Bøger af Ingrid Rojas Contreras

"For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Growing up in the Colombia of the 1980s and 1990s in a house where "what did you dream?" was asked in place of "how are you?" her world was laced with prophecy and violence. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with the ability to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. As a young girl, Rojas Contreras eavesdropped on her mother's fortune-telling business from the stairs and waited eagerly for the moments when Mami appeared in two places at once. She was accustomed to "letting the ghosts in." So when Ingrid, now living in the U.S., suffered a head injury in her 20s that left her with amnesia-an accident eerily similar to a fall that had put her mother in a coma at the age of 8, from which she woke with not just amnesia, but the ability to see ghosts--the family assumes "the secrets" have finally been passed down to the next generation. But as Ingrid recovers her memories, they don't come with supernatural abilities. Rather, she is consumed by a powerful urge to learn even more about her heritage than she knew before the accident. Spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, wherein Nono communicates that he is unable to rest peacefully in the afterlife, Ingrid joins her mother on a journey home to Colombia to disinter her grandfather's remains. With her mother as her unpredictable, stubborn and often hilarious guide, Ingrid traces her lineage back to her indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary"--

"For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Growing up in the Colombia of the 1980's and 1990's in a house where "what did you dream?" was asked in place of "how are you?" her world was laced with prophecy and violence. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with the ability to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. As a young girl, Rojas Contreras eavesdropped on her mother's fortune-telling business from the stairs and waited eagerly for the moments when Mami appeared in two places at once. She was accustomed to "letting the ghosts in." So when Ingrid, now living in the U.S., suffered a head injury in her 20's that left her with amnesia-an accident eerily similar to a fall that had put her mother in a coma at the age of 8, from which she woke with not just amnesia, but the ability to see ghosts--the family assumes "the secrets" have finally been passed down to the next generation. But as Ingrid recovers her memories, they don't come with supernatural abilities. Rather, she is consumed by a powerful urge to learn even more about her heritage than she knew before the accident. Spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, wherein Nono communicates that he is unable to rest peacefully in the afterlife, Ingrid joins her mother on a journey home to Colombia to disinter her grandfather's remains. With her mother as her unpredictable, stubborn and often hilarious guide, Ingrid traces her lineage back to her indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary"--

';One of the most dazzling and devastating novels I've read in a long time...Readers ofFruit of the Drunken Treewill surely be transformed.' --San Francisco Chronicle';Simultaneously propulsive and poetic, reminiscent of Isabel Allende...Listen to this new author's voice she has something powerful to say.'--Entertainment WeeklyA mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them bothSeven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogot, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal. Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.