“Paper women in Sicily. Itineraries in the footsteps of women writers” by Marinella Fiume (Il Palindromo – preface by Fulvia Toscano): interview with the author
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by Massimo Maugeri
The trip to Sicily is not just any trip, it can never be just a “physical trip” – we read on the sheet of this book – . It is first and foremost a literary journey.
To propose this very particular and enjoyable literary journey, on Paper women in Sicily (this, the title of the volume we are talking about) is Marinella Fiumewhich takes us around the island offering us precious itineraries in the footsteps of the writers.
Let’s discuss it together…
– Dear Marinella, let’s start from the beginning. Tell us something about the genesis of this book. How was “Paper Women in Sicily” born?
The book was born from the “La Sicilia delle donne” festival of which I am the artistic director with Fulvia Toscano and which has reached its fourth edition. One edition was dedicated to the discovery of Sicilian women writers or those who in some way resided in Sicily for a more or less long time and made it the main object of their inspiration and narration. And in fact the book has a preface by Fulvia Toscano who explains its genesis by inserting it in a festival to which was added “La Calabria delle donne” directed by Mariangela Preta.
– How did you go about choosing the itineraries to take into consideration and the writers to involve?
In truth, they are the ones who chose themselves thanks to the original method that I would define as the “bottom up approach”, i.e. from below, through a simple call that involved organisations, municipalities, foundations, universities, associations, individual scholars or enthusiasts who spontaneously wanted to join to rediscover their territory through more or less well-known and often forgotten women writers. The places in Sicily on our itinerary are therefore those where they took us, the writers are those who they made us know or rediscover.
– The first chapter is entitled “Journey to Sicily. From Goethe to Freud to foreign travellers”. Why start with Goethe? And what is the reason for the reference to Freud?
Mine is also a narrative, emotional, psychological itinerary: the journey of those who see Sicily, land of Beauty, with new eyes, as if it were the first time, but from this journey they will receive many of those emotions, they will encounter many those experiences that, when he returns home, at the end of the journey, he will no longer be the same as he left, the Journey will have become an initiatory journey, just like Goethe’s and he will have learned to know himself more deeply by exploring the meanders of his Psyche and bringing them to light (Freud). My Guide offers the “nomadic alternative”, to quote Bruce Chatwin, to those who are not satisfied with the usual “disposable” travel and in this sense there is no difference between going to Patagonia or Sicily…
– Who are the writers that readers will meet in the pages of this book? There is also a thick section dedicated to biographical notes…
Well-known and lesser-known writers, from small villages and capital cities, many of them “invisible” because they have never been told, ignored or forgotten: they range from Goliarda Sapienza in Catania, to Jolanda Insana in Messina, to Mariannina Coffa in Noto, to Francesca In the Mancusio in Caronia, in Mariarita Sgarlata in Syracuse, in Giuliana Saladino in Palermo, in Antonietta Rosa Raso in Lipari, in Antonella Maggio in Sambuca, in the Author of the Odyssey in Trapani, etc… To each of which is dedicated in the Appendix a biographical profile signed by the authors who wrote it.
– Is there a particular anecdote, among the many present in the book, that you could tell (or even just mention) for the benefit of our readers?
A curiosity. Among the writers we have the author of a travel diary that we managed to find fortunately: Francesca (known as Nella) Mirabile Mancusio with her “Two old ladies and a cat with an Appia at the Arctic Circle”. She was the first in Italy to obtain a driving license with the «certificate of suitability to drive cars with internal combustion engines» issued on 5 June 1913 by the Prefecture of Palermo, before Ernestina Prola from Turin, considered for a long time the first woman with a driving license. ‘Italy. Her car, an Isotta Fraschini given to her by her father in 1909, when she was just sixteen years old, together with the original of her driving license and all the driving accessories were donated by her to the National Automobile Museum in Turin and on permanent display there. In short, Guinness-worthy Sicilian writers!
– The volume contains in attachment the Map of Paper Women in Sicily with the indication of the cities and places connected to the biographies of the writers. What is it about?
The importance of the place is fundamental, it is from the place that everything is born, social relationships, micro-stories are born, and micro-stories make History; the very term “glocal” tells us that the global includes the local, the French historian Fernand Braudel spoke of Geohistory and taught us that there is no History without Geography. Places are not just pieces of land, they are memory, identity, horizontal relationships between the living and vertical relationships with the dead. Even if you leave Sicily you will never stop being from here and some authors, wherever they have gone to live, continue to talk about the places where their narrative universe was formed. Hence the choice, in agreement with the publisher, Palindromo di Palermo, to accompany the book with a map, a literary map where the names of the writers in the various locations are inserted.
– Thank you very much, Marinella. In closing, I take this opportunity to point out that the excellent preface of the volume is signed by the aforementioned Fulvia Toscano (whom we salute).
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The book description: “Paper women in Sicily. Itineraries in the footsteps of women writers” by Marinella Fiume (Il Palindromo)
The trip to Sicily is not just any trip, it can never be just a “physical trip”. It is first and foremost a literary journey.
In the pages of this book, one story after another, a narrative atlas is composed that holds together the memories of women (and men) and those of places: itineraries that lead us to more or less known locations on the trail of more or less famous but above all of forgotten writers, Sicilian or foreign, who felt all the charm of the island and sometimes decided to stay there forever. A different guide for a new experience of Sicily.
The volume contains the Map of paper women in Sicily with the indication of the cities and places connected to the biographies of the writers.
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Marinella Fiume, born in Noto (Sr), graduated in Classics, PhD in Italian Language and Literature; already a teacher of literature in high schools, he collaborated for a decade with the “University specialization school for teaching in high schools” of the University of Catania. She was mayor of the municipality of Fiumefreddo di Sicilia (Ct) for two legislatures. Among her publications: Arcane Sibyl. Mariannina Coffa (2000); Celeste Aida A Sicilian story (2008); the curatorship of Sicilian biographical dictionary (2006) and the collection of short stories The memory of grandparents (2021); Fiefdom of the sea. The season of women (2010); Esoteric Sicily (2013); From mother to daughter. Life of a country healer (2014); The bedlam of heretics (2017); Ammagatrìci (2019); Capizzi’s Ciociare (2020); Streuse. Strange and foreign in Sicily (2023). She with Fulvia Toscano is the creator and artistic director of the “La Sicilia delle donne” Festival.
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