D.to 2020 to date, while the Coronavirus produced cracks in our lives, thousands of Italians have tried to repair them by writing: stories, fables, letters, poems, but above all autobiographical narratives. A choral tale of Covid-19an encyclopedia of feelings and sensations, a heritage for the historians of the future and above all a reworking of the collective trauma that hit us.
Covid must be told
Why, as he said Gabriel Garcia Marquez: «Life is not what you lived, but what you remember and how you remember it to tell it“. From North to South, students, housewives, retirees, employees in smart working or those who have lost their jobs, nurses, relatives of the deceased and survivors have told these two years. Over a thousand registered writings, not counting the spontaneous ones, the testimonies collected by the media, the books, the diaries kept in the drawer or the stories published on social networks.
We are only talking about those edited (and certainly will be lacking) in most cases by women: teachers, psychologists and librarians who have launched collections all over the country, to then edit and publish them. «Marilena Capellino and I firmly believe in writing as a healing toolwe experienced it on ourselves – says Sara Degasperi – and the project arose spontaneously ».
Indeed it should be written
Business woman working on desk. Business and technology concept.
Both are teachers and collaborate with the Lua, the Free University of Autobiography of Anghiari: in March 2020 they propose to launch a national call to collect autobiographical texts. The Lua accepts and exploits its network of contacts. 830 people answeredsome send even more writings, for a total of 1174, which after being published on social media, converge in the book Writing about oneself in the time of the Coronavirus.
The two curators not only give a personalized answer to everyone, but also analyze the origin, type and theme (even if the data are partial): over 70 percent of the authors are under the age of 20 – numerous schools participated – 67, 5 percent are women and 62 percent come from the North. Most of the writings are reflections and thoughtsautobiographical stories in the third person, fairy tales, beautiful letters from children to empty schools or to the virus, diaries, poems and other materials.
The themes are the onset of the virushow it changed our lives, the negative feelings it generated, but also the opportunities and awareness it opened up. The epidemic thus becomes an occasion for self-analysismade even more powerful by autobiography, a method also used by psychologists to rework trauma.
Like gold in the Kintsugi technique
«The sheet contains and repairs – the authors write – and on it the writing heals, soothes, anchoring us and putting us back together like the gold of Kintsugi, the Japanese technique of repairing ceramic objects with gold paste». “Writing fixes me,” says Bruna, nurse. “What will remain of this quarantine? – asks Savino Dicorato -. Perhaps less than what I could crystallize in these pages ».
It is mainly in the Northmost affected in the first waves of the virus, than autobiography is used: numerous courses organized by individual teachers, small associations (a Mantua club transforms a yoga course into a writing course through social media), universities and administrations. In Seriate, on the outskirts of Bergamo, they carry out a multimedia project that lasted two years. In 2020 an autobiographical writing workshopmeetings to tell one’s own experience and train one’s memory, video interviews, theatrical dramatizations of the interviews, collect elementary school material and more.
In 2021 they present everything to the community for a whole week, entitled The courage to be reborn listening to the sound of the thoughts of the people from Seriatesi. The idea, which started from the library and the Culture sector of the Municipality, was immediately that of creating a “multimedia shared diary”. A permanent and always open heritage.
«I will never forget March 25 – Daniela Cialdella says in a video interview -. I was intubated and that day they removed the tube. I was able to breathe on my own, it was like being reborn ».
Pain recognized
Even in the Seriana Valley, the epicenter of the Bergamo contagion, libraries acted as a catalyst. The idea of a autobiographical workshop comes to Cristina Paruta, librarian of Ranica. She is an expert in the collection of territorial memory, involving the Lua teacher, Matilde Cesaro, and the coordinator of the Seriana Valley library network, Alessandra Mastrangelo, in 2020 she manages to get 41 libraries to join the project.
Participants first learn to tell themselves and then to collect the stories of others, how to interview and interact with pain. The curators follow the project step by step, suggest, edit, until the book comes out last December I would like to remember forever. Remembering in the Seriana Valley. Telling the time of Covid-19.
A curative exchange that in some cases went beyond attending the course, creating new relationships and contaminations. Maria Luisa Artifoni, 57 years old, housewife, she lost both her husband and father to the virus. “After two years I keep wondering if I have done everything to help them – he says -. Not everyone around me wants to listen and when I was given the opportunity to tell myself I felt relief, like a river that is released. I started keeping a diary, I also talk to my husband, it makes me feel good. Of course, the wound is still open and it hurts a lot“.
Maurizio Milesi, 28, photographer, in the days of the lockdown took a huge sheet of paper, placed himself in the center and drew the fundamental values of life around him. «At that moment I didn’t even have one – he-he writes. I felt a lot of anxiety, but it was also a new beginning. For some time I have wanted to develop a social photography project: I had felt relief when I told myself, now I wanted to make myself useful ». So from being an interviewee he became an interviewer and was born Epicentro, a photographic book in which the people portrayed have told their stories. Once again in autobiographical form.
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