Former Chilean exile and acclaimed author Isabel Allende spoke Thursday to a sold-out crowd at the Wisconsin Union Theatre as the lead act in the Distinguished Lecture Series, using examples from her life to stress the importance of dreams and humor in a life of difficulty.
For Hope Wallace, the director of the Distinguished Lecture Series, Allende was a clear choice for the first speaker.
\She was the speaker everyone was the most enthusiastic about,"" Wallace said.
Allende met an incredibly receptive audience, including Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, who introduced Allende.
""I think she has a good way of combining politics with humor and very personal writing,"" he said. ""I think it makes politics that much more effective.""
UW-Madison senior Betsy Conrad said she was drawn to Allende because ""she's a really strong woman willing to challenge things.""
One of the controversial topics Allende discussed in her speech was the military coup in Chile Sept. 11, 1973. Her uncle, then-president Salvador Allende, was killed in the coup, which was backed by the CIA. This history gave the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a special significance for Allende.
""The military coup in Chile was a terrorist attack on a democracy orchestrated by the CIA,"" she said.
But Allende's speech was by and large uncontroversial, focusing on topics from her life and novels and ranging from deaths of loved ones to aphrodisiacs. Two of her novels, ""The House of the Spirits,"" and ""Paula,"" were inspired by the loss of loved ones.
""The House of the Spirits"" was written as an extended letter to her deceased grandfather, while novel ""Paula"" was dedicated to her daughter who died as a result of a hospital accident. ""Grief was a long and dark tunnel, a journey into hell,"" she said. ""My way of walking that tunnel was to write.""
But the dominant theme of her speech was dreams. Allende claimed her visions in the night are prophetic and simultaneously force her to confront reality.
Allende concluded by pointing to the importance of writing, saying, ""Stories are to humankind what dreams are to individuals.""
