NoIt’s not easy to live authentically in a world that recognizes us only in the spectacle of ourselves, to the point of confuse us about what we are and what we are asked to be. This is one of the questions he poses to us Tangerinnthe beautiful debut novel by Emanuela Anechoum: a generational story about today’s twenty- and thirty-year-oldsan unprecedented point of view on those who come to our sated West from afar, a dedication of love to their roots, which for Mina, the protagonist of the story, as for the author, are mixed with a paternal echo of Morocco.
Emanuela Anechoum’s boys
Mina left the small town by the sea and went to live in London, according to her to feel free, but in reality to reflect on an inauthentic life and friendship, in the absence of her own identity. But the sudden death of her father forces her to travel backwards, first to Southern Italy, where the man had a bar on the beach, and then to Morocco, to understand something about herself. Written in the form of a long epistle, the novel has a wealth of ideas and a depth of analysis that makes it speak of literary maturity.
Who is Mina and what does she represent?
Mina is 26 years old, daughter of a Moroccan father and an Italian mother, she decides to leave the small town in which she was born and her family, unlike her sister Aisha, who instead continues her father’s business and also embraces his Muslim faith. She goes to England, she works as an assistant manager in a somewhat organic fast food restaurant. There she has a very toxic friendship with a girl named Liz, who rents her a room, and she’s basically lost. Everyone around her has strong, clear personalities, and she is eager to find herself and ends up losing herself more and more.
Emanuela Anechoum, 32 years old, born in Reggio Calabria, lives in Rome. You deal with publishing rights and have written for many magazines; Tangerinn it is his first novel. (Photo: Dario Nicoletti)
In his search for identity, he encounters various possibilities. One is offered by Liz herself. What type of life do you propose?
Liz is perfect on paper, but there’s no real intimacy with her. Mina puts Liz on a pedestal, but in this way she excludes that she really knows her. Liz represents the city, a superficial life that deludes us into becoming the best version of ourselves, in reality to hide our shadows. A life of good, sustainable, inclusive, ecological appearances, which seamlessly alternates the meditation course with exclusive travel, and which uses the right values to brand itself on social media. A life, in short, which presents itself as an alternative, progressive, but which is in reality perfectly inserted into a capitalist vision, with a sense of superiority. This is also a bit of the picture of my generation, and in Liz I did self-criticism, scattering pieces of myself in her. In this world Mina seeks contact, but she also avoids it, because she is afraid that he will see her vulnerability. This giving and withdrawing is her solitude.
The second possibility is represented by Aisha and the small provincial town. Can you describe it to us?
The country also has its difficulties, but the relationship that Mina establishes with her sister is saving for her. The sister, who chose to stay, did not make a surrendering choice, but a constructive one, full of future and desire to do. And in fact Aisha manages to create a community around her that makes her feel satisfied, despite working in her father’s bar, as Mina has never managed to do. In the small dimension, in fact, it is possible to create a network of real relationships. I, like Mina, am the one who left, I don’t live where I was born, and I’m left looking back on what I left behind. Like me, an entire generation has left for the cities. If we had all stayed together, could we have built an alternative? I wonder. Aisha represents for me a sliding door, the life that could have been.
The third world we explore is the paternal one of Morocco. What does he bring to the story?
Morocco represents a place narrated in the second degree: from Mina’s imagination and from the stories of her father himself. Mina goes to Morocco to put together the puzzle with the missing pieces on the life of this elusive father. Here you, with her Rashid, will have the opportunity to ask yourself: can I be loved as I am, without having to do or be anything for this to happen? My generation is dominated by the myth of self-realization, but now Mina tastes an alternative for a moment: can I choose to be simple and happy instead? And this thought comes to her in Morocco.
Tangerinn by Emanuela Anechoum, editions and/or, pages. 244, €18
For Mina, the search for identity becomes a search for authenticity. Does he always speak for an entire generation?
As I was saying, my generation feels it can be recognized because it is accomplished, but in this way we lose sight of relationships, as if we were chasing the ideal of becoming “the best version of ourselves”, a phrase that goes around a lot on social media. But in reality there is no better version of us. There are versions of us that we bring out with others, because we exist in the relationships we have. Authenticity, in the end, doesn’t even depend on the place, but on how true and vulnerable you can be with the people around you. Where you find these relationships is home.
What message do you want us to take home when reading the book?
I would have liked to bring Mina to safety, but in the end the conclusion for me is that there is no single way of living, of loving, of being in situations. Everyone must find their own.
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