In honor of International Women’s Day, for the entire month of March, GlobalLeadership.TV will take time to reflect on innovative women leaders from around the world who are modeling new & dynamic forms of leadership. Learn along with us more about these extraordinary leaders.
The first of our series is the internationally best-selling Chilean-American writer, Isabel Allende whose work has received accolades around the world and been translated into 35 languages. One of the world’s mostly widely-read Spanish language authors, Isabel is a recipient of the 2014 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. While Isabel is well known for her work in literature, having been awarded 15 honorary doctorates and over 60 international awards, she is also a committed activist and works to support women and girls’ rights worldwide through the Isabel Allende Foundation.
Check out Isabel Allende, in a deep dialogue with Walter Link, exploring her thoughts on why her stories cross cultures and her visions of hope and redemption.
To watch the full episode, Isabel Allende: The Heart of Creativity, click HERE.
Walter Link: Somehow you must be able to come to something very essential in humans because your books are loved all over the world, it’s not that you are particularly read in the Latino world but not in Germany, or not in the U.S. So what is it that makes it possible for people in apparently different cultures to appreciate what you are bringing, what you are writing?
Isabel Allende: I think I write about human emotions that are common to everybody. We all feel the same. We all feel fear; we all want our children to do better than us. We all feel love the same way. We all get mad the same way. And I don’t know why my books are successful in 30 languages all over the world, but I recently read an article that a professor of the University of Virginia wrote, Professor Donald Shaw, and he talks about the boom of Latin American literature that was in the 60’s, 70’s part of the 80’s, all male, all male authors that created the incredible movement of Latin American literature that told the world who we were. And told us who we were. They were mirrors with which we could see Latin Americans, our own faces.
And he says that the vision of the men of the boom was existentialist, fatalist, pessimistic, also very male. And then what, I, and I don’t belong to the boom. I came, I’m the post-boom, start another movement. It says that the difference is that I see the world exactly in another way, I see it in a positive way, with hope. And I believe that love redeems everything. That there is a natural justice that is not the happy ending. But that there is a natural justice and balance in everything that exists, and that love is a force that redeems. And I think the readers might find in that explanation something, something. I have never thought of it, I just read this two weeks ago. So I have it fresh in my mind. But I think that that’s the way I see life. I see life as a very, of the world as a very troubled place.
I see the world exactly in another way, I see it in a positive way, with hope. And I believe that love redeems everything.
And awful things happen. But there’s beauty. There is constant, permanent beauty. And there is this incredible force that we all have, and sometimes it’s so crushed that we don’t even perceive it. If you think of half a million women raped in Congo to the point that they can’t even walk, then you say what happened there? What happened? But in spite of that there is redemption. And these women help each other, and they are going to stop it. So there is hope. There is always hope. And in my long life, Walter, I have seen a lot. I was born in the middle of the Second World War, when they threw the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of the Holocaust. When millions and millions of people were killed systematically. I was born in a time when feminism was not a word yet. Where child labor, union labor, I mean it was, nobody talked about it. Racism was rampant. Half of the world were colonies of Europe. All that has changed in my lifetime. So I have seen the world go through terrible crisis and we seem to walk in circles, but it’s not a circle. It’s a spiral. And we seem to go pass again the same place. Yes it is. But we’re a little higher and higher. And in my years, I have seen that the world is a better place, no matter what. A much better place for more people.
Still much needs to be done. A lot. And I’m here to help do it, but I’m not at all discouraged. I think that my grandchildren will live in a better world than my grandparents did.
I think that my grandchildren will live in a better world than my grandparents did.
Walter Link: You talked about these different movements, the women’s movement, the different political movements, different movements in science and the economy that are bringing about change. That are a promising new society of civilization that’s emerging in the midst of all these crises. What do they all have in common? You spoke for example of love. What are these qualities, these underlying values, these visions that are spread all across the world, all across the sectors of society to bring about this new beginning, or this new continuation of the development of humanity?
Isabel Allende: I think we are at the end of a period, of an era. At the end of a certain civilization. And many people hold on to whatever there is because they are afraid of change. So there is all these emergency of religions and nationalities and ethnic problems, but at the same time as you say, there is a movement an undercurrent of change. And its all, its mostly among the young people. And the first word that comes to my mind is connection. People want to be connected. And that is the miracle of the new technology. That has brought people to the idea for the first time in our known history, the idea of a global community. That anything that I do here has a ripple effect that can have consequences in Africa, somewhere else. And that we can be connected. There is the technology that connects us. And people long for community. What’s happening today in Wall Street, why are people camping in Wall Street? They’re camping against greed and Wall Street and the banks and all that, but what is the force there? We are together. We are the same. We are connected beyond race and class and gender. We are human and that idea that we are global and we are human and we can be connected is the great force that is emerging in my opinion.
We are the same. We are connected beyond race and class and gender.
To watch the full episode, Isabel Allende: The Heart of Creativity, click HERE.
The post Celebrating International Women’s Day – Isabel Allende: The Heart of Creativity appeared first on GlobalLeadership.TV.