Two Words

by Isabel Allende

BEFORE READING

Background

Until the 1960s, Latin American literature had a small, mostly localized audience. Book publishers typically published only 3,000 copies of a novel. During the 1960s, however, Latin American writers began to reach larger audiences, thanks to the growth of Latin American literacy, advances in book publishing and distribution, and the development of multinational companies. Outstanding authors, such as Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes, sold as many as 20,000 copies of their works. Then in 1968 García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude broke entirely new ground, selling about 100,000 copies per year and creating a viable international market for other Latin American authors. Beginning in 1967, a series of Latin American authors won the Nobel Prize for Literature. These were Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Mexican novelist Gabriel García Marquez, and Mexican essayist and poet Octavio Paz.

In the 1980s Latin American women writers claimed an international audience, too. Latin America already had several well-known women authors-Luisa Valenzuela, Elena Poniatowska, and Rosario Castellanos. In the 1980s a feminist literary movement began to develop that its chief proponent, Chilean writer Isabel Allende, said was unified by a common "dimension of emotion, passion, obsession, and dream." Allende, an exemplar of the style of "magic realism," became internationally famous with her best-selling first novel, House of the Spirits (1982; tr. 1985). Mexico's Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate (1989), also helped to create an international audience for Latin American women authors.

This selection, "Two Words," is one of Allende's short stories.

About the Author

Isabel Allende (b. 1942), is a Chilean novelist, short story writer, and author of nonfiction who, with Mexico's Laura Esquivel, has helped create an international audience for Latin America's women writers.

Allende was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Chile. As a young woman, she worked as a journalist, married, and had two children. When she was 31, her uncle, Salvador Allende, who was president of Chile, was assassinated in a military takeover of the government. Allende and her family were forced to flee to Venezuela. A painful divorce as well as the illness and death of her grandfather prompted her to write her first novel, House of the Spirits (1982; tr. 1985), which became an international best seller and a film. Allende moved to San Francisco in 1987 with her second husband. Her other novels include Of Love and Shadows (1984; tr. 1987), Eva Luna (1987; tr. 1988), The Stories of Eva Luna (1989; tr. 1991), and the U..S.-based The Infinite Plan (1991; tr. 1993). Her first nonfiction work, Paula (1994; tr. 1995), was a series of letters to her dying daughter. She also wrote Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1997; tr. 1998). In 1999 two new books appeared: a novel called Daughter of Fortune (1999; tr. 1999) and Conversations with Isabel Allende (1998; tr. 1999), a collection of essays and interviews with the author.

Allende's work is written in a style called "magic realism," which links myth and fantasy with realistic portrayals of life and often with politics. Previous writers of magic realism include Asturias and Garcia Márquez. Writers of magic realism view Latin America as a many-layered culture in which everyday activities and events are colored by powerful underlying forces, such as religion, superstition, passion, myth, and magic. As Allende's heroine Eva explains it, "reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well, and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying."

In the Foreword to Conversations with Isabel Allende, the author writes that "Most of my writing is an attempt to bring an illusory order to the natural chaos of life, to decode the mysteries of memory, to search for my own identity."

1. irreconcilable—unable to be brought into harmony or mutual understanding.

2. inhospitable—unwelcoming; unfriendly.

3. interminable—seemingly unending.

4. eroded—worn by wind and weather.

5. reverberating—repeatedly reflected.

6. appropriate—take into one's possession.

7. pension—retirement benefit.

8. ineradicably—permanently.

9. calamity—disaster; tragedy.

10. sea bag—a sailor's duffle bag.

11. deceptive—hidden.

12. indelible—permanently marked.

13. subterfuge—deception; trick.

14. aspiration—ambition; hope.

15. repertory—collection.

16. improbable—unlikely.

17. foray—military raid.

18. irrevocable—permanent; irreversible.

19. extinguished—put out, as with a fire.

20. lucidity—clarity.

21. phenomenon—rare and extraordinary thing or event.

22. feral—animal-like; savage.

23. rosary—In Roman Catholicism, a form of devotion to the Virgin Mary.

DURING READING

Use the STUDY GUIDE below as a way to work through the selection and improve your comprehension of the essay.

AFTER READING

Answer the Questions to Consider in the book as a way to deepen your interpretation of the selection.

1. What picture of Belisa Crepusculario's world do you get from the story?

2. Why do you think Allende says that Belisa has withstood "the exhaustion of centuries"?

3. What do you think are the two words Belisa gives the Colonel at their parting? What is their effect?

4. Why would a man such as the Colonel appeal to Belisa? What does she hope for from him?

Bibliography

Isabel Allende

House of the Spirits (1982; tr. 1985)

Of Love and Shadows (1984; tr. 1987)

Eva Luna (1987; tr. 1988)

The Stories of Eva Luna (1989; tr. 1991)

The Infinite Plan (1991; tr. 1993)

Paula (1994; tr. 1995)

Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1997; tr. 1998)

Daughter of Fortune (1999; tr. 1999)

Conversations with Isabel Allende (1998; tr. 1999)

Latin American Writers

Isabel Allende. House of the Spirits (1982; tr. 1985). Best-selling first novel by a famed Chilean writer of magic realism, describing three generations of a Chilean family.

Germán Arciniegas. Latin America: A Cultural History (1967). Analysis of Latin American peoples, culture, and history.

Miguel Ángel Asturias. The President (1964; tr. 1972). The Nobel-Prize-winning Guatemalan novelist's forceful portrait of a brutal dictator and his effects on human life.

Jorge Luis Borges. Fictions (1944; tr. 1962). A highly influential short story collection by the world-famous Argentinean prose master.

Julio Cortázar. Hopscotch (1963; tr. 1966). A challenging and structurally innovative Argentine novel, depicting urban life in twentieth-century Buenos Aires.

Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). A best-selling, internationally acclaimed work by the Colombian Nobel Prize winner, which portrays a century in the lives of a family and a town.

Rita Guibert. Seven Voices (1973). Conversations with major Latin American authors such as Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, and more.

João Guimarães Rosa. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (1956; tr. 1963). A brilliant prose epic of the Brazilian backlands.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1691; tr. 1982). A brilliant seventeenth-century Mexican nun's defense of her rights to education and an intellectual life.

John King, ed. On Modern Latin American Fiction (1987). Interviews, essays, and more relating to important Latin American writers, such as Borges, Fuentes, García Márquez, and others.

Pablo Neruda. Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970 (1974; ed. Ben Belitt). A representative collection of poetry by the beloved Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner.

Octavio Paz. The Collected Poems, 1957-1987 (1987). A rich collection from Mexico's greatest modern poet, winner of 1990's Nobel Prize for Literature.