press).
"The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende's most liberating book yet."-Elle
"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.
As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between our teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.
So what feeds the soul of feminists-and all women-today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will "light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished."
"The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende's most liberating book yet."-Elle
"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.
As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between our teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.
So what feeds the soul of feminists-and all women-today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will "light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished."
Editorial Reviews
Praise for the books of Isabel Allende
The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir
"[Isabel] Allende is a genius."-Los Angeles Times Book Review
"[Allende] executes this epistolary memoir with the same authenticity and poetry that grace her fiction. . . . Allende is a survivor worth reading and emulating."-The Dallas Morning News
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
"Charming and entertaining."-The New York Times Book Review
"A stunningly intimate memoir . . . Allende is that rare writer whose understanding of story matches her mastery of language."-Entertainment Weekly
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
"Allende's vivacity and wit are in full bloom as she makes her pronouncements. . . . Her book is filled with succinct wisdom and big laughs. . . . As always, her secret weapon is honesty."-Publishers Weekly
"Allende teases, tempts and titillates with mesmerizing stories."-The Washington Post
Paula: A Memoir
"Allende has an exciting life story to tell."-Booklist
"A magician with words."-Publishers Weekly
The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir
"[Isabel] Allende is a genius."-Los Angeles Times Book Review
"[Allende] executes this epistolary memoir with the same authenticity and poetry that grace her fiction. . . . Allende is a survivor worth reading and emulating."-The Dallas Morning News
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
"Charming and entertaining."-The New York Times Book Review
"A stunningly intimate memoir . . . Allende is that rare writer whose understanding of story matches her mastery of language."-Entertainment Weekly
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
"Allende's vivacity and wit are in full bloom as she makes her pronouncements. . . . Her book is filled with succinct wisdom and big laughs. . . . As always, her secret weapon is honesty."-Publishers Weekly
"Allende teases, tempts and titillates with mesmerizing stories."-The Washington Post
Paula: A Memoir
"Allende has an exciting life story to tell."-Booklist
"A magician with words."-Publishers Weekly
Readers Top Reviews
Kindle pollysher
I loved Allende’s writing,as always. She’s methodically chronicled the plight of women in the past and present. It’s a “call to arms” of a woman’s right to fight for peace,equality and power to be free.
adathetKindle po
She makes her point against the patriarchy with disarmingly self-deprecating humor. She integrates lifestyle choices of her grandchildren, making her commentary that much more relevant even though she comes from such a different time.
Paul Sulla Gonzal
I was very lucky to read the book and i agree undoubtely with what i understand are the basis of feminism: to promote tolerance, egalitarian rights, inclusion and justice. However, it really disappointed me when i read some parts of the book where the autor seems to demonstrate contempt for male condition, male values and masculinity in general. An example of this can be read when she mentions that "...women have more emphaty and solidarity than men..";"...destruction is masculine..." (pag.35) or "...As with many other species, human males are also vain..." (pag.40); "...women are more sociable than men and have more diverse interest..."(pag.84). Nevertheless, I understand that her intention is to prove that women have the same value as men. However, from my point of view, if we really want to promote egalitarian treatment and respect for all people, it is a terrible mistake to instigate conflict by disqualifying openly one band. It seems that Isabel Allende forgets or wants to ignore that the victims of Patriarchy are not only women but also men. We must not forget that most of people who commit crimes are also people who is rejected for the society, people who has suffered abuse or discrimination, independently if they are men or women. In the same way, the attributes, values or talents belong to both men and women. Indeed, even the name "Feminism" is not inclusive at all, because instead of promoting egalitarianism and union, it only generates oposition. At the end, the name of a movement that fight for people who is discriminated, abused, and oppresed by the system might not be so important for someone, but in this particular case, it is.
Joan J.Paul Sulla
I liked her feminine albeit sometimes feminist views on the world's current problems. I didn't like when she went too far with her feminist views. I recommend this book to women and enlightened men who seek to understand a female mind.
VirginiaJoan J.Pa
I've read most of Isabel Allende's books and this is a great one. It's a short book - and not a novel - so very different from her others. It's more a narrative of her look at feminism and how she manifests it in her life. A fascinating look at Allende's life thru her own eyes. And the narrator is fantastic too - she's bilingual so when Spanish words pop up she doesn't mangle them. Great book all around.
Short Excerpt Teaser
When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, even before the concept was known in my family, I am not exaggerating. I was born in 1942, so we are talking remote antiquity. I believe that the situation of my mother, Panchita, triggered my rebellion against male authority. Her husband abandoned her in Peru with two toddlers in diapers and a newborn baby. Panchita was forced to return to her parents' home in Chile, where I spent the first years of my childhood.
My grandparents' house in Santiago, in the Providencia neighborhood, then a residential district and now a labyrinth of offices and shops, was large and ugly, a monstrosity of cement with high ceilings, drafts, walls darkened by kerosene-heater soot, heavy red plush curtains, Spanish furniture made to last a century, horrendous portraits of dead relatives, and piles of dusty books. The front of the house was stately. Someone had tried to give the living room, the library, and the dining room an elegant varnish, but they were seldom used. The rest of the house was the messy kingdom of my grandmother, the children (my brothers and me), the maids, and two or three dogs of no discernible breed. There was also a family of semi-wild cats that reproduced uncontrollably behind the refrigerator; the cook would drown the kittens in a pail on the patio.
All joy and light disappeared from the house after my grandmother's premature death. I remember my childhood as a time of fear and darkness. What did I fear? That my mother would die and we would be sent to an orphanage, that I would be kidnapped by pirates, that the Devil would appear in the mirrors . . . well, you get the idea. I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don't know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage.
Early on, I realized that my mother was at a disadvantage compared to the men in her family. She had married against her parents' wishes and the relationship had failed, just as she had been warned it would. She'd had to annul her marriage, which was the only way out in that country, as divorce was not legalized until 2004. Panchita was not trained to work, she had no money or freedom, and she was the target of gossip; not only was she separated from her husband, but she was also young, beautiful, and coquettish.
My anger against machismo started in those childhood years of seeing my mother and the housemaids as victims. They were subordinate and had no resources or voice-my mother because she had challenged convention and the maids because they were poor. Of course, back then I didn't understand any of this; I was only able to do so in my fifties after spending some time in therapy. However, even if I couldn't reason, my feelings of frustration were so powerful that they marked me forever; I became obsessed with justice and developed a visceral reaction to male chauvinism. This resentment was an aberration in my family, which considered itself intellectual and modern but according to today's standards was frankly Paleolithic.
Panchita consulted several doctors trying to find out what was wrong with me; maybe her daughter suffered from colic or a tapeworm? An obstinate and defiant character was accepted in my brothers as an essential condition of masculinity, but in me it could only be pathological. Isn't it always thus? Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about. We had some psychologists in Chile, maybe even child psychologists, but in a time dominated by taboos, they were the last resource for the incurably mad. In my family, our lunatics were endured in private. My mother begged me to be more discreet. "I don't know where you got those ideas. You will acquire a reputation of being butch," she told me once, without explaining what that word meant.
She had good reason to worry about me. I was expelled from school-run by German Catholic nuns-at age six, accused of insubordination; it was a prelude to my future. Maybe the real reason I was expelled was that Panchita was a single mother with three kids. That should not have shocked the nuns, because many children in Chile were born out of wedlock, but not usually in our social class.
For decades I considered my mother a victim, but I have learned that the definition of victim is someone who has no control or power over her or his circumstances. I don't think that was her case. It's true that in my early childhood my mother seemed trapped, vulnerable, and sometimes desperate, but her situation changed later, when she met my stepfather and started traveling. She could have fought for more independence and the life she wanted; she could have developed her great potential instead of submitting. But I know that's easy for me to s...
My grandparents' house in Santiago, in the Providencia neighborhood, then a residential district and now a labyrinth of offices and shops, was large and ugly, a monstrosity of cement with high ceilings, drafts, walls darkened by kerosene-heater soot, heavy red plush curtains, Spanish furniture made to last a century, horrendous portraits of dead relatives, and piles of dusty books. The front of the house was stately. Someone had tried to give the living room, the library, and the dining room an elegant varnish, but they were seldom used. The rest of the house was the messy kingdom of my grandmother, the children (my brothers and me), the maids, and two or three dogs of no discernible breed. There was also a family of semi-wild cats that reproduced uncontrollably behind the refrigerator; the cook would drown the kittens in a pail on the patio.
All joy and light disappeared from the house after my grandmother's premature death. I remember my childhood as a time of fear and darkness. What did I fear? That my mother would die and we would be sent to an orphanage, that I would be kidnapped by pirates, that the Devil would appear in the mirrors . . . well, you get the idea. I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don't know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage.
Early on, I realized that my mother was at a disadvantage compared to the men in her family. She had married against her parents' wishes and the relationship had failed, just as she had been warned it would. She'd had to annul her marriage, which was the only way out in that country, as divorce was not legalized until 2004. Panchita was not trained to work, she had no money or freedom, and she was the target of gossip; not only was she separated from her husband, but she was also young, beautiful, and coquettish.
My anger against machismo started in those childhood years of seeing my mother and the housemaids as victims. They were subordinate and had no resources or voice-my mother because she had challenged convention and the maids because they were poor. Of course, back then I didn't understand any of this; I was only able to do so in my fifties after spending some time in therapy. However, even if I couldn't reason, my feelings of frustration were so powerful that they marked me forever; I became obsessed with justice and developed a visceral reaction to male chauvinism. This resentment was an aberration in my family, which considered itself intellectual and modern but according to today's standards was frankly Paleolithic.
Panchita consulted several doctors trying to find out what was wrong with me; maybe her daughter suffered from colic or a tapeworm? An obstinate and defiant character was accepted in my brothers as an essential condition of masculinity, but in me it could only be pathological. Isn't it always thus? Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about. We had some psychologists in Chile, maybe even child psychologists, but in a time dominated by taboos, they were the last resource for the incurably mad. In my family, our lunatics were endured in private. My mother begged me to be more discreet. "I don't know where you got those ideas. You will acquire a reputation of being butch," she told me once, without explaining what that word meant.
She had good reason to worry about me. I was expelled from school-run by German Catholic nuns-at age six, accused of insubordination; it was a prelude to my future. Maybe the real reason I was expelled was that Panchita was a single mother with three kids. That should not have shocked the nuns, because many children in Chile were born out of wedlock, but not usually in our social class.
For decades I considered my mother a victim, but I have learned that the definition of victim is someone who has no control or power over her or his circumstances. I don't think that was her case. It's true that in my early childhood my mother seemed trapped, vulnerable, and sometimes desperate, but her situation changed later, when she met my stepfather and started traveling. She could have fought for more independence and the life she wanted; she could have developed her great potential instead of submitting. But I know that's easy for me to s...
