Isabel Allende Talks to VOW

Photo: Isabel Allende reads Gabriel Méndez’s story from Solito, Solita at our 2019 Brave Stories, Bold Movements event

Isabel Allende & Lori Barra in Conversation with Mimi Lok

Voice of Witness cofounder and executive director Mimi Lok recently caught up with longtime VOW supporters Isabel Allende and Lori Barra. Isabel is an acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and humanitarian. Her most recent book is The Soul of a Woman. Her daughter-in-law Lori Barra is a noted designer-turned-philanthropist and photographer. Lori runs the Isabel Allende Foundation, which Isabel started over two decades ago to pay homage to her late daughter, Paula Frias. The foundation invests in the power of women and girls to secure reproductive rights, economic independence, and freedom from violence.

MIMI LOK: This past year has been difficult on so many fronts. What has helped you both stay grounded and hopeful during this period?

ISABEL ALLENDE: Writing keeps me sane and grounded. I am one of the few lucky people for whom the pandemic was not particularly hard because I am used to spending most of my time in solitude and silence. Writing requires it. Also, I married recently (for the third and hopefully the last time) so I have had the company of a loving man and two shaggy dogs.

LORI BARRA: I feel incredibly blessed because during this past year my family has stayed relatively well. Also seeing how hard this year has been for our grantees—who are dealing with issues like domestic violence, reproductive justice, and children being separated at the border, and watching how hard they’re working to stay alive and well and hopeful—I feel the least I can do is stay grounded and be there for them.

ML: What inspires your storytelling?

IA: I realize that I keep going back to the same themes in my writing: love, death, violence, strong women, absent fathers, loyalty, displacement, organic justice. What I have experienced in my life, the extraordinary people (mostly women) that I have met, traveling and reading inspire me. For me storytelling comes naturally. I forget almost everything except stories. ML: I really love these quotes from your foundation’s website: “We only have what we give” and “It is a wonderful

truth that the things we want most in life—a sense of purpose, happiness and hope—are most easily attained

by giving them to others.” Can you talk about what or who inspires your giving? What are some of the issues or projects that are closest to your heart?

IA: The mission of my foundation is to invest in the power of women and girls. I have worked for women and with women all my life. When a woman is empowered, her family prospers; when families prosper, the community and eventually the nation does too. The poorest and most backward regions in the world are where women have less rights and opportunities. Yet this evident fact is ignored by governments and often also by philanthropy. Women do two thirds of the work worldwide and own less than ten percent of the resources and one percent of property.

ML: How has the pandemic affected your philanthropic priorities?

LB: Quite a bit actually, just the way the election in 2016 affected our priorities. We went from having seven different categories of health, education, and literacy to really focusing on reproductive rights. The disparity of medical

LB: For the last ten years, I’ve done a photography project on children in Oaxaca at the down syndrome school, at the school for the deaf, at a residential center for disabled children. I would go down for 10 days at a time and sometimes I would just sit with the kids all day and play. Some days I wouldn’t even take pictures, I would just be with them. And I learned so much about resilience and hope through them, and so much about being playful and being present.

ML: Isabel, your words, “Write what should not be forgotten,” speak to me profoundly, both as a fiction writer and as a human rights advocate. Can you talk about the connection/relationship between your writing and your advocacy?

IA: Through my foundation I get to hear amazing stories of survival, resilience and generosity. Those stories need to be told. They should not be forgotten because they inspire us, they teach us, and sometimes they can change us. I don’t need to invent my characters, they are all around me.

Lori Barra and Isabel Allende Photo: Allende Archives

L – R, Mimi Lok, VOW narrator and curriculum specialist Dr. Zaira Arvelo Alicea, author Piper Kerman, Isabel Allende, and VOW narrator Gabriel Méndez at our 2019 Brave Stories, Bold Movements event

care became glaringly obvious through the pandemic. And we tried to stay with all our grantees because it was a time when they really needed steady support and to know that someone was walking behind them the whole time holding things up. But we also tried to fit into our mission the idea of maternal health, black maternal health, and healthcare at the border.

ML: You’ve been wonderful, longtime friends and supporters of VOW. I remember you both on your first visit to the office, about ten years ago, and a lot of us crowding around on a sofa that wouldn’t quite fit all of us—

LB: Oh yes, that was funny.

ML: What was it about our work that spoke to you?

LB: We just outright love you guys. The amplifying of unheard voices is crucial at a time like this. With all the misinformation out there—to really hear the truth from the people who need to speak it, who can really teach us something, is incredible. The reach you have now is tremendous. We’re really in awe.

ML: What advice would you give to someone wanting to make a meaningful difference? IA: Few people have the resources to help others financially, but most people can embrace a cause close to their heart and support it by investing time and energy and getting others involved as well. How do we choose our activism? I think that we have to ask ourselves what kind of world we want and how could that dream be achieved. I believe that the key to the future is in the hands of women, so my activism targets feminine issues. There are innumerable issues that require our attention. A meaningful difference isn’t only Bill Gates ending malaria, it can be planting trees, walking pets in shelters, taking food to homebound elders, etc.

LB: What sometimes bogs people down is that they feel what they do is too little, too small, the problems are too big. And I feel like you just start where you are. Help that one person, and then that leads to two people, and then that leads to a group and it just gets bigger and bigger. As a foundation, we’re constantly asking questions. Nine times out of ten what grantees want—how they want to change things or what’s going to make a difference— is so different than [what we might have imagined]. I feel very humbled. And there’s something so wonderful about learning people’s hearts, and learning where they’re at and connecting on that level. That’s a meaningful thing.