Author Isabel Allende’s Feminist Journey

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about the origin story of your feminism. And you trace it back to your mother. And you essentially say that your mother and what happened to her, left by her husband, your father, basically planted the seeds of your feminism, or, as you have said, rebellion in you. Tell me about that.

ISABEL ALLENDE, AUTHOR, “THE SOUL OF A WOMAN”: My father — my mother was married for years and had three babies. My father abandoned the family before she gave birth to my youngest brother. She was pregnant. And, eventually, she had to go back to live in her father’s house, my grandfather, where I grew up. And it was a male household, my grandfather, my bachelor uncles, and my mother, who was a sort of charity case, because she didn’t have any resources, any money of her own, no independence. It was at a time in Chile where there was no divorce. Actually, divorce in Chile was allowed in 2004. So, my mother’s only way out was to annul the marriage. And she was able to do that with the condition. My father put the condition that he didn’t have to take care of his children, which was accepted. We never saw my father again. And my mother was very vulnerable, poor, I would say, although she was sheltered by her father, and she lived in a nice house, and the college the school of the kids was paid. She didn’t have any resources of her own. And I saw her, so vulnerable, so limited in many ways. I adored her. And very young — I must have been 5, 6 — I already knew — I already rebelled against some something that for me was incredibly unfair. But, of course, the word feminist had not arrived in Chile, and nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. I was just an angry child. Maybe I was a lunatic or something. And I — it wasn’t until late puberty or adolescence that I realized that there was a movement out there called the women’s move.