Write About Yourself

Frida by Frida: Selection of Letters and Texts

Frida Kahlo, the writer? In this new expanded edition of the painter’s writings, art critic Raquel Tibol gathers letters, poems, notes, protests, confessions, brief messages and longer texts written by Kahlo to her friends, her lovers and others. In her writings, Kahlo employs, in Tibol’s words, an “unreserved, imaginative language, heart and intimacy laid bare,” that reveals her taste for neologisms, colloquial turns and the crossing of linguistic boundaries. The freedom of her language is a path towards sincerity, the origin of Kahlo’s pictorial universe, with its recurring motifs: the tramway accident that left the artist physically maimed at the age of 18; her anguished and demanding adolescent passion for Alejandro Gómez Arias; her complex and fascinating relationship with Diego Rivera; her illness as destiny; her political engagements; and her uncompromising quest for liberty. Here the reader will find Kahlo “swinging back and forth between sincerity and manipulation, self-complacency and self-flagellation, with her insatiable need for affection, her erotic upheavals, her touches of humor, setting no limits for herself, with a capacity for self-analysis and a deep humility.” By gathering this material, until now scattered in archives and various published sources, Tibol offers us “a tacit autobiography and the placement of Frida within the intimate, confessional literature of the twentieth century in Mexico.” This is a Frida Kahlo far removed from the distorted image so often found in films, plays and supposedly serious writings and studies–a beautiful book about Frida, by Frida.   https://www.amazon.com/Frida-2nd-Expanded-Kahlo/dp/9685208468/

Or I Could Write About Me

The title of my first novel is Emmie of Indianapolis. The idea for this book came about when my nieces were visiting me. They were teasing me about living in the last century. Casey, who was eight at the time, wanted to know if refrigerators had been invented yet and did I have one way back then. Ten-year-old Frankie asked me about vacuum cleaners and stoves. Jamie, thirteen, wondered how I did my hair. Did they have hair dryers and even shampoo? The list went on and on until the subject of popcorn came up. Microwaves weren’t invented yet, so my mom, their grandmother, cooked popcorn on top of the stove in an old metal pot. Their eyes became very big and were so amazed as I demonstrated with my hands how you had to shake and keep the pot moving over the flame or the popcorn would burn. The girls were thrilled that they caught me with evidence of being old.

I told them other stories about when I was a young girl in Indianapolis. Even though they lived in the suburbs of Indianapolis, they’d only been downtown a few times for football games and Christmas shopping. I think it’s important for people to know their family history and the place where they live. I began by writing down a list of names, birth dates and other information of our immediate family members. As I created the list, the idea of turning the list into a book became something I felt called to do.

https://www.amazon.com/Emmie-Indianapolis-Kay-Castaneda-ebook/dp/B07G2S9MTP/