QUete are the letters that the journalist Donatella Stasio and Gianluca exchanged before writing Love in cagepublished by Castelvecchi. Gianluca was arrested when he was 17 and was held for 11 years. His is a story of drugs, of violence. But it is above all a story of solitude. Now she is an entrepreneur. This exchange of letters makes it clear why his is a story that deserves to be read.
«Dear Gianluca, I still need your help. I agreed to write the book on love in cage, the right to affectivity and sexuality denied in prison. I would like to resume that thread, knot it with others to tell what it means, in the life of a human being to keep in a cage, together with the body, also the mind and heart, close everything with a double send and throw the key. Inside, but also outside the prison ».
“Dear Donatella, if only my story were useful, in some way, to awaken a feeling somewhere to someone, the game will be worth it. Over the years, this story has had so many versions all good to protect me, that today the great exercise lies almost in remembering the truth. That’s what I’m doing, remember with care. And I don’t feel any limit in doing it. Indeed, I am filling a great void made of fear and prejudices, silences and lies, which lasted too many years ».
Fiorenza Sarzanini (photo by Carlo Vangi Gilbert).
«Dear Gianluca, I understand and hear empathetically what you write to me but I will have to press on many aspects, which perhaps consider boring, annoying, and above all painfulperhaps too painful. Please always tell me if and how much this way of proceeding bumps you, it hurts you, when you don’t feel ready. This is the best way to proceed in the right direction ».
“Cage love” by Donatella Stasio (Castelvecchi).
«Dear Donatella, A word that often comes to mind is brutality. It is strange as already so young I felt brutalized by the events of my life and their nature, and how the imprisonment was the coup de grace, the blow that beheaded me. Today I sometimes say: “Fortunately I would have died otherwise”. In the end, somehow, someone or something of me, or in me, really died. But perhaps to give me a chance, to decide whether to be reborn or not. Life in prison was a kind of ritual made of deprivation and abuse and that thick pain I felt gave me on fire. I remember him well. Take this stuff out: maybe I can help you, but you can help me. Maybe it’s the right constellation, the right time to do it ».
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All articles by Fiorenza Sarzanini.