Revisiting History in The Man Who Could Move Clouds
Memoir, memories, and amnesia
“There are many types of hunted treasures, secrets long buried, come to light,” Ingrid Rojas Contreras writes in her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds (Doubleday, 2022). The theme of buried memories expands throughout the memoir as Rojas Contreras reflects on her personal history of medical amnesia alongside the forced identity loss that comes with westernization, colonization, and assimilation. Through her writing, Rojas Contreras brings her personal and familial truth to light, forcing readers to reevaluate what we have been taught to be reality, to be history.
Lost memory establishes itself quickly within the memoir. In the opening author’s note, Rojas Contreras writes: “This is a memoir of the ghostly—amnesia, hallucination, the historical specter of the past—which celebrates cultural understandings of truth that are, at heart, Colombian.” After losing her memory during a biking accident, Rojas Contreras seeks to retell her family’s history. She comes from a line of curanderos; Such individuals might be healers, seers, or possess other beneficial skills. Through both her own childhood and her mothers’ stories, we see how widely fundamental curanderos are, as well as the shame and doubt colonization, its spread of Christianity, and whiteness have placed on curanderos and those who place trust in them. Westernization (with its roots in white supremacy) has dismissed the practice as the work of the devil or as fabricated—claiming curanderos are a sign of an “undeveloped” society. “Knowledge long lost, which I try to remember, which Mami says I should try to forget” (83).
In a blurb for the book, author Luis Alberto Urrea writes that Rojas Contreras is “talking about the real stuff…Tell yourself as you read, this is nonfiction. You will believe.” Historically, publishing has labeled any stories beyond white, western understandings of reality as one form of magic or another, and “magical realism” is often slapped onto the descriptions of any story from Latin America. Yet Rojas Contreras’s is specifically a memoir, a move that reclaims her history, her family’s history, and, in many ways, her ancestors’ history. Memoir, memories…these words are linked for a reason, and in writing a story so personal, in enshrining her family’s legacy by recording them, Rojas Contreras rewrites history. She rewrites the stories that colonizers have forced upon her country, reclaiming the past, exposing generational trauma, and creating a new map for our society to recognize as truth.
Organizations working to heal generational trauma
We encourage you to look into the following resources, whether to utilize their services, donate, and/or volunteer.
Mental Health Liberation’s BIPOC Therapy Fund: “Since 2019, our Inclusive Therapists community has prioritized mental health care access for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BI&POC). We make it simpler and safer for folks with intersecting marginalized identities (e.g., 2SLGBTQIA+, Disabled, and Neurodivergent communities) to connect with identity-affirming therapy services, groups, and collective care spaces.”
Asian Mental Health Collective’s Lotus Therapy Fund: “The goal of this program is to make psychotherapy as available, accessible, and approachable as possible to the Asian community.”
Decolonizing Therapy: An organization and practice working to create a “decolonial, politicized and abolitionist mental health movement internationally.”
The Loveland Foundation: “Loveland Foundation is committed to showing up for communities of color in unique and powerful ways, with a particular focus on Black women and girls. Our resources and initiatives are collaborative and they prioritize opportunity, access, validation, and healing. We are becoming the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
The National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network: “The National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN) is a healing justice organization committed to transforming mental health for queer and trans people of color (QTPoC). We work at the intersection of movements for social justice and the field of mental health to integrate healing justice into both of these spaces. Our overall goal is to increase access to healing justice resources for QTPoC.”
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition: “NABS was created to develop and implement a national strategy that increases public awareness and cultivates healing for the profound trauma experienced by individuals, families, communities, American Indian and Alaska Native Nations resulting from the U.S. adoption and implementation of the Boarding School Policy of 1869.”
The Nap Ministry: “An organization that examines the liberating power of naps. Our ‘REST IS RESISTANCE’ framework and practice engages with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred and safe spaces for the community to rest together. We facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing. We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.”
And so, in those places left vacant by the erroneous reassembly of our selves, the remnants of our amnesias lived like a brood of wasps.
—The Man Who Could Move Clouds, p72
Other’s thoughts on The Man Who Could Move Clouds
“Rojas Contreras has forced into the public record a collective identity of clairvoyants and spiritualists…that she has pieced together from the disintegrating fragments of her own familial past. In the process, she has written a spellbinding and genre-defying ancestral history.” — Miguel Salazar for The New York Times
“Part account of Ingrid’s shared family dream-turned-journey and part magic, this multi-generational reflection on family, love, life, birth, death, and curandera will find a way to wrap itself around your soul.” —@TomesAndTextiles
If you liked The Man Who Could Move Clouds, read…
Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer by Jamie Figueroa
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Xx,
Olivia and Fiona