TOnna is an anomaly, one day she feels like the poor daughter of a worker and a housewifeanother the bourgeois intellectual on the eighth floor. It is both, but it is always poised between the two worlds and it belongs to neither of them. Apparently she has emancipated herself from her family of origin, from poverty, from the ramshackle family vocabulary and from a violent mother, but when she sees herself as a child again, in the brown clinker block where she lived, she is not so sure.
Her mother Adriana is marked by depression and the fear of misfortunes promised by a ghostly being, Canuta, whom she met as a young girl. And misfortunes will come. While her husband, Nino, abandons his dream of becoming a footballer, works as a worker, fights with his companions for fairer living conditions, killing himself with fatigue. Anna grows up, watching as a spectator the life that passes until the tragedy that shakes her.
You’ll die tomorrow anyway by Antiniska PozziItalian teacher and poet, has the outburst of an intimate but also political book, which tells the story of the Seventies, a working-class family and the history that passes through it without asking permission. A coming-of-age novel, without the rhetoric of redemption.
Antiniska Pozzi was born in Milan. Translator of sixteenth-century texts during her studies in literature, today she teaches Italian in a public school. In addition to novels, he writes poetry and plays. (photo Desiderio Puleo)
Let’s start with the title, strong but democratic. How did you choose it?
It was inspired by a graffiti on the wall, which actually exists in the suburbs of Milan. It goes like this: «Home, car, work / you die tomorrow anyway». It has always made me think, it refers to consumerism, capitalism, our value system. The second part is very democratic, yet we have put death on the margins of public discourse, perhaps we feel eternal because we are on social media. A few decades ago the topic was less taboo than today.
The novel is inspired by some personal events. What is there about her in the protagonist Anna?
I gave her my view of the world. He always asks himself questions, he stops to think about what happens, even the smallest things, and the people he meets.
La Canuta is a very powerful narrative figure. Where does it come from and what does it represent?
It is the transfiguration of stories I heard as a young girl. It is as if I had given name, body and gaze to the supernatural that has always existed in popular folklore, but also in the magical gaze of children.
This specter appears several times, to different characters. Could fear be a form of family inheritance?
I think so. The questions that Anna asks herself during her training never find a definitive answer, as is right. There also remains in her a somewhat fearful view of the future and this is a legacy inherent in human beings. We don’t know what will happen to us, neither in life nor in death.
Tomorrow you die by Antiniska Pozzi anyway, HarperCollins240 pages, €18
Anna always feels out of place. Why were you interested in exploring this discomfort?
It is the crux from which the story is born. As teenagers we all feel this way, but often this feeling persists into adulthood, especially in reference to social classes. Anna has changed completely, but continues to try to pigeonhole herself into this or that category. Coming from a world where we have experienced the feeling of lack and instead finding ourselves in a place where nothing is missing makes us feel like we are in a middle ground. You don’t know what you have become. The solution? Accept being on the border.
Is identity multitude?
It is always in transformation, depending on the age of life, it is the result of many worlds. But we always strive to find its core. There are those who never find it, perhaps because they don’t have the tools to investigate themselves.
It’s like this for Anna too. Is it only half saved?
Yes, there is no real redemption for her. Perhaps the only possible one is the one at the end of the novel.
Where does Adriana’s anger, Anna’s mother, come from?
It’s more about unhappiness, discomfort and discomfort. Adriana has no tools to understand her own story and accept it, like her daughter does. He doesn’t fully understand his path in life and where he is at.
Anna falls in love for the first time with Ludovico, the son of wealthy people. What do you see in him?
It is the discovery of a universe. He belongs to a bourgeois family, which expresses itself with a different language, which gives her a glimpse of possibilities never contemplated. She is attracted to him and like all teenagers she wants to get away from the known world.
The story also focuses on the language of Anna’s parents, a mixture of dialect terms, incorrect or invented words. Was Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon an inspiration?
I read it in middle school and reread it several times. It fascinated me right away. For me it was a discovery and a revelation that the intimate language of a family unit could have literary dignity.
