Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s family believes some of them are touched by magic, an ability to speak to the dead, see the future, heal, and move clouds. Part of the family sees what they call “the secret” as a gift, while others see it as a curse. Her mother and grandfather both inherited “the secret,” and after a strange occurrence, Contreras’s family thinks she might have it as well.

WOW. I have never read a memoir that feels so much like fiction, and I mean that in the absolute best way. It's transportive, beautifully written, full of larger-than-life characters, and I mean come on, it's about real life magic! I was gasping and yelling "oh my god" throughout the book. Contreras is an incredibly gifted writer with an incredibly unique story to tell.

This is a stunning memoir, and the author's words read like poetry. It's a very moving and fascinating story of the author's family from Colombia to the United States. It dealt with intergenerational trauma and healing and was enlightening to read about.

This book is beautifully written and tells and important story, but I found it so slow moving it was hard to stay focused on it.

𝙄 𝙬𝙤𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙛- 𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙢𝙮 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙈𝙖𝙢𝙞’𝙨, 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙣 𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙉𝙤𝙣𝙤’𝙨- 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙛 𝙪𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙜𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙠, 𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧’𝙨 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s debut novel, 𝘍𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘳𝘦𝘦, was a tale of wealth, poverty, war and politics in Columbia, but the superstitious fancies that dominated the Santiago daughters’ minds in relation to their young maid, Petrona was a window into old world culture, burning in superstition. Through Ingrid’s memoir, the supernatural influence on her family roots connects readers to the fictional inspiration and political upheaval in her stories. Dangerous violence in Columbia was the catalyst that left her family with no other choice than to move to Chicago. It is also what caused a kink in the chain of her magical education under her Mami’s tutelage. Ingrid’s inheritance is one of unique gifts wrapped up in accidents of amnesia, walking in worlds of the living and the dead. While she was growing up in Bogotá, her Mami ran a ‘fortune-telling’ business, but a practicing curandera is what she truly is. A word loaded with old world origins, a truth to be kept hidden from the more ‘progressive’ people, despite the fact they seek her gift for guidance and healing. These are the very same people that spit ugly words meant to shame Mami if she dared to acknowledge the family lineage. One thing is translatable throughout this planet, hypocrisy. What Ingrid’s Mami does to make money and support the family costs Papi his jobs, so maligned is her profession. The sexism is just as bad. Ingrid wonders in her youth if she will ever possess the family gifts, aware she doesn’t see or hear ghosts nor have visions of the future. Is it all fake, as some believe, certainly there is proof in the accounts friends, family and strangers share about her mother that her gifts are genuine? It is uncanny. If their folk healing is passed down through the blood, Ingrid should be able to lay claim, as she looks just like her Mami. It all comes from Nono, the “Man Who Could Move Clouds”, the same man who tells his family through shared dreams that he wants his remains disinterred. It is through dreams their dead walk.

This is just one of many validations that something supernatural is deeply ingrained in her family, long before colonialism scattered native people, and later, drugs and wars ravaged those still standing. Nono’s mysterious knowledge, passed down through his forefathers, has always been ‘a well-guarded secret’, for over hundreds of years. One can imagine the horror and fear when Ingrid informs her Mami that she wants to write about the very things that have been buried and hidden for so long. Writing is for Ingrid a gift, one that helps her remember where she comes from, who she and her people are. More fascinating after an accident leaves her with amnesia, a peculiar heritage of its own. The truth in her family transcends the times, forces those who scoff at magic to consider the culture of native beliefs and recall the brutality visited upon them, birthing a third culture, one that has Spanish and Native wisdom ‘entwined’. Add to that Ingrid’s own life being remade in a foreign country, America. Her immigration cost her the loss of a path that her ancestors had followed, a natural process of passing down what her Nono and Mami had been carrying, now barred to her by a vast distance and a cultural divide. Her assimilation into America won’t stop the calling. Her accident is a doorway and in order to learn, she is forced to temporarily forget. As memories return, the truth of her family refuses to be denied. Secrets have always been about survival for her people, hence the need to share traditions ‘in whispers’, but they are getting too loud and the time for cowering in the shadows is over. Now, it is written.

It is a courageous act to speak about one’s beliefs, that has survived untoward violence and shaming. To risk the laughter of strangers and the damning judgements and yet Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s mission is to remember her powerful family, with haunting reflection. It is looking into the mirror and seeing not just herself, but all those who can before her. It is a transformation the reader gets to witness as she is on her journey of spirit, unearthing many stories about her family, one that splintered toward religion and away from the ‘witchery’, accusing the other half of sin, demanding they seek salvation. Too, the men often make the women in the family suffer, due to their own inner turmoil. It’s an endless cycle. It is an engaging memoir about ‘living at the edge of what is socially acceptable’, it is about cultural clashes, political chaos and the reach of it’s arm. It is division of oneself between worlds, ghosts (living and dead), inheritance and surrendering to the truth. Ingrid’s family history is even richer than her fiction and her memoir a gorgeous exploration into our personal belief systems. It is about what we bury and what we bring into the light.

Gorgeous memoir and it’s available now!

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

Doubleday Books

The Man Who Could Move Clouds
by Ingrid Rojas Contreras


“We are both women transformed by the exit and the return. In this way, we alone understand each other: we know what it’s like to wake up disassembled and witness, hour by hour, the invention of self.”


From the author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, The Man Who Could Move Clouds comes an honest and illuminating memoir about the author and her exceptional multigenerational Columbian family. I have to admit that I wanted to like this memoir a great deal more than I did. It took me a while to get through the book. While the language was poetic at times, the flow was as fragmented as the authors thoughts likely were during her long episode of amnesia. And perhaps, this was the point. However, the disjointed structure was difficult to stay with and I found myself putting the book down a great deal more than I normally would. What I thought it did well was embed historical information throughout the novel to enlighten the reader regrading significant events and cultural practices. I thought it also did an wonderful job of conveying how Latin and Central American cultures view the veil between this and the spiritual world to be thin and knowable. I’m sorry to say that this book was not for me, although it might be for others. I look forward to seeing what Contreras writes next.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Double Day Books for the gift of an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ll start by saying that if you aren’t willing to entertain the possibility of the supernatural or those gifted with the ability to connect to something greater out there, then you probably won’t enjoy this memoir.

I, on the other hand, absolutely love the connection to the spiritual and ancestors that is present is South American culture. Contreras’s memoir is a ghost story, a family saga, and an education on colonialism in Colombia.

The story weaves through her connection to her mother, who both gain “the secrets” through traumatic injuries. This begins them on a path to disinter her grandfather, Nono, a healer who just wants peace in death. Along the way, we hear about her childhood in Colombia, her Mami’s eccentric siblings, and the powers of a curandero.

This is a stunner of a memoir: a brutally lovely painting in words of a family's individual and collective memory. It's a book to soak in, in every way. If you enjoyed My Broken Language by Quiara Alegria Hudes, this should be your very next read.

Run, don't walk, to your closest library or independent bookstore!

There's a phrase in Hebrew that I will never forget from Sunday school classes, l'dor v'dor, from generation to generation. The Contreras family has passed down what seems an infinite amount of knowledge, that breathes anew with each generation, that extends backwards through time and yet seems to loop in on itself in surprisingly coincidental or miraculous ways.

Ingrid Contreras' maternal grandfather was a curandero with an ability to see what will come to pass and with a supernatural gift. Quite simply a man who could move clouds. He passed this gift down in his family again and again, begrudgingly and against all concerns for what it would mean to err in what he thinks will displease the spirits, in passing his gift to his daughter, who passes it down to Ingrid.

The author explores so much in this memoir. Interspersed in her own story is that of her mother, her sister, her father and grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles, of Colombians, of mestizos, a history of colonialism trauma and suffering, of ghosts not yet buried that haunt the living and future generations.

There is a constant tug and pull between remembering/memory/rebirth and purposeful forgetting/memory loss/death. The author at one point experiences amnesia for 8 weeks (her mom did as well in her youth) and she is retracing her own patterns, despite not remembering and with a clean slate. But during her amnesiac state, it's as if, even without knowing, she is herself in a core way, on the same path without knowing or remembering. There's a use to forgetting as well. The body and brain shut down to defend itself. And recollect when they can.

It makes me wonder how much we leave untapped. How many loops of repeat we are on unknowingly or knowingly.

One thing is certain- this is one of the most interesting memoirs I have ever read and I think everyone will wish they could know this family, share in some of their stories...

Lyrically written a memoir that drew meright in,The author shares her memories her family's history the role of magic realism in her life.The authors words read like poetry I will be recommending the book and following the author.#netgalley #doubledaybooks.

The author titled her family memoir after her grandfather, a corandero, believed to have supernatural healing and prophetic powers. She traces her families from Columbia to the US and tackles the role of trauma in her family history. At times rambling and disjointed, this book is nevertheless interesting and has much to say about intergenerational trauma and healing.

This author writes such incandescent work. Very moving, intimate and engrossing prose. Looking forward to more from this author.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds
by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Pub Date: July 12, 2022
Doubleday
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.
* Memoir *Non fiction
The memoir takes place in Colombia [predominantly], Venezuela, and the United States.

As the author's note states: "This is a memoir of the ghostly--amnesia, hallucination, the historical specter of the past--which celebrates cultural understanding of the truths that are, at heart, Colombian. Words truly do not do justice to what Contreras has created here. To read this book is to be haunted by it.
I recommend it.
4 stars

I requested this book because I enjoyed the author's Fruit of the Drunken Tree.

This memoir details her family legacy--magic . "Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother’s fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.

This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to “the secrets.”" And so it begins--the back of forth of Rojas Contreras' life and her [extended] family history.

However, I dispute the words of R.O. Kwon that this is an "often hilarious book" and the blurb that says Mami is an "often hilarious guide." Yes, stubborn and unpredictable, but not much laughter in this tale. Instead, much grief, sorry, and haunting. And the horrors of COLONIALISM and political violence--guerrillas and drugs in Colombia. And the lowly position and abuse of women.

The memoir takes place in Colombia [predominantly], Venezuela, and the United States.

As the author's note states: "This is a memoir of the ghostly--amnesia, hallucination, the historical specter of the past--which celebrates cultural understanding of the truths that are, at heart, Colombian.

At times enthralled, other times somewhat bored. I thought quite repetitive. BUT.

Some of the writing/phrases I thought fabulous/interesting:

"thieved the joy of others"
"I fought the marshmallow of nothingness, but soon I was consumed by it."
"The stupid things peop[e say are true. Ignorance is bliss."
"leisured with a drink"
"grandfather lived on my face."

The details of the anorexia of Ingrid's sister, Ximena, enlightened me.

And I learned something new--philtrum--look it up, I did.

And, think about this: "U.S Americans flew the Confederate flag, then insisted racism didn't exist. The told me theirs was a country founded on ideals, then got upset when I brought up the genocide of Indigenous peoples or slavery, which were clear indications to me that the country was founded on something else."

Surely it was extremely cathartic to write this tome.

3.5; not rounding up.

There is one line in this memoir that says something like ‘Jane Austen is realism in America & Gabriel Garcia Marques is magical realism. In Colombia, GGM is just realism.’ It’s better written than that - but really sticks with me now that I’ve finished reading.

I loved this memoir - it’s unbelievable in the best way, I loved all the spirits and memories and photos and stories. I love how she talks about dealing with trauma and how it lingers. I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction - it’s such an amazing story.