Isabel Allende

Wearing around the edges, binding thinning, and pages yellowing like coffee-stained teeth, Isabel Allende's "Mi País Inventado" sits buried on a bookshelf in my Chilean family's living room beneath picture frames, silver tea cups. For the first time today, I carefully removed it and began reading, slowly albeit. I opened it with painstaking care as though it were an old bible, more for the fear of tearing the cover off than for fear of angering the deities. Much to my surprise, the inside cover revealed a small, black signature, "Isabel Allende," underlined, written above a quickly drawn single flower.

I ran a finger over the ink, as though to feel if it were a computerized replica, or for some reason, in this ancient book, was fresh, wet ink, as though Allende herself snuck into the house, placed it in some indiscriminate location, and then left. Otherwise, why would a keepsake from the most storied Latin American female literary figure be stuffed beneath "South America on a Shoestring" and a fold-out map of Santiago.

To be honest, I don't know what made me look through their bookshelf. More likely than anything else, I was snooping around, as though through a deceased grandparent's belongings, trying to find signs that signified something important about a life lived.

I was once told, "Everything you need to know about someone you can find on their bookshelf." But now, I'm just confused. What can conclusively be said about my findings? Nothing, really. But what I've decided is this:

I am going to read this book, and the poetry of Pablo Neruda, and the short stories of Gabriela Mistral, and really anything else I can get my hands on. In Spanish. Like anything else, it will be a process for sure, and just reading the first page in "Mi País Inventado" was a tutorial in the use of a Spanish-English dictionary. To make recommendations of authors and poets for me to read, just comment below. What better way to learn a language than with teachers who are, quite literally, those who are the best with it.