Ilie Ruby's Blog
April 23, 2011
Ilie Ruby on Brava
Those inquisitive eyes and warm smile belong to a writer who, through her storytelling skills and poetic prose, has captured the imaginations of countless readers. Ilie is an award-winning writer and the author of The Language of Trees, and her artistic skills as a painter come through brilliantly on the printed page. Her novel, which has garnered well-deserved acclaim, weaves together themes of pain, healing, magical realism, and suspense. The Language of Trees is a unique, multi-layered story that shouldn’t be missed. Though Ilie is tremendously busy these days, I invited her to stop by Brava and I’m delighted that she accepted.
Please welcome Ilie as she shares a very personal story …
In the mountains of Honduras, it is said that the women are old by twenty. In 1990, I was 23, the token female in a 12-person film crew sent to document a family who survived on a tiny apron of land on the side of a mountain. It had been a rough trip to say the least.
We’d spent weeks climbing through the rain forests of the western part of the Yucatan peninsula, exploring among the Mayan ruins with heavy packs strapped to our backs. We were looking for answers to age-old questions about the demise of the Maya civilization. With every step, I felt the same worry over my own survival, having inherited a severe form of arthritis that took down several women in my family by 50, and which already had me sidelined for long stretches throughout my childhood and teenage years. As far as I was concerned, my body was a thing to be fought.
Inside a mud-house, an old woman greeted me without lifting her eyes. Her arms reminded me of those of my grandmother, so thin one might mistake her as brittle, as incapable of withstanding the many seasons of disease and hunger that she had survived. My guide said this woman was 28, five years older than I was. Her four daughters and her young son stood beside her.
They began their day bent over hot stones, shoulder to muscled shoulder in the sweltering heat of the oven, their backs twitching under identical red threadbare dresses as they ground corn and pounded tortillas into the thin mountain air made soup-thick with soot. The woman's jaw clenched as she fed the fire, reaching dauntless into the oven, her face soaked with sweat, her hands blackened but unmarred. Her glossy dark hair was brushed and tied in ribbons made of the same red material as her dress, the same strips of cloth wrapped around the left ankle of her son. The ribbons would prevent him from falling through the front door which was tied to the entrance by another piece of red cloth, a token which tore grief apart into loveliness, which draped loveliness across every corner and door, around every wrist and ankle, a manner of insistence.
I marveled at the way that the universe could suddenly become one's home.... (more)
Those inquisitive eyes and warm smile belong to a writer who, through her storytelling skills and poetic prose, has captured the imaginations of countless readers. Ilie is an award-winning writer and the author of The Language of Trees, and her artistic skills as a painter come through brilliantly on the printed page. Her novel, which has garnered well-deserved acclaim, weaves together themes of pain, healing, magical realism, and suspense. The Language of Trees is a unique, multi-layered story that shouldn’t be missed. Though Ilie is tremendously busy these days, I invited her to stop by Brava and I’m delighted that she accepted.
Please welcome Ilie as she shares a very personal story …
In the mountains of Honduras, it is said that the women are old by twenty. In 1990, I was 23, the token female in a 12-person film crew sent to document a family who survived on a tiny apron of land on the side of a mountain. It had been a rough trip to say the least.
We’d spent weeks climbing through the rain forests of the western part of the Yucatan peninsula, exploring among the Mayan ruins with heavy packs strapped to our backs. We were looking for answers to age-old questions about the demise of the Maya civilization. With every step, I felt the same worry over my own survival, having inherited a severe form of arthritis that took down several women in my family by 50, and which already had me sidelined for long stretches throughout my childhood and teenage years. As far as I was concerned, my body was a thing to be fought.
Inside a mud-house, an old woman greeted me without lifting her eyes. Her arms reminded me of those of my grandmother, so thin one might mistake her as brittle, as incapable of withstanding the many seasons of disease and hunger that she had survived. My guide said this woman was 28, five years older than I was. Her four daughters and her young son stood beside her.
They began their day bent over hot stones, shoulder to muscled shoulder in the sweltering heat of the oven, their backs twitching under identical red threadbare dresses as they ground corn and pounded tortillas into the thin mountain air made soup-thick with soot. The woman's jaw clenched as she fed the fire, reaching dauntless into the oven, her face soaked with sweat, her hands blackened but unmarred. Her glossy dark hair was brushed and tied in ribbons made of the same red material as her dress, the same strips of cloth wrapped around the left ankle of her son. The ribbons would prevent him from falling through the front door which was tied to the entrance by another piece of red cloth, a token which tore grief apart into loveliness, which draped loveliness across every corner and door, around every wrist and ankle, a manner of insistence.
I marveled at the way that the universe could suddenly become one's home.... (more)
December 20, 2010
New article on cross-cultural parenting during the holidays in the New York Times Motherlode is here!
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/the-scents-and-tastes-of-home/
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/the-scents-and-tastes-of-home/
August 26, 2010
http://content.usatoday.net/dist/cust...
Haunting 'Language of Trees' takes root in folklore, mystery
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Ghost stories, at least in Hollywood, are often either comedies or horrors, but Ilie Ruby's haunting debut novel, The Language of Trees, borrows its spirits from the Seneca Indians.
The result is a literary, emotionally intense ghost story about family secrets and regrets.
Most of it is set in 2000. Most of its characters are not Senecas, but their folklore and spiritual powers propel the plot.
It's endowed with a strong sense of place: the real-life lakeside town of Canandaigua in upstate New York. In the novel, the spirits of the Senecas can still be heard if you know how to listen.
The plot revolves around the mysterious drowning of a boy in 1988, and how the guilt is borne, a dozen years later, by his family and other characters.
The novel is filled with stories like the one about how wolf packs were once as commonplace in Canandaigua as Indian burial grounds: "The wolves acted as protectors of the graves. When the graves began to be robbed and the artifacts disappeared, so did the wolves."
Ruby, who spent her childhood summers in Canandaigua, packs a lot into the plot: the dissolution of a marriage, the beginnings of another relationship, a kidnapping and shooting.
The plot lags a bit midway through, but never suffers from lack of lyrical images as the one of trees: "the most trusting of all creatures because they put their roots down in one place, knowing they'd be there for life."
Haunting 'Language of Trees' takes root in folklore, mystery
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Ghost stories, at least in Hollywood, are often either comedies or horrors, but Ilie Ruby's haunting debut novel, The Language of Trees, borrows its spirits from the Seneca Indians.
The result is a literary, emotionally intense ghost story about family secrets and regrets.
Most of it is set in 2000. Most of its characters are not Senecas, but their folklore and spiritual powers propel the plot.
It's endowed with a strong sense of place: the real-life lakeside town of Canandaigua in upstate New York. In the novel, the spirits of the Senecas can still be heard if you know how to listen.
The plot revolves around the mysterious drowning of a boy in 1988, and how the guilt is borne, a dozen years later, by his family and other characters.
The novel is filled with stories like the one about how wolf packs were once as commonplace in Canandaigua as Indian burial grounds: "The wolves acted as protectors of the graves. When the graves began to be robbed and the artifacts disappeared, so did the wolves."
Ruby, who spent her childhood summers in Canandaigua, packs a lot into the plot: the dissolution of a marriage, the beginnings of another relationship, a kidnapping and shooting.
The plot lags a bit midway through, but never suffers from lack of lyrical images as the one of trees: "the most trusting of all creatures because they put their roots down in one place, knowing they'd be there for life."
