The cultural history in The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras is not one I am familiar with. The story weaves back and forth between the present to stories of the past - the author, her mother, Nono, and other relatives. After a while, I stop trying to follow the chronology and float along. With the myriad stories and the lack of a cultural context, I am not sure I completely understand the family story being told, but the tale is a fascinating mythological journey.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2024/03/the-man-who-could-move-clouds.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

Ingrid is such an incredible literary citizen (and did you see that Halloween costume HA!) Anywho her work here is so poignant and compelling and brilliant. Her sentences:

"We were a brown people, mestizo, European men had arrived on the continent and violated indigenous women, and that was our origin: neither Native nor Spanish, but a wound."

"We have a word in Spanish for the walking of the dead—desander. To un-walk. To walk until the walking is worn thin, to walk until the walking undoes even itself. That ghosts have a particular way of walking is an idea we inherited from the settlers who invaded the continent, but what is intrinsically ours is the sense of porosity, an understanding that we live between the real and unreal, and that often they are one and the same. So, to us, the living go on ghost walks too."

This was an entertaining and informative read. I found myself sharing what I learned from this book with those around me. I recommend it to fans of good and highly readable non-fiction.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras knows the magic that surrounds our lives whether we are in Latin America or in the Latinx diaspora. Magic surrounds our journeys, our beliefs, and our superstitions. When Rojas Contreras is hit by a car while on her bike she experiences an amnesia that clears her mind of her experiences where even watching a sunset feels like something new and breathless. She moves around her life like an alien who is inhabiting a life and body not her own but with a curiosity to play her role and live life to the fullest. She discovers she's a writer, there's a dress, a partner, and different pieces of a puzzle she can't quite put together. We discover throughout her journey that her mother had a similar experience when she was younger and suffered an accident. Her mother came out of that journey with abilities to speak to the death and become a curandera, following the career path of her own father. As Rojas Contreras is recovering her memories, her mom and her sisters are receiving messages from their long departed father that they must travel back to Colombia and move his bones (which people are still disturbing asking for gifts from the man who could move clouds). This was a wonderful memoir and one of my favorite reads as we accompany Rojas Contreras on her journey back to Colombia and to herself.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras's debut novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree included autobiographical elements of her personal life. In this memoir, we learn the true story behind the story. We also learn the background of her family as healers. It includes the curious duality of an incident with Ingrid and one with her mother. Both had accidents where they lost their memory. When her mother was eight, she fell down a well. Her father rescued her, but she could not remember who she was. She even thought she was a ghost. This went on for six days. Afterward, they realized that she would be a healer. Ingrid ran into an open door while on her bike. She would also lose her memory for six months. She would not become a healer, but it triggers her journey to write about her family.

Her family has generations of healers. Being a curandero is part witchcraft and part therapist. People cannot heal unless they heal mentally. Ingrid has to move her grandfather's grave as those who need their prayers answers continually bother the grave and will not let his soul rest.

I really enjoyed the history of her family and Colombian Culture. I read Brenda Lozano's Witches earlier this year and enjoyed the mysterious and threatening nature of healing work.

New and ancient, a refracted mirror and a flowing river, Ingrid reveals that the act of storytelling is in and of itself a haunting and a healing.

Loved this book, love the author- I can't wait to continue reading more books by her. This book contained so many elements that I love. It focused on memory and narrative, how our family's past affects and shapes us, and how sharing our stories can heal us.

I can't stop talking about Ingrid Rojas Contreras's latest masterpiece.

I recently taught a class on how to conduct research for creative nonfiction writing, and in the weeks before, as I was devouring "The Man Who Could Move Clouds," I knew I needed to share the artistry that this author brings to these pages.

This is a haunting, unforgettable story about the gifts that pass from one generation to another, and it's truly astounding to see how IRC is able to make magic through the realm of storytelling with her own two hands. I don't want to give too much away (the jacket copy of the book will give you a nice teaser of what to expect), but I have to say that this story builds to an incredible narrative crescendo. By the last quarter of the book, I was reading with such fervor because each and every page offered some kind of payoff or revelation. I particularly admired the author's precise use of language, the way that I could feel her words cracking open my mind -- I believe this would be true for even the most skeptical reader -- and revealing essential truths about human nature.

Absolutely one of the best books I've read in 2022.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras claims that magic runs through her family. With Colombian roots, her mother a fortune teller and her maternal grandfather a community healer with other gifts, Ingrid learns in her twenties that the family abilities also rest with her. After having a dream about her maternal grandfather and his wishes for her to disinter his remains, Ingrid and her mother take a pilgrimage back to where it all began.

After reading the fictional book Fruit of the Drunken Tree, I was excited to read this author's personal story. The biggest issue I had with the book was that the author jumped back and forth, both with personal stories and those of her relatives. I grew disinterested and never felt the full picture of life in a family where two separate groups formed - those who believed and those who did not. Not spellbinding or captivating, The Man Who Could Move Clouds just did not grab my interest. For these reasons, I would not recommend it to other readers.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy by NetGalley and the publisher. The decision to read and review this memoir was completely my own.

A beautiful memoir about family, love, and history. The Man Who Could Move Clouds is a hypnotizing memoir full of what is real, remembered, or imagined. Recommended for discussion groups. Also recommended for writers who want to study how to construct a book that brings together the past, the present, and the future.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rohas Contreras is a story of memory, family, and Columbian history. It's such a gem of a novel from the writer of Fruit of the Drunken Tree.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

This was an exceptional read and I was again blown away by the impressive quality of Contreras' writing. Her novel was exceptional but this memoir exists on another plane. I don't know that there are many other authors alive today that can do what she does, though the two that come to mind are Akwaeke Emezi and Carmen Maria Machado. Both of those writers also work in a more magical realm than most and Contreras especially shines when she heralds her wordsmithing focusing on the ghouls of her family's past and her personal history.

This is a fantastic memoir/family history by a Colombian writer with curanderos/as in her family. There are lots of ghosts and family antics, and I was especially interested in the way the author (who has Indigenous ancestry) talks about the colonial gaze on South American and Indigenous writing and traditions. I liked Rojas Contreras' novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, when I read it several years ago, but I think this memoir is even better.

This is a long review, but I have a lot to say about this book. First off thank you to Doubledaybooks and Netgalley for the electronic ARC. The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras is a stunning and beautifully crafted memoir about family, memory, ghosts, and dreams. The book follows the author on a quest back to Colombia to exhume the body of her grandfather Nono after having a shared dream with her mother and tía. The memoir traverses this adventure with stories of her mirrored memory loss with her mother, Mami, and the family’s mirrored practice of curanderismo.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras is an incredible writer. I can’t explain it, but every story just captivates you and is so elegantly written in a beautifully descriptive way that just seems perfect for every story. Like, truly the storytelling is top notch. And she interweaves it all in a non-linear arch as if we are remembering things along with her as she regains her memory.

A loose theme throughout this book is the erasure of Indigenous culture and lineage or rather how it has not been erased for her family. Contreras dives into the classification of what it means to be mestizo and the many different names assigned for the various levels of Indigenous makeup. I thought a lot about what this means for others as well as my own family. I’m half-Mexican and my Dad is “full”. In our genealogy I’ve been told we descend from the Yaqui tribe and that my dad is 1/8th Native American by parental makeup…as if someone could be 7/8th Mexican and 1/8th Native American since we often fail to recognize that Mexican often means some portion European colonizing country and the other part Indigenous. When filling out the census, surveys, and other forms in the US, if you attempt to select the option for “American Indian/Native American" you are often forced to list your tribe affiliation. If you are lucky enough to know what tribe you descend from, you are sometimes requested to input your member number. A failure to have access to this information or to be registered with a tribe results in you defaulting to “white” or “other”. According to 23 and Me my dad is 58% Native American and I’m always thinking about how he and other people who are a MAJORITY Indigenous blood, who’s people have been raped and killed, now also have had their identity erased both in paper and practice. This book takes a lot of that back.

And with the aspect of ghosts, dreams, and curanderismo, it’s interesting to think that more people would believe in this if not for the violence enacted through white supremacy and the Christian religion. The following is a little story I’d like to share about dreams. (TW: Death) In the years before my paternal grandma died, she used to rotate around our aunt and uncles’ houses so that we could all take care of her. When it was my family’s turn, she would stay in our guest bedroom for a couple of weeks and sometimes when I was visiting home from college, I’d get to see her for extended periods of time. A few years after she died, I had this vivid dream where she was staying with us again in our guest bedroom. We got to chat and talk and play with our cat Tasha. I had to go out and do something in the dream (I can’t remember what) but when I came back, she had died. I woke up distraught and then checked my phone like I do every morning. I saw that a couple of my cousins and my Aunt Stephanie had left new Facebook posts. “Today marks two years since we lost Grandma Evelyn…”. I immediately started crying. I’ve always known that my grandma visited me that night, but this book gave me the permission to fully believe that dreams and ghosts are real.

Please read this book. If not for the storytelling, do it to take back some part of this culture.

This was really more of a family memoir than I was expecting. I learned a lot about colonialism in Colombia! Very interesting. Her family seemed like a bunch of real characters, comas, fortune telling were two of the less extraordinary things about her family! It really was fantastistical.

Easily one of my favorite reads of the year. I absolutely loved this read and found myself talking about it constantly. If you’re looking for a memoir about family legacies, curanderismo/healing, culture, history, identity, and storytelling, then please pick this book up.

Here's a small glimpse into the magic of this book:

“The histories and stories of a people are a mirror— they tell how and when and where and why a people lived. No matter the year or the hour, empire will always seek to destroy the mirrors in which it does not see itself. This is why the colonizing culture does not consider our stories passed down through memory to be a valid document; why they are deemed to be more dreams than history, just as our perceived realities are deemed to be fiction.

This is the language in power. It has never been able to imagine anything outside itself.

But where their thinking ends, ours begins.”

Book review: Author explores burden of history in warm, insightful memoir
By ASHLEY RIGGLESON FOR THE FREE LANCE–STAR

I loved reading Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ début novel, “Fruit of the Drunken Tree.” So, when I saw she would soon be releasing a new memoir called “The Man Who Could Move Clouds,” I jumped at the chance to review it. I have loved reading memoirs this year, and Contreras’ latest is no exception. “The Man Who Could Move Clouds” sparkles with grace and insight.

Though this text is ostensibly about Contreras’ life, it is easier to consider “The Man Who Could Move Clouds” as the story of a family. Contreras begins this memoir with the story of the accident that caused her amnesia. For weeks, she was unable to remember anything about who she is or her background. Soon, we learn that her mom also had an accident as a child and lost her memory for eight months. When her mother recovered, she had powers, including the power to hear the dead, and Contreras explores, among other things, generational inheritance, and legacy.

Yet, this memoir also tells another story, that of her grandfather, a Curandero in Colombia, who after dying, appeared in several of the family members’ dreams, asking to be disinterred. As Contreras, her mother, and some other relatives work to fulfill this request, Contreras learns more about her family and her history..

To a Western reader like myself, this memoir sounds like fiction. And one would, perhaps, wonder why this memoir is not marketed as a novel. Over the course of the memoir, though, Contreras ponders this question at length, discussing what happens when “reality” and “fiction” clash with colonialism. And though this book is not a novel, it reads beautifully. Contreras’ prose is crystalline, and her family members seem larger than life.

While this memoir is warm and often funny, Contreras’ latest also reads as an exploration of intergenerational trauma and the burden of history. And Contreras’ talent is such that, though she conveys the importance of looking at these topics, she does so with a light touch, and readers will not be consumed with sadness.

As I read this, I wondered what other readers from my background would think of this memoir, how many would read it at all. I am writing this review because I think it is a stunner that deserves to be read, considered, and remembered..

This review was originally printed in The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, VA.

I really loved this author's first book, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, which was a novel loosely based on her life history, and I couldn't wait for this memoir to come out. It's still incredibly well-written with beautiful prose, but there were some chapters I enjoyed more than others. This book didn't feel like a cohesive whole but more like separate pieces in each chapter. Some chapters were more story-like than others, and those were the ones I most enjoyed. Overall, I felt the memoir lacked a plot and was a little repetitive, but I would still read another book by this author because her writing is gorgeous. Note: I personally found the magical realism aspect of this book fascinating, though other readers might have difficulty considering it nonfiction.

A multigenerational memoir about hurt and healing, memory, secrets, history, and the things we can’t explain. Contreras is born in Colombia into a family of healers, curanderos, this book examines three generations of that work along side the history of the nation.
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Ok, this book is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It is fluid and strange and written absolutely beautifully. The book hits the ground running, it reads like some sort of an adventure story. I had no clue where Contreras was taking us, but I was along for the ride. By the end, I had lost steam as the narrative gets repetitive, but overall it’s a stellar piece of writing and storytelling.
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What I loved most about the book was the ways it made me reevaluate my own relationship to healing, magic, ghost stories, and what is possible. THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS is ultimately about intergenerational legacies and imagination.

I feel drastically unqualified to write this review. This book was nothing short of beautiful. A collection of heritage I can’t begin to understand. The writing is beautiful, the story is heart wrenching. Everything I would hope for in a memoir and so so much more. I feel inspired to collect stories from my mom and grandmother now before it’s too late.