Disability, stories of girls without limits

Not disabled but people with disabilities

“Some words that we normally use, such as able-bodied or disabled, are wrong, and I understood it only by writing this children’s book,” says Fasola. It is not a question of language but of how we look at disability, when we see it. «In our society, disability tends to precede the person: that is a disabled person, an amputee, a Down. And instead “that” is one person who has a disability such as is also blond or has glasses».

Girls beyond disability: Vittoria Bueno

“It doesn’t mean that every child with a disability should set extraordinary goals for himself”, explains Fasola, “Only that he can do it, that disability is not an obstacle”. On the contrary. What it looks like a weakness can become a strength.

The story of the stuttering singer proves it John Paul Larkinwho found in music a way to express himself not using words, and invented a musical genre, between scat and jazz.

Or the story of Armless dancer Vittoria Bueno. Born in the extreme south of Minas Gerais, Brazil, she has learned since she was born to do anything with her feet. And so she even felt an advantage in her artistic career: dance requires strong, resistant and elastic feet. And who more than her?

Amber Sabatini

Again, «disability does not lead to failure but can lead, in lifeto a change of perspective. As in the case of Amber Sabatini, young promise of the middle distance who, after the loss of a leg, has reinvented itself. As an amputee she couldn’t run the middle distance? You have decided to switch to speed (ie the only Paralympic specialty for the “athletes with prosthetic limbs” category).

He did the same, in a sense Ludwig van Beethoven: «Completely deaf, he couldn’t be the great concert artist his father dreamed of. He was the greatest composer of all time ».

But that of change of perspective on life it is a path that not only young people with disabilities can take but their parents too. Mothers and fathers who, like all mothers and fathers, dream of the best for their children. It could be, then, that there is a different “better” to dream about.

Frida Bollani

Another of the female stories that Giacomo Fasola tells in his book is that of Frida Fiore Dulcinea Bollani Magoni, daughter of pianist Stefano Bollani and singer Petra Magoni. She has been visually impaired since birth but she has a «superpower», as Fasola calls it for her young readers. That is absolute pitch, the ability to recognize exactly the frequency of a note without a tuning fork or other references of any kind. Frida started playing the piano when she was two years old and at 7 she, after an essay, she went so far as to tell her mother about her «If I hadn’t had the gift of blindness I could not have interpreted the music so well». His debut album is titled First tour and has a cover written in Braille.