Mother’s Day, but not for them. Who are the “distant mothers”

The journalist’s new work is out, the result of a photo reportage on migrant women and their “white orphans”

RIMINI – There are mothers and children who have never celebrated Mother’s Day together. The book soon to be released (in June) collects their stories and testimonies “The Distant Mothers”published by People. To write it Stefania Prandi, journalist and photographer who has dedicated herself to issues of gender rights and violence for years.

“Each letter ends with ‘I love you, mother.’ The voice of Rosita Alexandrova, a 64-year-old teacher, breaks. Her lips quiver and she can’t hold back the tears as she talks about how she helps her students write to their distant mothers. Some don’t even come back for Christmas, and then the messages from their children become more heartfelt“.

from “The Long Mothers” by Stefania Prandi

The journalist’s new work explores the very harsh reality of migrant mothers who live for years away from their children, left in other countries, cared for by grandparents or husbands, while they find themselves in Italy for an often underpaid, irregular, exhausting job, even violent. In fact, they collect fruit and vegetables in the fields of the southern regions and are the women already met by Prandi in “Oro Rosso”, a photo reportage – which also became a book – winner of numerous international awards. In “The Distant Mothers” what is investigated – with a respectful eye and far from brazen voyeurism – is more their personal and intimate sacrifice, the sphere of affection that is missing, the consequences of a distant motherhood on the little ones and on the women themselves. The work is the result of reportage created with over 70 interviews with labourers, psychologists, historians, trade unionists, teachers in Romania, Bulgaria, Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia. It is a narrative book. The book is accompanied by a traveling photographic exhibition which will continue along the country in the coming months.

“Leaving their children in their countries of origin and living for years in the pain of absence is the fate of many Romanian and Bulgarian workers employed, often illegally, in harvesting the fruit and vegetables that arrive in our supermarkets. The same suffering experienced by these women weighs on their children, the “white orphans”, the thousands of children who grow up far from their mothers, entrusted to the care of grandmothers or other family members”.

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A text to reflect, on the occasion of Mother’s Day, on the right to motherhood and one’s family life, which is not taken for granted even today and not even here, near us. It is possible to pre-order it on the publisher’s website.

(The attached photos are part of the traveling exhibition of the same name as the book “The distant mothers”)