The book: Secondigliano. Stephanie is ten years old and every time she returns home she complains to her mother because her cousins play outside and she does not. The reason is simple: they can because they are boys, she cannot because she is a girl. After school, she reads on the balcony, the only outdoor space where she is allowed to be. Stephanie studies because she knows that words are her only defense against the world. Her grandmother told her this during afternoons spent at her home, two floors below in the same building: "For girls, everything is more difficult. You have to learn to defend yourself. You must always have the courage to speak, Stephanie." And if her grandmother says so, it must be true. After all, her grandmother is Nannina de Gennaro, called Nannina la Cuntastroppole, the storyteller. For some, she is just an old crazy woman; for others, she is the one who, thanks to her cunti, the stories recited in courtyards, gave identity and dignity to mothers worn out by poverty and the arrogance of men. With her stories, Nannina gave a face to those who had none, redeemed the weakest, made people laugh and cry. But now it is up to Stephanie to take back her voice, to seek redemption in the cunti, her own redemption, that of a girl who has a dream: to study and discover freedom. Stefania Spanò takes us into the heart of a reality where in the alleys, courtyards, and squares one can still hear the echo of traditions. The echo of a past that has never really passed. The echo of a language that is music. The echo of gestures and movements that make every place an open-air theater. Two protagonists, two generations, two different Secondiglianos that meet and clash. One thing never changes: the importance of words and stories. Today as then. The author: Stefania Spanò is a storyteller, LIS interpreter, and support teacher in middle school. She has been conducting theater, creative writing, empathetic communication, and visual poetry workshops for years in the turbulent suburbs of the Naples hinterland, throughout Italy, and abroad. As a storyteller, she performs family tradition cunti and those she has written. She dreams of traveling the world with her street kids and returning to Secondigliano with antidotes and exotic potions of civil disobedience. This is her first novel.
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The book: Secondigliano. Stephanie is ten years old and every time she returns home she complains to her mother because her cousins play outside and she does not. The reason is simple: they can because they are boys, she cannot because she is a girl. After school, she reads on the balcony, the only outdoor space where she is allowed to be. Stephanie studies because she knows that words are her only defense against the world. Her grandmother told her this during afternoons spent at her home, two floors below in the same building: "For girls, everything is more difficult. You have to learn to defend yourself. You must always have the courage to speak, Stephanie." And if her grandmother says so, it must be true. After all, her grandmother is Nannina de Gennaro, called Nannina la Cuntastroppole, the storyteller. For some, she is just an old crazy woman; for others, she is the one who, thanks to her cunti, the stories recited in courtyards, gave identity and dignity to mothers worn out by poverty and the arrogance of men. With her stories, Nannina gave a face to those who had none, redeemed the weakest, made people laugh and cry. But now it is up to Stephanie to take back her voice, to seek redemption in the cunti, her own redemption, that of a girl who has a dream: to study and discover freedom. Stefania Spanò takes us into the heart of a reality where in the alleys, courtyards, and squares one can still hear the echo of traditions. The echo of a past that has never really passed. The echo of a language that is music. The echo of gestures and movements that make every place an open-air theater. Two protagonists, two generations, two different Secondiglianos that meet and clash. One thing never changes: the importance of words and stories. Today as then. The author: Stefania Spanò is a storyteller, LIS interpreter, and support teacher in middle school. She has been conducting theater, creative writing, empathetic communication, and visual poetry workshops for years in the turbulent suburbs of the Naples hinterland, throughout Italy, and abroad. As a storyteller, she performs family tradition cunti and those she has written. She dreams of traveling the world with her street kids and returning to Secondigliano with antidotes and exotic potions of civil disobedience. This is her first novel.
