On Saturday 29 June, at 6.00 pm, at the Brettii and Enotri Museum, the book by the Cosenza writer Ada Celico, “Femminota”, published by Efesto editions, will be presented
For the proven review of current book news “LibrinComune”, promoted by the municipal administration led by the Mayor Franz Caruso and conceived by the councilor delegated for Culture Antonietta Cozza, on Saturday 29 June, at 6.00 pm, at the Museo dei Brettii e degli Enotri, there will be presented the book by Cosenza writer Ada Celico, “Femminota”, published by Efesto editions.
The presentation of the volume, in the presence of the author, will be preceded by greetings from Mayor Franz Caruso. The poet Anna Petrungaro and the anthropologist Mauro Francesco Minervino will dialogue with Ada Celico. The presentation was moderated by Antonietta Cozza. Some passages from the book will be read by Federica Montanelli and Franco Araniti. “Femminota” is Ada Celico’s latest novel. As we read on the back cover, “The women described by Stefano D’Arrigo in “Horcynus Orca” are female.
They were women of trade and salt. Smugglers by necessity, they hid the precious mineral in the double lining of their clothes.” “In the courage, in the strong and well-built bodies, in the sense of freedom, in the effort of these women – states the author – I found my mother. She had powerful legs painted by Tamara De Lempicka. She is tall in stature, with hands as big as fans. She was like that. And she was my mother. Next to her body I looked and felt like a comma of a female too similar to my father’s normality. Even though he was tall, he was a delicate man.” In the novel Ada Celico brings together a catalog of very vivid memories that belong to her experience. The narration uses different registers.
From the epistolary form in some parts, with letters in which he reconstructs a relationship and dialogues with his mother and father, to the interweaving and succession of past and present, ending with the story of the impact that the autobiographical events have had and continue to have have on the choices, taste and values of today’s mature woman and writer. What Ada Celico writes about concerns not only her own history, that of her mother, her father, but also the history of Calabria. She regards literature with the glue of Horcynus Orca, an authentic monument of Italian literature in which the Femminote acquire identity and dignity.
And they acquire it through the artifice of writing. There are many women from Calabria and beyond who, despite not covering the role of Femminote and not living in the same area of Calabria, model the traits, behaviours, non-conformism, audacity and extraordinary strength of these legendary figures. In Ada Celico’s book, which will be presented as part of the “LibrinComune” initiative, this body of affective recomposition and resignification is delivered to us with a constant tension, an uninterrupted communicative pathos, from beginning to end. “Femminota” is the story of a mother, but it is also the story of a woman and many women. As well as the history of a city, the Cosenza of the past. But it is also the story of courage, what women bring out when there is a need to do so, when they have to support their children, their home, their family.
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