The Man Who Could Move Clouds - Ingrid Rojas Contreras Audiobook

Written by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Read by Marisol Ramirez
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: July 12, 2022
Duration: 10:58:50

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family.

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 powers 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.”

In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono’s remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often hilarious guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe “the secrets” are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.

Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.

“Marisol Ramirez’s beautifully expressive narration pairs perfectly with author Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s compelling exploration of the powerful connections between memory and family. From a vibrant, tumultuous Colombian childhood to a new beginning abroad, the author’s connection with Nono, her grandfather, remained central. Ramirez expresses the complexity of emotions contained within these stories of the author’s maternal grandparents and extended family as she travels with her mother back to Colombia in order to fulfill a dream-inspired imperative to exhume Nono’s body. Ramirez’s keen characterizations, especially for Mami and Rojas Contreras, are full of warmth and heart. Together, they give weight and texture to the forms that memory takes on. An incredible journey that listeners will not soon forget.”— AudioFile