Laura Restrepo: 1950—: Journalist, Political Activist, Novelist Biography - Raised On Unconventional Education, Acquired A Different Social Awareness, Emerged As A Writer, Saw Writing As Historical Record
country world able past
Laura Restrepo: 1950—: Journalist, political activist, novelist.
Few writers have been able to craft together fact and fiction so flawlessly to produce a created world that deals with so many real world issues as Laura Restrepo. Making a splash in the 1980s with her journalism and spending time as an exile because of it, Restrepo is no stranger to the dangers that are prevalent in the world, and is able to express the multitude of angles that these dangers represent through her characters and narration. Most important to the core of Restrepo's work is her love for her home country of Columbia and discovering the past of the war and the drug culture that has destroyed parts of the country and how from that past the country can be rebuilt.
Additional Topics
Laura Restrepo was born in Bogotá, Columbia, in 1950, the eldest of two daughters. Restrepo had an unconventional childhood; her father believed strongly in education, but he also believed that much of a child's education should be found through experience, rather than in conventional schooling. Restrepo's father left school when he was 13 years old, and her paternal grandfath…
When she was 16, in her sophomore year at college, she began working as a literature teacher in a public school for boys. Of this job experience, Restrepo says that she learned a disturbing lesson from the students in this school, all of whom were from the lower class, were older than she was, knew more than she did, and had experienced more. She told Manrique that these students changed the direc…
Restrepo began to write at age nine, when she wrote a story about poor peasants. This convinced her father that she would become a novelist. In many ways, this first story essentially predicted the themes of her subsequent work, the tragedy of poverty or the disenfranchising of the oppressed. In spite of this early beginning, it took 25 years before Restrepo began to write seriously. In her interv…
Before her books began to be financially successful, Restrepo had to write at night, while working as a journalist and television screenwriter. However, in recent years, she has been able to use royalties from her books to support her writing and research. Of her desire to write novels, she told Andre Mayer of Eye Weekly Online, that "I've been a journalist for many years, and writin…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments