07/21/23 07/21/23 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> when the separation of families at the border here happened in 2017-2019, i remember thinking the instances in which the children have been taken away from the parents. for example, during slavery children work sold out or taken

from their mother's arms. amy: "the wind knows my name kuczka looks at the child up --"the wind knows my name" looks at children taken from their families. first, we speak with maria hinojosa on investigation into the sexual abuse of women detained by ice. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. russian ongoing attacks on ukrainian grain supplies had destroyed at least 60,000 tons of grain as global food security faces mounting threats. russia's navy has carried out live fire military exercises in the black sea days after moscow withdrew from the black sea grain deal and both moscow and kyiv said ships constitute

potential military targets. turkish president erdogan said he will be holding talks with the russian president which could lead to restoring the grain deal. ukraine started using cluster bombs supplied by the united states on the battlefield. over 100 countries have signed onto an international treaty banning their use due to the danger they pose to civilians, though it is not signed by russia, ukraine, or the united states. in nebraska, the teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy was sentenced to 90 days in jail. police charged 19-year-old celeste burgess and her mother jessica burgess of assisting her in getting the pills after facebook handed over their private messages. celeste was just 17 when her mother ordered the pills online. the events took place before the supreme court overturned roe v. wade in june 2022. at the time, abortion in nebraska was banned after 20

weeks. earlier this year, governor jim pillen signed a 12-week ban into law. meanwhile, a court in austin heard testimony this week from women who are suing over texas's abortion ban, which put their lives in danger when they were unable to end their pregnancies, even when they were non-viable. in a dramatic moment, plaintiff samantha casiano vomited on the stand as she recounted her traumatic experience. she was forced to carry out her pregnancy even after receiving a diagnosis of anencephaly, a severe congenital disorder that results in a baby being born without portions of its brain and skull. another plaintiff, elizabeth weller spoke at a news conference wednesday. >> i was sent home to wait for my baby to die or my infection to start showing physical symptoms, even though they were already there. but i was not sick enough to get the care i needed.

there is no statement of pro-life in a state when you send me home to wait for my baby to die inside me and for me to wait for myself to get to a place where i have to gamble my uterus and gamble my life and gamble any future possibility of becoming pregnant. it is not pro-life. in essence, it is almost pro-torture. amy: the press conference was held by the center for reproductive rights, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of 13 patients and two doctors. in related news, new data shows texas' abortion ban is likely leading to a surge in infant mortality as women are forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term. infant deaths increased by over 11% last year over the previous year. meanwhile, infant deaths with severe genetic and birth defects rose by over 21% after years of decline. florida's board of education approved new standards for

teaching black history after governor ron de santis and florida republicans passed new laws limiting what can be taught in classrooms as part of their anti-woke crusade. the standards include teaching children that "slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." it also instructs educators to teach about violence committed by black people. the florida education association blasted the new standards, saying -- "governor desantis is pursuing a political agenda guaranteed to set good people against one another, and in the process he's cheating our kids. they deserve the full truth of american history, the good and the bad." vice president harris is traveling to jacksonville today to speak out against orton's attack on black history in education. in more news from florida, rights groups are suing over sb 1718, a new law targeting immigrants, making it more difficult to work and get medical care, among other things. one-in-five florida residents is

an immigrant. in a statement, the aclu of florida said -- "this legislation is not the solution to any problem. it is an attempt to scapegoat and terrorize vulnerable families and workers already burdened by the difficulty of the federal immigration process." meanwhile, the florida rights restoration committee is suing desantis for illegally intimidating people with felonies in order to prevent them from voting. the lawsuit accuses florida of creating intentional obstacles to determine voting eligibility and creating an election police to go after people who may have cast ballots without knowing they were still not legally permitted to do so. almost all those targeted by the police force were black and democrats. in georgia, secretary of state brad raffensperger announced another 191,000 people would be purged from georgia election rolls even though they are registered voters. the move targets voters who are deemed inactive because mailed election materials were not able to be delivered and voters who may have not officially signaled

an address change. kendra cotton, head of new georgia project action fund, said -- "georgia is well-known for its wide-ranging and creative attempts at voter suppression. voting is a right. if someone chooses not to use it, that doesn't mean they lose it." meanwhile, in alabama, lawmakers passed a new congressional map this week that still does not include a second majority-black district as ordered by the u.s. supreme court last month. in other news from alabama, the state executed james barber early this morning after the u.s. supreme court denied a request for a stay. it's the first execution by lethal injection in alabama following a pause last year to review a series of botched executions. the group reprieve said, "there's no humane method of execution. executions aren't working -- and it's torture." a warning to our audience, the following stories are of sexual

violence. in india, outrage is mounting over a viral video showing dozens of men sexually assaulting and parading two women. the incident took place in may in india's northeastern state of manipur. the main suspect was arrested thursday. he's accused of dragging the two women onto the streets and inciting a mob of over two dozen into assaulting and then parade them on the streets naked. a least one of them was raped by the mob. there's been soaring violence. the two women assaulted in the video -- the families of the two survivors have denounced police misconduct saying it took law enforcement months to address the case. and could or, some barrels of 1200 crude oil spilled into the pacific ocean wednesday, contaminating over 2 miles of shoreline. officials with ecuador's national oil company petroecuador said a tank in a maritime terminal had surpassed its capacity causing it to spill.

the company was only able to contain about half of the spilled crude, while the rest collected on the ocean front of the popular las palmas beach. cleanup efforts are underway as environmentalists warn of the effects the spill could have on local wildlife. here in new york city, lawyers, plaintiffs, and city officials held a news conference thursday following the announcement the city will settle for $13 million with racial justice protesters who were brutalized by the new york police during the 2020 uprising that followed the murder of george floyd. this is attorney wylie stecklow. >> today's settlement is historic and i am proud it will bring some sense of justice to nearly 1400 people who took to the streets and put their bodies on the line against police brutality. but as a new york city taxpayer, i am bothered. the payout is a red flag but we still have nypd executive officers like chief of patrol, inspector leading

unconstitutional protest policing in this city. there example to the rest of the 35,000 members of service is that the constitution does not apply simply when these high-ranking members of service say so. amy: the senate judiciary committee advanced legislation to mandate the supreme court adopt a code of ethics and stricter financial disclosure rules. the move comes following explosive revelations around several justices, most notably clarence thomas, who was lavished for decades with luxury travel and gifts by gop megadonor harlan crow. no republicans voted for the measure, though they did attempt to add amendments to make it easier for judges to carry weapons and to ban reporters from publishing draft opinions without court approval. the amendments were defeated. and in labor news, the international alliance of theatrical stage employees, or iatse, has averted a strike that would have shut down broadway after reaching a tentative deal to improve working conditions for some 1500 stagehands, hair

and makeup artists, and wardrobe personnel. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. coming up, we speak to pulitzer prize-winning journalist maria hinojosa a new investigation into the sexual abuse of women detained by ice. then we speak to isabel allende about her new novel. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "una respuesta" by julieta venegas. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. a warning to our viewers and listeners, this story contains description of sexual abuse. we begin today's show with a disturbing new investigation into how immigration officials have failed to properly address complaints of sexual abuse from people held in detention centers. a damning new report by maria hinojosa and zeba warsi, two immigrant women and journalists, examines how women in

immigration and customs enforcement, or ice, jails have been sexually abused, often in a medical setting when they are at their most vulnerable. the report is out today from futuro investigates, the investigative unit of the pulitzer prize-winning news organization futuro media, and latino usa. it comes more than a decade after maria hinojosa's report for pbs frontline about sexual abuse in ice detention. but allegations of abuse continued. maria will join us in a minute. first, this is a clip from the report when she and zeba speak with a migrant from venezuela who is using the pseudonym viviana for safety and describes her first meeting with a male nurse employed at ice's stewart detention center in georgia. >> during her first week's detained at stewart, viviana had a urinary tract infection. she was prescribed medication that gave her severe allergic reaction. looks your face is swollen. your lips are swollen. you are unable to breathe and

you are feeling incredibly scared. she tells us that in that moment of total vulnerability, that is when she met this male nurse. a short white man with a beard. we should warn you, the following descriptions of her visits are explicit. they are hard to listen to but we also believe that they are necessary to understand what viviana and other women have gone through. >> so he is using a stethoscope to put it on your lower body. just to describe what you're showing me, he takes the stethoscope and basically puts it right where a woman's ovary might be. viviana told us while examining

her with a stethoscope, the nurse asked her to open her mouth and into open it wider and then stepped away and typed a question into google translate and this made her feel even more uncomfortable. so this point, he writes a note to you that asks you if you have a boyfriend? amy: let's go to another clip from the investigation. >> once women started to arrive at stewart, this nurse started seeing female patients and viviana said he started abusing them. this nurse and his abuse, you believe, was not a secret to anybody who had spent any time inside stewart, whether they

work his colleagues or people who were detained. >> after the second incident with the nurse, viviana returned to her cell and broke out in tears. she told other detainees what happened to her. >> so you feel like you are one of the people who helped the other women start naming what was happening? >> women from different countries told her they suffered similar abuses from the same male nurse. we have reviewed documents that showed at least five women came forward and complained against the male nurse. one of them was also another young woman from venezuela. amy: amy: an excerpt from the new investigation called "immensely invisible," which found the pattern of sexual

abuse complaints in ice detention goes beyond the stewart jail in georgia. women were only brought to stewart in 2020 after ice had to shut down the irwin county detention center when a whistleblower nurse exposed invasive procedures by dr. mahendra amin. 2020, we spoke to a survivor of gynecological abuse while detained at irwin. she described how she was scheduled for an unwanted hysterectomy held at irwin between 2019 and september 2020 until she was deported to mexico , she believed come in retaliation for speaking up about the abuse. a warning to our audience, her account is extremely disturbing. >> from day one that i met dr. men, he -- dr. amin, he said,

"ok, you need surgery." he did a ultrasound, vaginal ultrasound, with a wand. and i didn't even know he was going to do that. to be honest with you, i didn't know that i was going to have to take my pants off or lay on that bed and let him look at me. i didn't know that. nobody ever told me that i was going have a vaginal ultrasound. they sent me back to see dr. amin from march to july at least 25 times. they would take me out constantly. he would always check me. if it wasn't with his fingers, then it would be with the wand. and to be honest with you, it was uncomfortable each and every time. i didn't like anything he ever did. i didn't like his posture. i didn't like the way he stood in front of me or rested his hand on my knee as he did the vaginal search or whatever he was doing.

and it was uncomfortable to be honest with you. he kept telling me every single time i would see him that i was going to have a surgery. but for some reason, i never knew when the surgery was going to be. amy: for more, we're joined by maria hinojosa, the pulitzer prize-winning founder of futuro media, host of latino usa and welcome back. this is such a harrowing investigation. talk about all that you have learned. this is over a decade after you did this big pbs investigation. >> and the, we are journalists. the work we do is to serve and we believe in our work that when we put sunlight -- when we put -- when we uncover something, that because we believe we live in such an advanced democratic

country, that we believe things are going to get better. and they don't. in this particular case, on the question of people -- men, women, children -- in this case were reporting about women committing sexually abused continuously at government-run immigrant detention centers, consistently gets worse, actually. it does not get better. one of the things we uncovered with this piece is that one of the things that ice is trying to do is use transfers, a term that now you're going to begin to hear more about those of you who care about this kind of reporting, transfers as a way to deal with immigrants and refugees who are making complaints. were transfers in order to deal with one immigrant detention center was shut down because of abuse and the people are transferred to another detention facility where they say, now

you're going to be safe. you're going to be transferred from one to another and now things are going to get better. that we have seen, it is a form of punishment, a way of shuttling off and not dealing with the problem. we have been friends and colleagues for decades now, amy. when i uncovered the abuse and frontline in 2011, it was horrific. center dick durbin says because of the frontline, that is why prison rape elimination act must be offered in immigrant detention facilities. and here we are. we are recovering yet another ice investigates itself. what is that? finally, we have a very specific case of women coming forward, taking agency -- which is part of our investigation is that they are not just victims but they're also taking agency, speaking up, complaining about one male nurse, as far as we know has not lost his license,

and who sexually abused them continuously when they were seen -- the nurse. when you're vulnerable. just like the cut we just heard which is horrific. when women refugees are at their most vulnerable, this is when there exposed to being abused by medical personnel. it is horrific. i had to go into whole other series of therapy because of this exposure yet again. amy: the southern poverty law center reviewed medical records and showed the male nurse have been working at stewart detention facility, the jail in georgia, since at least 2018. what is known about his employment now? >> we know he has not lost his license. we know who he is. we triedze to communicate. zeba called him and he hung up.

there is no official complaint against him. nothing that has been legally brought on by ice or any of the corecivic run detention facilities where he may have worked. so he is a predator and he remains out there. by the way, amy, if you have a criminal mind -- there is a tv show "remodel mines." if you have a criminal mind, you know exactly where to go to find a job. you go to ice because you know now because there is -- they need to fill positions, there are not even back down checks. you have access to men, women, and children in trauma and you know that they will or than likely not complain because as we talked about in this piece, if you complain, you're going to be threatened the women we spoke to. they were told they were going to be sent to prison, they would

be deported immediately. constant coercion and threats. this is horrific. amy, we know, sadly you and i will be gone, and they will make hollywood movies, we hope, about how this was happening in the u.s. and everyone was like, how is this happening? amy: women who are abused in detention are supposed to be protected by the prison rape elimination act. can you talk about the legislation and the protections ice and private prison corporations like corecivic have repeatedly ignored? >> so the prison rape elimination act was created for prisons. it is a way in which to protect people behind bars when there sexually assaulted. they need a way they can have an independent way to complain. as we know, because immigrants in detention, we do not have the same legal rights. we have no legal rights. zero two process. senator dick durbin was so moved by what we uncovered in 2011 in

frontline, which you can watch on frontline youtube, that those protections -- which is somebody's held can make an independent complaint, has access to -- a way to make this complaint, to follow up on the complaint, that in the case of ice what wasz able to see his dying of havingeba -- it is dystopian. the abuse continues to happen that night have signs everywhere that say, by the way, if you're being abused, should not be being abused and you can call this number for help. what we uncovered is, as you heard, those signs mean nothing for the people who are being held. absolutely nothing. that is what has changed that now there is a sign up, but there does not mean there is a legal protection for women. in this case, complained against sexual abuse. by the way, for the immigrants

were held in detention, the legal path for them is incredibly complicated. again, they have no due process. because like me, they were not born in this country. as a result, you have no due process when you are in immigrant proceedings. amy: maria hinojosa, we will link to this incredible investigation you have done. pulitzer prize-winning journalist, founder of futuro media, host of latino usa. coming up, the acclaimed author isabel allende. back in 30 seconds. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we spend the rest of the are with isabel allende, one of the world's most celebrated novelists. she is the author of 26 books that have sold more than 77 million copies and have been translated into more than languages. 40 isabel allende was born in peru in 1942. she traveled the world as the daughter of a chilean diplomat. her father's first cousin was former chilean president salvador allende. this september marks 50 years since augusto pinochet seized power from allende in a cia-backed military coup, the date was september 11, 1973. salvador allende died in the palace that day. isabel allende would later flee from her native chile to venezuela. her books include "the house of the spirits," "paula," and "daughter of fortune." her latest novel, "the wind knows my name," which looks at the trauma of child-family

separation from the nazi holocaust to the u.s.-mexican border and those on the front-lines helping migrant children. on thursday, i interviewed isabel from her home in california. i asked her to start by telling us the story of her new novel "the wind knows my name," beginning in 1938. >> in 1938, and austria. it was a night which the nazi mobs attacked the jewish houses and establishments, commercial establishments. they broke the windows and beat up people. it was a very scary and terrible preamble to what was going to happen very soon after. that point, the jewish community realized they had to get out and so many people started looking for places to go.

england offered 10,000 temporary visas for children, to get the children out. families had the terrible choice of sending the children away to save them from a potential danger that was there in the air. they knew it was coming, but that could not be very sure. still they had to make that choice. so these kids ages, i don't know, when you're old to 15, they went in convoys,," trains to the netherlands and other places where they would be sent to england. they were received by people who offered their homes and orphanages and other establishments, but really the parents never knew who was going

to receive the kids or what was going to happen. most of them, more than 90% of them, never saw their families again. that separation that was supposed to be temporary became permanent. and those children who lost everything were raised in other places. they had a lack in england europe or came to the united states. many of them became very successful. but i heard on television some interviews, very old people, who were part of the kindertransport. they had a hole in their heart. they never forgot the trauma. they lived with that all their lives. so when the separation of families at the border here happened in 2017 and 2019, i remember the kindertransport and

other instances in which the children had been taken away from their parents. for example, during slavery children were sold out -- taken from their mother's arms in many indigenous tribes, not only in the u.s., but many places. the children were taken away to put them in some christian orphanages, horrible places where many of them died of abuse and starvation. so that idea of separating the kids is extremely cruel, but it keeps happening. and that prompted me to write the book. i was already thinking about it -- i saw a case through my foundation that really triggered the writing. and that was the case of a little girl with her brother. she was seven and the brother --

she was almost seven and the brother was four and they came with their mother to the united states legally. they were separated at the border. the mother was detained and arrested. she was sent away. the children were in detention centers and then and foster homes and whatever. the problem is the girl was blind. can you imagine a little blind girl was in charge of her brother and who doesn't know where she is? doesn't speak the language? can't even recognize people or places? so that -- the terror of that girl was what triggered the book. but then i realized, like in most of my books, i don't focus on the victims as much as on the people who are trying to help. because it is through them, through their actions and through their eyes, that i can tell the story without plunging

into the depths of hell. amy: i want to go back for a moment to the kindertransport that you talk about. we dug up a documentary called "kindertransport." in this clip, we hear two people. >> in the evening, my mother took me to the railway station. then i really felt, for the first time, that there was going to be something terrible happening. i remember saying to my mother, you are coming too, and she said, well, no, not this time. i hope to come later. >> the station was a horrific experience. you can just imagine thousands of people. just horrible to see. look back into see my mother and

sister standing there. that is the worst memory i've got. just crying all the time. that is all i could do. >> the train lurched a little and i screamed. i can hear my voice shouting, "mommy!" somebody lifted me up and i was able to see over somebody's head my mother's face. her eyes frantically looking for me. and that was my last sight of my mother. amy: those voices from the documentary "kindertransport." that is the story you tell of a young samuel who, too, would never see his parents again, isabel. >> yeah. it was very easy for me to put myself in the place of samuel. i really felt his pain and

samuel for me is a very interesting character because this is a man who because of the trauma of his childhood, he was a musical prodigy and that was lost in the shuffle of the war and everything else. he tries to have a very safe life. he becomes a musician in the symphony. he has a sheltered life, protect alike in which he does not want to get involved in anything that will upset him. he is married to a wonderful extravagant woman and he does not know about her infidelity or her secret activities or what she's doing and with whom because that would've set him. he just was everything as nice as possible. and then the pandemic hits when he is 86 and he finds himself at

home, sheltering at home. the terror of being alone, he asks his housekeeper the tisha to please stay with him, thinking would be just for a week or two. so they start living together and then at 86, he can reflect about his life. he said, i wasted my life. i let life pass by and i did not participate in anything. i am guilty of the sin of indifference. consider or later in life, -- and sooner or later in life, you pay for that price. then he opens his heart and his house and his life to the little girl that knocks at his door, this little blind girl. amy: i was reading about the little girl and i could not help but think back to 2018 inside

that u.s. customs and border protection facility in which children are heard crying "mama" and "papi" and the children to be bullied between four years old and 10 years old. i want to play that clip. [crying] amy: that audio shocked the world, later played by reporters at a white house press briefing, also blasted from speakers to donors as they arrive at a republican fundraiser at trump's hotel in washington, d.c. these children separated under trump's child separation policy,

what, still hundreds of not 1000 or more, still never reconnected with their families, with their parents. talk more about anita and her journey. >> in the case of the real anita , the girl who inspired the book , she could not hear were her mother was or reunite with her mother but there were lawyers and social workers trying to put the family together again. eventually, after eight months, they were reunited. they went in front of a judge who deported them all. they were deported to mexico where we never heard from them again. very tragic story. one of the many tragic stories. but there are still a few --

1000 kids at least two have not been reunited because no one thought about it. they thought about the separation, not the reunification. there are many aspects that are not terrible. for example, the name of the book "the wind knows my name," the idea is that in order to keep track of the kids, they give them a number. sometimes the kids are so little , they are babies. they don't even speak english. they don't speak anything or they are so traumatized that they won't speak. even their names are lost. they become numbers. so when we think of refugees, and there are 100 70 million refugees in the world, we think of numbers. that doesn't mean anything. we need to see a face, hear the

story, know the names so that it makes sense. we would be that person. that could be our child. and i think that is the miracle of literature, that it brings people close to telling the story of one child, you can somehow connect with a reader and create that sense of empathy that is so often lacking. amy: is about, so often the power of your books, it is the stories of real people but also the way you expand and bend and wind them through your imagination, you tell us the story of anita and also leticia.

if you could tell us her story and talk about what happened in el salvador in 1981. >> when we think of migrants and refugees, why are they coming? there's a moment in the book when the lawyer frank says, well, if they know they're going to take the children away, why are they coming? well, they are desperate. they're running away from extreme violence in their countries or string poverty. so taking the chance of crossing the border is preferable than staying. in the case of leticia, housekeeper, she has lived in the united states for many, many years. this is also based on a case on a very good friend of mine who is from el salvador. i see her almost every day because we walk talks together. so she helped me a lot with the research for that part.

in el salvador, there was horrific military repression in the 1980's, especially. one note massacre, the military entered a zone which is just farmers, just people who lived off the land. they were little small villages scattered here and there. leticia was one of the children. she had a stomach problem and she was taken by the farmer to a hospital in this city. so she was not there when the massacre happened. the military came in trucks and helicopters and they took over not only that village and they

separated the men from the women. they tortured everybody, including the children. they killed everybody, including the pets. the children were inside what was supposed to be a little chapel or something, and they burned the whole thing to ashes. and then three days later, after this orgy of blood and cruelty and death, they left the place. and the government covered the whole thing up for years and years. some people who presented this horror story because this military were trained by the cia in washington, and it was also covered by the press there. and by the government. so for more than 10 years, the whole story was kept silent. there are a thousand people dead there. this is in a very small country.

i needed to talk about it to explain why people get out. why people have to escape. what you do if you have to -- the gangs under the military? it was necessary for me to tell the story of leticia as well to understand why people immigrate to amy: the story is so horrifying and you depict it so unforgettably in "the wind knows my name? the brigade that was trained, she said, by the united states. tell us more about "the wind knows my name," the title and how you continue at the age of 80, you cannot be without a pen or maybe it is a computer. are you using a pen or computer for the first draft?

>> i don't have a draft. i start all my books on january 8 out of superstition. then i sit in front of an empty blank screen and often i don't even know what i'm going to write about. i have a vague idea. if it is a historical novel, i might have researched the place and the time. but i confront the screen in the beginning with an open mind. i don't know what is going to happen really. i don't have a draft. i don't have a script. things happen. somehow, it seems this is a cliché of course, that the universe conspires to help because as i write, seems all of my antenna are directed out there to pick up the collective

fears and dreams in the past and memory. and all that i can do because my work is very silent. i'm always alone. we live in the noise. so nothing happens in the noise, amy. when you're in silence in a room with your characters and your story, things happen. miracles happen. amy: what is the ceremony performed before you put that -- before you start writing on january 8? >> well, the day before i clean up. i cleaning up, i mean i take out everything that had to do with the previous book or the research, the notes come everything. i burn sage. i have my candle, always a new candle.

i have my marco polo tea ready. and then i do a little meditation to sort of call in what other people would call inspiration and i call my spirits, the memory of my mother and my grandparents and my daughter. even the pets that have gone to the other world, call them in and i say, "come on, get to help me in this process." then i feel accompanied and strong. amy: so you have your mother and the memory of paula, your daughter, her oldest child who died we wrote a book about -- and we have talked about that book in the past. but your daughter come also the inspiration for your foundation that works along the border. talk about paula and how she influences what you do. >> paula, i think every parent

things their children are special, different, extraordinary. and that is how i remember my daughter. she was a psychologist and a teacher and she worked always as a volunteer among the poorest of the poor. she never earned any money, so i supported her with the idea that she would do the good work and i would go to heaven. so we had this deal. when she died, her premature death really broke my heart. when i wrote the book "paula," i did not want to touch any of the income that would come from that book. it would belong to her. but i didn't know what to do with it. eventually, i came up with the idea of creating foundation to prolong the work that she had been doing.

she always worked with women and children. she told me very early on, even before this was common knowledge, if you change a woman's life, change the family. and if you change and improve the conditions of the family or many families, then the community emerges and eventually, a country. he places that are most packed with the poorest in the world are where women are put down the most. so that idea that paula had very young, she had already come up with that, i decided that that was going to be the mantra of my foundation. i did not know how to do it, just sending checks here and there. it did not do any good i think. but then my daughter-in-law walked into our lives and she

took over. she transformed the foundation. right now she is in africa visiting two of our projects over there. she is all the time traveling, all the time in touch. she has done a fantastic job. an, sometimes i say to lori, what is the point? this is a drop of water in a desert of need. what does that mean? she said, don't think in numbers. think in lives. if you can improve someone's life, you have done enough. so let's think about that. i understand that because i think in stories. stories are always about people, one person at a time. so that is what i try to do in my writing and that is what lori does in the foundation. amy: you dedicate the book to lori. are people who don't know,

paula, her daughter, died of a rare disease, genetic disease? >> yes. it is a genetic condition that runs in the family, paula's father's family. to my granddaughters have it and my son. but it doesn't manifest in males, mostly in females, the women. so paula had an attack. it doesn't have to be fatal if it is treated properly and in time. as she was in madrid. there was serious neglect. criminal neglect in the hospital. and paul it'd up with severe brain damage. they tried to hide it. for five months, they told me she was going to recover. which of course, she couldn't. eventually, i brought her in a,

all the way from madrid to california in a commercial united flight. how did i do that? i have no idea. i don't know. it was before 9/11, so that was maybe possible. today would be impossible. i took care of her at home until she died. she was 29 when she died. both of my granddaughters are older than she was when she died . it is interesting how life goes by. amy: and they both have it but it is not a fatal condition? >> no. one of of my granddaughters has had six serious attacks and she has survived and is doing well. and now finally, recently, there is a preventive drug that she is using. once a month she gets a shot and that prevents the attack or at

least makes it much milder. amy: you talk to women, writers, women who are taking care of so many being able to isolate, as you do, to be able to write, to be able to find that silence. what do you recommend, isabel? >> well, it is so hard. virginia woolf already said you need a room of your own. and that rib does not have to be a physical room. it has to be a room inside you where you retreat to be alone with yourself and your writing. but that is honest impossible if you have small children. i could not write until my children were teenagers. older teenagers. so that they already had their lives -- paula was driving. it was a completely different

life. i worked at the time in a ministry of school 12 hours a day because i had two shifts. but i could come home and i did not have to take care of the kids. i knew when i was working of the kids were doing fine. i also had help at home. i did not have to clean up. so i could write at night in the beginning in the kitchen on the kitchen counter. alone at night and during the weekends. i could find little moments to write. then i emptied a closet and put a board across the closet with a lightbulb on top, my typewriter, and then i could close the door to the closet and my writing was there intact, waiting for me until the next day or another moment to go back to it. but before when i was writing in the kitchen, that was impossible.

i had a canvas bag where i would put everything. i carried around with me like a newborn baby. i was never far from that canvas bag until the manuscript was finished. so there was always ways one can find for oneself, but it depends very much on your domestic situation. amy: you wrote your first book "house of the spirits" at the age of 40? >> yeah, i could not do it before. amy: can you remind us how you wrote this book? it is not as if you had an agent, not as if you had a community of writers as you're describing. talk about what inspired you. you are not in chile at the time -- >> i was living in exile in venezuela. we still had the military coup. this was in 1991.

it was one of the worst times of the dictatorship. so i was living in venezuela with my kids and my husband, but my husband wasn't living with us. he was working in another province. i heard my grandfather was dying in chile. i started a letter for him. somehow i always knew he would not be able to read the letter because it was his last days in the mail would take maybe a couple of weeks, a week at least. so i started a letter. i wanted somehow to tell him or tell myself that i remembered everything that he had ever told me. my ancestors, my crazy family. i remembered everything he had told me. so i started telling about my great aunt rosa, who was my

grandfather's first fiancé and she died seriously before they could get married. many years later, my grandfather married the youngest daughter in the same family, my grandmother, who was clairvoyant and crazy, and wonderful, a lunatic. i started telling about rosa and then something happened. it was like everything i had inside just was poured out in those pages. i had a little typewriter. and then at the time, there was of course no computers, in order to have a copy of something, you would have a carbon paper but i did not have even carbon paper. it was just one only page with a story. cut and paste, he would cut with scissors. paste was scotch tape. that is how you corrected

things. you had to think very carefully every sentence because erasing it was honest impossible. you had to start the page again. it was a wonderful process. such innocence not knowing anything about the book industry. i had never read a book review in my life. i was a good reader. i had never taken a course about writing or a workshop. i did not know any other writers. of course, it was the time of latin american literature and they were all men. it was happening in the periphery of my life. i was reading their work but i would never even dream of getting in touch with them. amy: the world-renowned writer isabel allende. her latest novel "the wind knows my name."

she is the author of 26 books that have sold more than 77 million copies and translated into more than languages. 40she recently turned 80 years old. to see all our interviews with isabel allende, visit democracynow.org. democracy now! is looking for feedback fro