The Homeland of Itzurza, the women of the novel by Alessio Vagaggini

The Homeland of Itzurza (La Patria di Itzurza in Italian) is the first novel by Alessio Vagaggini. The book has been published by Chance Edizioni in 2021.

The History, the stories, and women. The first has a strong and authoritarian voice, the seconds play a secondary role in the wider history, the thirds just get lost on the way.

But this book is not (just) about the events of a specific era, this is a novel. The three elements converge all along with the tale around four women, the main characters of the novel: Itzurza, Maria, Elena, and Clara. These women – so different between them – will face their identities and their choices in a Spain stuck between the future and the memory of the recent Franco-era which is well-rooted in the society.

The first word of the title – Homeland – indicates the relevance of places. What is the relevance of the location for this novel? Why did you choose Spain?

I have always thought that Spain is a perfect location for a novel because it is a country with a solid cultural connotation and characterized by a series of unresolved conflicts. From the independence issues of Basque and Catalans passing through the nostalgics of Franco’s dictatorship, which still produce effects in today’s society. Spain has always been deeply involved in these terms. This tension reflects well in the interior torments of the women of the novel.

Alessio Vagaggini - la Patria di Itzurza
Alessio Vagaggini - author of the Homeland of Itzurza (la Patria di Itzurza)

The main characters are all women, tell us more about them

“The Homeland of Itzurza” focuses on four female figures, four ordinary women in their lives but unique for the message that each of them wants to launch. The historical context is the background to see these lives living so differently from each other. Itzurza is the archetype of a woman who tries to impose herself in a highly male-dominated society. Through male activities such as war, she will enter a terrorist organization (ETA) and play a leading role.
On the other hand, Maria and Clara have a more “feminine” nature given their closeness to the arts, to the care of their physical appearance, to seduction; many points in common unite them, precisely because it is a mother and a daughter in conflict with each other precisely because they are incredibly similar. Indeed, Maria affirms herself thanks to her talent for acting, becoming the most famous actress in the Kingdom of Spain and, it is said, even reaching the ears of Francisco Franco. On the other side, we have Clara, whose iconic beauty is the first captured aspect, which represents the first pillar in her “rebellion”. The revolt against all traditional values, atheism, the imposition of her excessive sensuality represent the means to break all patterns in a world where she is a prisoner.
Mother and daughter impose themselves on the male world not through an “action” but rather as a “representation” – one with their own art of acting, the other of seduction – by lulling themselves into that position of domination. Still, they constantly chase something giving them a never-ending state of tension. Only the third woman of the family, Elena, will be capable of going over these inner and outer conflicts.

 

The book is a mosaic of scenes. Is there any you prefer among these?

I tried to make some pieces of the book “cinematic” to allow the reader to identify better with the events. The scenes I care about are the crisis of Matias, Elena’s husband. Due to his wife’s mysterious disease, he comes to the brink of madness like in an Almodovar movie or the dialogue between Itzurza and Miguel in prison. I deliberately inspired this latter by “I Malavoglia” novel when they greet Padron Ntoni at the hospital.
However, the story revolves around the dialogue between Itzurza and Clara, the piece I wrote with the most attention to detail. Here are two girls who are forged by very different life experiences and values. To tell the truth, I really imagined their meeting in the autumn of 2018, when I was in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid and saw these two girls, apparently very different, talking to each other at a bar, in the midst of great confusion. In addition to being the keystone of the novel, I have articulated the foundation of the plot around this scene, which, not by chance, comes to it after a long climax that begins from the very beginning.

Thank you very much, Alessio, both for your time and for the chance of going deeper into the novel with us. And as there is much more to talk about from this book, we will soon talk about it in a Facebook / Instagram live on our channels.

The Homeland of Itzurza (“La Patria di Itzurza”, 2021, Chance Edizioni) is available – to date, only in Italian – at the following links:

La patria di Itzurza

Livia Corbelli and Filippo Paggiarin

la Patria di Itzurza

Nüshu: the silent voice of women

“Every time I get on the bus from Guilin to Jiangyong, I look out the window and think of the power of the yuánfèn 缘分 (“fateful coincidence”) that led me to feel at home in such a remote and unexplored place.”

Thus, began my “physical” journey to discover that corner of the world which, without knowing it, represented precisely that piece of the puzzle I had been looking for for some time. Jiangyong, and in particular the village of Puwei, represented a perfect combination of my love for China, for Chinese people and for its millenary culture: the sublimation of ideals that I have admired for years but which I have rarely found enclosed in one place.

My “spiritual” journey started in a university classroom, that place that we often consider only a container of abstract notions, that room from which we can’t wait to escape to give concreteness to the words of the study manuals. Thanks to the passionate stories about China that the Professor told us, it is precisely within those classes that I had the great fortune to be able to start traveling with the mind and fall in love with a country even before seeing it live. Moreover, it is precisely within those walls that I heard about nüshu 女书 for the first time, when my mind immediately decided that I should further explore that topic and that I would be passionate about it. And so it was.

“Nüshu: the writing that gave women a voice” was another great adventure, which, looking back, allowed me to reflect on many details of my experiences, to deepen the details of this splendid cultural phenomenon and to realize the beauty of many places and many people. The idea of this book was born about two years ago, when in summer 2018 I talked about nüshu with Professor Zhao Liming, inside her study at the Tsinghua University of Beijing: I immediately thought that those wonderful stories could not remain just for me.

“the Nüshu – the script that gave voice to women”, by Giulia Falcini, CSA Editrice

WHAT IS NÜSHU?

Nüshu literally means “women’s writing” in Chinese. Its pronunciation is based on the local dialect of the villages located around the county of Jiangyong, in the province of Hunan, in southern China. The female characters are around 396, each of which corresponds to a syllable of the dialect. Unlike Chinese, therefore, these ideograms transcribe sounds, not meanings and to each of them correspond to many Chinese characters. Therefore, the importance of the context to understand its meaning is evident. It’s difficult to establish a precise date for the creation of nüshu (which most probably occurred around 1700) this issue on its own is the subject of constant debate among scholars. Female writing was certainly born in response to the patriarchal society of the time, which inevitably placed women in condition of submission. A fundamental aspect that led to the birth of this language is the fact that the girls could not attend school, therefore, to stay in touch with each other, especially once they got married, they invented their own system for communicating. Nüshu also represented a way to escape from the overwhelming everyday life, a parallel world in which women took refuge, where they could find understanding and where they could externalize their suffering in some way. It is no coincidence that, according to the legend, nüshu was created by a girl from the village of Jingtian who was chosen as emperor’s concubine. The woman was not well received in the court and loneliness, and nostalgia for her relatives led her to create a new writing, different from that of men, to give vent to their thoughts and make them reach their families.

Nüshu is “a language of women and for women” because it was from them that it was conceived and brought into the world. However, it is important to emphasize that the female language was never a secret script, rather it was men who were not interested in it because they thought that everything that was created by women was not something appreciable.

In fact, if we consider the very small places in which nüshu culture was born, lived and continues to be handed down, it is unthinkable that the male part of society had never noticed those rhomboid characters that covered the objects made by the ladies ; and it is impossible to believe that men had never heard the melodies that echoed in the alleys of the villages. Historical and social events have led to a great change in the importance attributed to the female writing: men became interested in nüshu, in the county they speak proudly of it as a symbol that characterizes their city and many of them are directly involved in promoting this phenomenon. And it is no coincidence that today, in the villages, as soon as women start singing, everyone stops to listen to them, including men: they do not do this out of duty or reverence, but because they are really captured by these beautiful sounds.

And it is precisely the songs that act as vectors of the most intimate, deep and confidential female feelings: they deal with every type of theme, from happy moments to the most disheartening ones.

PEOPLE: THE VITAL BREATH OF THE TRADITIONS

“The places of nüshu have taught me that you can be rich even without running water at home and that humility and goodness are the basis of every great person.”

Although the characters represent the most fascinating aspect of this culture, it is only by visiting and experiencing the villages that orbit around Jiangyong that one can realize a great truth: nüshu is not only a language, but a cultural phenomenon. In fact, its existence is closely linked to that of local traditions, popular festivities and local people.

In my book there are many characters who have lived and handed down nüshu: Chen Xinfeng and Hu Yanyu are certainly among the names that the reader will not be able to forget. The great welcome they give me every time in their home in the village of Puwei, has allowed me to get to the heart of their culture, to perceive how it is lived nowadays, to listen to many stories, to register the colors , the sounds and gestures of what is not just a language, but much, much more. The two – mother and daughter – retain the typical traits of women who over three centuries ago had the strength to create a world parallel to the one that was destroying them. It is difficult to express in words the goodness that characterizes them, but it is their complicity that most impresses anyone who observes them while intoning the nüshu songs or when, delicately, they trace the ideograms -symbols of female resilience.

They always welcome me very warmly in their home in the village of Puwei, and thanks to them I was able to get to the very heart of the nüshu culture, seeing how this culture is experienced today;  I also listened to many stories, I recorded many colors, sounds and gestures of what is not only a language, but much more. The two ladies- mother and daughter – have the same traits typical of women who over three centuries ago had the strength to create a world parallel to the one that was destroying them. It is difficult to put into words the goodness that characterizes the two women, but it is their complicity that most astonishes anyone who observes them while intoning the nüshu songs or when, delicately, they trace the ideograms that are the symbol of female resilience.

A friend once told me that “we are born in a place, but in the course of life we find our places of the heart where we know we can always return”. I believe I have found mine, what I miss every time I’m not there.

Giulia Falcini

A brief summary of Cottarelli’s “Seven Sins of the Italian Economy”

I have recently finished reading the book “the seven sins of the Italian economy” published by Feltrinelli and written by the Italian almost-premier Carlo Cottarelli. For those who don’t know him, he is an Italian economist and former Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund.

 

 

In the book, Cottarelli describes seven “sins” of the Italian economy, responsible of slowing down the country’s economic growth. I have found the book of particular relevance for both its objectivity and for the author’s clarity of thought. These seven sins can be divided into two categories, the long-standing ones and those more recent. Those that are within the Italian economy’s DNA make most of the list, these are: tax evasion, corruption, slow justice, excessive bureaucracy and the disparity between the North and the South. On the other hand, the most recent ones are: the fast aging of the population and the difficulty of Italy in adapting to the common currency. In this brief article I will only focus on the first sin, the one on tax evasion.

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