Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ New Memoir Explores Amnesia, Family History and Ghosts

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her new memoir, “The Man Who Could Move Clouds,” Ingrid Rojas Contreras tells the story of a journey she took with her mother to her native Colombia to exhume her grandfather’s remains. She intricately weaves family histories involving her curandero grandfather, her mother who could appear in two places at once and her own magical inheritance sparked by a bout of amnesia. Rojas Contreras, who now calls the Bay Area home, joins us to talk about infusing magic into story telling and how memory is both a burden and a treasure. Guests: Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author, "The Man Who Could Move Clouds" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho La Puerta, a wellness resort in Baja, California, just an hour from San Diego.
0:07.6	Three, four, and seven-night summer packages include fitness classes, hiking, live music, mindfulness, and culinary adventures, featuring fruits and veggies straight off the vine.
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0:23.8	Saver summer at Rancho LaPuerta, rancho LaPuerta.com.
0:28.3	Support for Forum comes from Broadway SF, presenting Parade, the musical revival based on a true story.
0:35.7	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of
0:40.0	Leo and Lucille Frank, a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is
0:46.9	accused of an unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice,
0:55.1	and devotion.
1:03.5	The riveting and gloriously hopeful parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th.
1:07.8	Tickets on sale now at Broadway, sF.com.
1:10.5	From KQED. From KQED. From KQED, in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:25.4	In northeastern Colombia, in the small towns near Venezuela, there lived a man his granddaughter
1:30.0	would call Nono.
1:31.3	He was a bad husband, a good father, and a curandero, a widely renowned healer.
1:36.6	He's the man for whom Ingrid Rojas Contreras's new memoir, the man who could move mountains
1:41.0	is named, and his journey, the people and movements he occasioned in
1:45.1	life and in death structured this new memoir. Healing, brutal violence, spiritual sickness,
1:50.8	multi-generational stories, truth, amnesia, ghosts, buried treasure. Ordinary family life gets
1:57.1	built from extraordinary things when that's what's all around. We'll talk Colombia, granderos, culture, and cast.
2:03.8	That's all coming up next after this news.
2:15.0	Welcome to Forum.
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