“I am a writer because I was blessed with an ear for stories, an unhappy childhood, and a crazy family,” said author Isabel Allende.

Allende spoke at the Greensboro Coliseum on Nov. 13 as part of the 2007-2008 Bryan series. 1,600 Guilford students, faculty, staff, and community members filled the Coliseum to hear the Chilean author speak about love, life, loss, and the role of women in today’s world.

“It is from memory and a sense of love that a passion for writing emerges,” Allende said. “I write because I need to remember.”

The idea for her first book, “The House of the Spirits,” came directly from memory. It began as a letter to her dying grandfather, eventually evolving into a manuscript, then a published novel in 1982.

Allende’s writing career did not begin with her first book. In the 1960s, she briefly held a job translating romantic novels from English into Spanish. She was fired once the editor noticed that she had been altering the stories’ “Cinderella” endings to ones where the heroine found not a prince, but instead her own sense of independence.

In her speech, Allende was just as assertive about the role of women in today’s society as she had been with the heroines of the stories.

“The time is right for women to participate fully in the management of this endangered planet,” Allende said. “80 percent of the women of the world are still treated like cattle. Ladies, it’s time for a massive rebellion.”

What women can use to promote this change, Allende said, is something called “mamisma.”

“Mamisma is the wild mother energy, the passionate, loving energy of the mother. It is love at its very best – warm and reassuring.” Allende said.

At the core of “mamisma” is the topic that Allende focused most of her attention on throughout the evening: love. Every point she made came back to the importance of love and its inevitable presence in everyone’s life.

“Love first trapped me when I was 11. Since then, I have always been in love,” Allende said.

Love led Allende to take a step away from writing and do her part to help others. After her daughter died, Allende created the Isabel Allende Foundation in her memory. The foundation supports nonprofits that provide health, education, reproductive, and anti-violence services for women.

Allende stressed the importance of helping others in love and life – an idea very familiar to the Guilford community.

“It is a wonderful truth that the things we want most in life, happiness and hope, can be obtained most easily by giving them to others,” said Allende. “I’m going to be generous and helpful because it makes me feel good. That is practical love.”