Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Benedetti.
Hi Alexandra, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I was recently in my home country of Colombia with the Bendita Tour. There I met with one hundred and twenty students in the largest classroom where I attended high school and gave my literature and creativity workshop. In that school, in that enormous classroom, in those corridors, my story and my journey as an artist began.
I told the students about my experience during the seven years that I studied there, how much I am grateful to the teachers, and that I owe my love of the arts and literature to the school. We sat together in creative circles, and I spoke about Bimba, the main character from the Bendita novel, reading a few pages to them.
There were my beginnings in dance and in the literary centers of the Spanish classes, where my passion as a writer was born. I grew up reading, being moved, and even amazed by the words of Gabriel García Márquez. Exploring the folklore and dancing to the Champeta of the Colombian Caribbean. Eating patacones and fried fish on the beaches of Cartagena. I returned to my origin, to see how time has passed and although I have changed, my essence remains the same: the essence of a dreamy girl who has become a woman fulfilling her dreams.
Time and rewards, magical realism, and creativity. I missed my nephews’ childhood and many family events. My grandmother left this world without seeing me on television and without reading the story I wrote for her. In a very difficult period of my life, with my heart broken by a breakup, and the loss of my grandmother and my father, the need to prepare to be a writer awoke in me. My financial situation had improved and with the resources acquired from my work as a film, theater, and TV actress; I was able to study at the School of Literary Creation in Mexico City.
Between reading and writing, my wounds healed, and my writer’s vein sprouted strongly. Love came to rejoice in my heart, I graduated, fell in love, and eventually got married and came to live in the US. I arrived with a suitcase of clothes and dreams. I knocked on doors on Spanish-speaking TV channels, doors that didn’t open, but that served as the impetus for me to sit down and write my first book.
This is how Soñar despierta was born, my method to know myself, love myself, and be creative. But above all a book based on my own experience and the tools that helped me not to give up in the darkest moments of life, in the toughest tests on the path of a dreamer, and in those moments of solitude on the path of the emigrant.
Time has brought its rewards, I have learned English and my first magical realism novel, Bendita, is being translated into English. A novel that I dedicated to my grandmother, my mother, and all the women who have fought for themselves and for us. A beautiful love story, inspired by true events, family secrets, and women’s civil rights.
And I keep dreaming, dreams feed life… We continue working with the Bendita Tour, and our goal is to take it to Spanish classes in high schools in the United States. A creative playful workshop on literature and creativity. An experience that promises to be wonderful, exciting, and unforgettable.
In my high school years, I discovered the magical realism of Gabo and his yellow butterflies. The butterflies of my magical realism are blue. Gabo and Isabell Allende are my mentors. One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits were the first works that inspired me and with which I said to myself: This is what I want to write!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
From Cartagena to Bogotá, from Bogotá to Mexico City, and from Mexico City to Fort Lauderdale. Leaving behind our homeland hurts and it is at that time we draw from deep within our soul the strength to stand firm and continue, to look at the horizon and have the confidence to get where you want to go… I dreamed of speaking English, acting in soap operas so that my grandmother would see me on the screen, and traveling the world!
In the days that I lived in Colombia, access to bilingual schools was almost impossible for me or any young woman belonging to the working class. The salary of my mother’s nursing assistant job was very low and there were no resources for English classes or acting, much less for traveling far beyond my grandmother’s town… Those were very big dreams, yes, not impossible.
When I finished high school, we didn’t have the resources for me to enter the university either. So, from a very early age, I started working as a dance teacher, folklore dancer in hotels, extra in television commercials, and brand ambassador at events. And so life went by and those invisible threads of destiny put me in front of the people, the resources, and at the right times so that I could move towards my dreams, in the different cities in which I lived, until I got to where I am today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alexandrabenedetti.com
Image Credits
Oliver Olivella and Kisay Machacón
