And The Nov. Book Club Pick is...

A memoir of "memory, myth and the mysteries and magic of ancestry."

Last month’s book club pick was a tell-all memoir from a famous celebrity, peeling back the curtains on Hollywood to show as the reality of a world we thought we knew.

This month, we’re reading a very different type of memoir from the opposite side of the Americas, trading the Hollywood Hills for the cordillera of Colombia, where author Ingrid Rojas Contreras is exhuming the body of her grandfather, Nono.

Why? Because a spirit contacted her family through dreams and told them to do it.

You see, Ingrid’s family is different than most. They come from a long line of curanderos, or healers who are in contact with spirits. They are some of the last guardians of a tradition that has survived the arrival of the Spanish, the dominance of Catholicism, and the endless conflict that has marred Colombia ever since.

The story begins with a head injury when Rojas Contreras crashes her bike into a car in Chicago and gets amnesia for eight weeks. When she wakes up, she discovers this head injury has given her the family “secrets” - the ability to talk to spirits, tell the future, and heal the sick - just as a similar injury did to her mother before her.

They say the amnesias were a door to gifts we were supposed to have, which Mami’s father, Nono, neglected to pass.

Nono was a curandero. His gifts were instructions for talking to the dead, telling the future, healing the ill, and moving the clouds…We called the gifts secrets. In the mountains of Santander, the fathers had passed the secrets to the son.

But none of his sons, Nono said, had the testículos required to be a real curandero. Only Mami, strong willed, unafraid, more of a man than most in his eyes… could have house the gifts. But Mami was a woman, and such things were forbidden. If a woman came to possess the secrets, it was said that misfortune would follow.

Rojas Contreras’ family history reads like a magical realism novel, but this is not a work of fiction - it’s the “genre-defying ancestral history” of Ingrid Rojas Contreras, known as The Man Who Could Move Clouds.

I’m excited to dive into The Man Who Could Move Clouds this month, which also happens to be Native American Heritage month in the U.S. And while this book does not strictly fit that category, its exploration of how Indigenous American traditions have been buried or subsumed by colonialism feels very relevant to the broader and ongoing discussions of neocolonialism in Mexico City and beyond.

We were a brown people, mestizo. European men had arrived on the continent and violated Indigenous women, and that was our origin: neither Native or Spanish, but a wound.

And while the story takes readers through Colombia’s major conflicts and historical events, it’s also a personal and intimate history of her family, which centers around her grandfather Nono - the titular “man who could move clouds.”

I encourage you to read the book with me this month. And if you would like to participate in the live book club discussion at the end of the month, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to gain access to the Zoom calls, exclusive content and the private joy of supporting my writing. ; )

Happy reading! Order your copy of the book and comment below with your thoughts and / or recommendations for what we should read next!

Until next week, I remain,

Your friendly neighborhood librarian,

Marko Ayling

UPDATE: Click here to learn how to join our private group message to discuss the book all month long - for free.