THEthe motivation behind it Barbara Belzini, journalist and film criticto, to summon 11 male and female writers (with a prevalence of the former) asking them to compete with «the only creature in the world who can change your mood with a single wordwith a ring of the telephone”, is, as she herself summarizes, “more environmental than personal”. The world, explains the curator of Honoramother-Stories from the country rich in mothers and poor in children, “it continues to send us an ideal image, refusing to accept the possibility that there are inadequate, tiring, judging mothers, mothers to whom you have to mother.”
From there began the search “for friends who would lend me their lucid gaze” writes Belzini in the preface. Among those looks (Chiara Bersani, Esther Bondì, Stella Poli, Alessandra Carnaroli, Carlo Martello, just to name a few), there is also Nadia Busato.
His story, a life on the skin, which is an investigation of the body and its scars, starts from tattoos. The incipit is: «Having adolescence is like having a quiescent, annoying virus». Okay, it’s a bit of a hellish age. But even a disease…
Adolescence is an upheaval that changes your brain and body, causes mutations, leaves wounds that you carry with you for your whole life. But it is not a disease, I see it rather as a computer virus, a system bug. I have two teenage children, there is a 20 month difference between them, he is 14, she is 16. From one day to the next I no longer recognized them. They go to bed and they are still your children, “Mom I love you”… then they wake up and you see the murderous fire in their eyes. They are inhabited by an unstoppable desire for transgression, by the desire to assert themselves through something forbidden. The tattoo responds to that desire.
Nadia Busato is a journalist and writer. She made her debut with the novel If you don’t like it, say it (Mondadori 2008), followed by I’ll never be anyone’s good wife (SEM, 2018) and Factory Girl (SEM, 2022). (Photo: Ilaria Vidaletti)
In his story, the tattoo, from a gesture of rebellion, adherence to tribal codes, then translates into pure conformism. Everyone gets tattoos, so much so that she invents a tattoo academy promoted by ministers.
The generation before me didn’t get tattoos. Outlaws, war veterans, those who had had extraordinary experiences were tattooed. For my generation, I was born in 1979, getting a tattoo certainly represents a form of rebellion, but so widespread that it loses its original meaning. We are now so steeped in pop culture that we have ended up confusing the plans. My generation has a serious fault: we have surrendered to entertainment and conformism. We have lost the sense of what it means to have a cultural impact.
Is there a relationship between that mark on the skin and the cesarean section scar on the mother’s belly?
My mother’s story is that of medical trauma due to my birth. From the idea of the sense of self absolved by the tattoo I landed there, on another sign. Untouchable, unapproachable. My mother’s body has always been forbidden to me, that scar was both the symbol of pain, but also proof of a great desire to have me, to give birth to me. But while I write down what happened to her in obstetric violence, she, convinced as she is that giving birth must be painful, thinks: “The surgeon does what he has to do.” There is a big gap between our generations, I am the first in my family to have children without being married, and the first to get a tattoo.
Perhaps also the first to question the legitimacy of the non-desire to have children.
The issue is political: the discussion about the demographic winter clashes with the reality of an overpopulated world. Of course passports have different validity, we see this every day. The issue of managing citizenship and the rights of people born in Italy is still to be discussed. We should stop defining different categories of children according to different degrees of law, because creating such strong discrimination, starting from childhood, can only produce generations of very angry teenagers. Not without reason.
Onoralamadre edited by Barbara Belzini, Lowlands/ Terrebasse editionsXII+156 pages, €16
The 11 stories of Honor your mother they say that motherhood is not a walk in the park, whichever way you look at it, as mothers and daughters.
Motherhood is a complex journey, and the book does not keep quiet about it: the stories deal with illness, economic difficulties, fatigue, an unresponsive body, loneliness. Among the merits of this collective work I believe there is the production of a somewhat unmentionable thought, but which refers to real concerns, to urgent themes. Many scenarios open up regarding parenting and the area of discussion also concerns men. Which the book rightly does not exclude.
She concludes: «Time enters our lives through the skin».
As a daughter, I missed the caresses. So when I became a mother I promised myself to always guarantee them. Because tactile sensations, communication that does not pass through words, offer a different time in life. Among the things that scare me most about old age is the possibility of no longer being hugged.