SortToria of a good girl It is a courageous book as few. The author, Arianna Farinelli, could write about violence against women and gender prejudices in an essay or in a novel. He had the credentials to do so: he is politologist, university professor, novelist. Instead he chose the Memoir, putting his personal history at the service of these themes. True, without fiction. The result is a powerful book, which speaks to the heart, not an intimate gossip, but a book of political and social value.
Forty -nine years old, two children aged 18 and 21, who has been living in New York for a quarter of a century, where he taught international relationships at City University, also dealing with gender theories and feminism. At the moment he is dedicating himself to writing. After the American Gothic novel (Bompiani), In this Memoir Farinelli tells his story as a child who grew up in Rome in via Prenestinain an extreme periphery where the roads do not even have the sidewalks. He senses that the study is the way to salvation. Thanks to the support of the family, he attends the classical high school in Rome where, however, he lives on his skin male violence and prejudices of peers. After the university, he takes the opportunity of a doctorate to New York on the fly, where he meets Jackscion in the career of a rich American family.
As in a fairy tale, Arianna finds herself living in the heart of Manhattan. The dream crumbles when the husband, often on the road, leaves her to get alone between the difficulties of two motherhood, the study and then the work. And after 16 years, he leaves with another. “I was a broken wedding, a monk career, the children still to be raised and a future to be rethought,” he writes. For the umpteenth time, he rolls up his sleeves and travels a new way, looking for herself. With an ironic and ruthless writing like that of Annie ErnauxFarinelli tells us that “gender prejudices have no passport, social class, religion”, there are in Rome as in New York. And that there is still a long way to go to defeat them.
Arianna Farinelli lives in the United States and has taught for ten years at the City University of New York. Among his publications, American Gothic (Bompiani) and the last Americans (Mondadori). @Margherita Mirabella
Women in the life of Arianna Farinelli
She writes: my story is the result of the history of women who came before me, those of my family who worked a lifetime because I lived in a different way from them. Who am I?
My great -grandmother, who had the Nazis at home during the war and stolen food at night to give it to those who needed it. My paternal grandmother, victim of domestic violence: when the grandfather leaves, she does not discourage and opens a newsstand. My mother, who managed to become the owner of the bar where she worked thanks to the legacy of an aunt. And when they ask her the lace, it opposes, but undergoes armed robberies. When I was a girl, in my neighborhood feminism did not arrive. But throughout my life, I had the example of these women in the eyes.
In his Memoir he talks about an episode of sexual violence suffered by a very young age. Was it difficult to write?
Yes. There were moments when writing I felt physical pain. I wanted to bring my testimony to help other people. Violence is not only personal history, it is part of a collective story that concerns women and who should not be repeated. As a girl I was very ashamed of what had happened to me. I was ashamed, and not he who had committed him. It was years in which there was no talk because it was feared that they were not believed but, as I discovered by my friends, they too were victims of abuse. As Ernaux says, you think he is the only one to feel ashamed. The company guilty of you because you had the miniskirt, because you came out late in the evening, because you drank and “you were looking for it”. But a male if he is drunk doesn’t risk rape.
“History of a good girl” by Arianna Farinelli, Einaudi208 pages, € 17.50
“I got married before I know what I wanted from life,” he writes. Is it a common mistake?
It is. It gives rise to the idea of romantic love that saves you and gives satisfaction. It is thought that it is the fate of women to marry and have children. When you actually don’t know you at all. Thus you lose your identity.
She landed in America looking for a better world. How did it go?
I thought the United States were an emancipated, more equal society. Instead in the world of work I saw women with the master’s degree on works that did not interfere with her husband’s career. Women who after the birth of the children do not apply for promotions because they know they have care work on his shoulders. For a long time, my career was also accessory to that of my ex -husband. In the US, the more women return to work after a pregnancy, but the feminicides are in proportion to the highest population, also for the greater availability of weapons. In 2022 the Supreme Court abolished the right to abortion, in some states: my daughter has less rights than in the times when her American grandmother was young. There are lights and shadows in both countries. We of Generation X we deluded ourselves on gender equality. If you compare yourself with friends and colleagues, you find out that there is still a lot to do.
To whom does it turn with this book?
I wanted to put my experience in the service of other women, I think especially of the young and the generation to which my daughter belongs. But I would like to be read by men too: to look at things with our eyes.
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