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adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Thanks to the publishers at Ballentine for a chance to read Isabel Allende’s newest novel, My Name Is Emilia Del Valle.
Emilia, a young woman from San Francisco, wants to make her way in the world and finds writing to be an outlet for her thoughts. She wrangles herself a position as a columnist for the local newspaper, and becomes a wartime correspondent for the Civil War taking place in Chile 1891.
What follows is a typical story of an ingenue who learns that newsflash - war is hell. While I appreciate the numerous times the novel makes reference to Emilia’s whiteness (as the child of an Irish-American and one of the elites of Chilean high society), it’s a little painful to muddle through it with her.
Emilia is constantly running towards danger, both as a way to get the deeper scoop but also as a kind of rebellion on the limiting gender roles placed on a woman of her time. But once you add Emilia’s whiteness - even if she is part Chilean - the novel reads more like Eat Pray Love but instead of food or spirituality, war is the impetus for our protagonist’s growth.
This isn’t to discount Emilia’s fair share of pain and trauma that she experiences throughout the novel, but it highlights a key inconsistency in the book. The book goes to lengths to describe how tragic it is that these people (soldiers, canteen girls, poor folks, and more) are the story. They are history in action, and yet so many of their names are lost to time. And yet, this random white woman from the US gets the privilege of being able to survive and tell her story, and the book doesn’t really critique her or ever really ask her to contend with the fact that even limiting the perspective to just her and her fiance (you guessed it: also white as the snow) is still a kind of erasure of the oppressed.
We only get Emilia’s story because her whiteness and tenuous connection to wealth manage to shield her from the worst of violence consuming Chile. Also Emilia’s decision at the end of the book lands flat for me given that she is a whole colonizer who even acknowledges that land is not hers, ditches her worried family to… commune with rocks? She narrowly escapes death, and processes her trauma… on land her ancestors stole. And the local tribe is just happy to take care of her in her convalescence??
This is not just saying that I want Isabel Allende to write a story that is not hers or take a perspective that’s not hers. I’m just tired of white protagonists stepping over every other character of color in the name of feminism without a more intentional critique, as well as white latines and our complicity with these colonial patterns. Allende’s last novel El viento conoce mi nombre did a much better job of examining race alongside gender politics in a Latin American context, while also pushing white protagonists to do something beyond guilt or pity.
Isabel Allende is a better writer than this, and this novel could have been so much more. Hoping that her next one (because there will be a next one) hits the mark better.
Emilia, a young woman from San Francisco, wants to make her way in the world and finds writing to be an outlet for her thoughts. She wrangles herself a position as a columnist for the local newspaper, and becomes a wartime correspondent for the Civil War taking place in Chile 1891.
What follows is a typical story of an ingenue who learns that newsflash - war is hell. While I appreciate the numerous times the novel makes reference to Emilia’s whiteness (as the child of an Irish-American and one of the elites of Chilean high society), it’s a little painful to muddle through it with her.
Emilia is constantly running towards danger, both as a way to get the deeper scoop but also as a kind of rebellion on the limiting gender roles placed on a woman of her time. But once you add Emilia’s whiteness - even if she is part Chilean - the novel reads more like Eat Pray Love but instead of food or spirituality, war is the impetus for our protagonist’s growth.
This isn’t to discount Emilia’s fair share of pain and trauma that she experiences throughout the novel, but it highlights a key inconsistency in the book. The book goes to lengths to describe how tragic it is that these people (soldiers, canteen girls, poor folks, and more) are the story. They are history in action, and yet so many of their names are lost to time. And yet, this random white woman from the US gets the privilege of being able to survive and tell her story, and the book doesn’t really critique her or ever really ask her to contend with the fact that even limiting the perspective to just her and her fiance (you guessed it: also white as the snow) is still a kind of erasure of the oppressed.
We only get Emilia’s story because her whiteness and tenuous connection to wealth manage to shield her from the worst of violence consuming Chile. Also Emilia’s decision at the end of the book lands flat for me given that she is a whole colonizer who even acknowledges that land is not hers, ditches her worried family to… commune with rocks? She narrowly escapes death, and processes her trauma… on land her ancestors stole. And the local tribe is just happy to take care of her in her convalescence??
This is not just saying that I want Isabel Allende to write a story that is not hers or take a perspective that’s not hers. I’m just tired of white protagonists stepping over every other character of color in the name of feminism without a more intentional critique, as well as white latines and our complicity with these colonial patterns. Allende’s last novel El viento conoce mi nombre did a much better job of examining race alongside gender politics in a Latin American context, while also pushing white protagonists to do something beyond guilt or pity.
Isabel Allende is a better writer than this, and this novel could have been so much more. Hoping that her next one (because there will be a next one) hits the mark better.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Suicide, Death of parent, War, Classism
Moderate: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, Vomit, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Child death, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Police brutality, Medical content