From the Etruscan Tanaquil, the queen creator of kings, to Luisa Spagnoli, the enlightened entrepreneur passing through Livia Drusilla, Amalasunta, Matilde di Canossa up to the mystics. Chiara d’Assisi, the first editor of a Rule, Angelina da Montegiove, the tertiary who did not want the cloister, Rita da Cascia, Lucia Broccadelli and again Giulia Farnese, known as the Beauty, Lucrezia Borgia, slandered by posterity, Vittoria Colonna, poetess spiritual, and Donna Olimpia, a greedy patron.
It is a catalog of reread biographies, all female, the one compiled by Maura Zamola in the book “Stubborn women. Italians who have changed the world“(C&P Adver Effigi, 2022) which will be presented Sunday 16 October at 6 pm in the Council Chamber of the Municipality of Porano, which sponsored the initiative together with Ancescao. The interventions of Cristina Caporali and the councilor for Culture, Giovanna Brunellias well as the author.
“With this book – anticipates – I wanted to tell the life of several women of the past. Some have been unjustly branded with a much heavier negative reputation than they deserved. Others have even been accused of faults that are not theirs. They all tried to escape the submissive situation in which patriarchal society forced them“. Page after page, the lives of women from different historical periods parade charismatic and rehabilitated.
The common thread is a link with Umbria and Tuscia where today the author – born in Trieste, moved to the hills around Orvieto – works as a tour guide. “I comment from my point of view – He says – as a woman who can’t stand injustice. They are determined and tenacious figures, who have overcome the obstacles with which a male-dominated society has tried to block them in traditional roles. An example of self-esteem, freedom and determination that is also valid for today’s women.
Deepening the study of the history of these territories more and more, I met many female figures of past centuries who seemed to me worthy of being told and disclosed. I did it from my personal point of view, which is not that of a historian, rather that of a passionate popularizer and always on the side of women. In fact, I participated in the exciting period of historical feminism of the 1970s and shared its ideals.
I experienced the particular atmosphere of a libertarian, cosmopolitan, secular city. Here I found a deep contact with nature, history and art and met new friends with whom I studied the Thought of Difference, feminist theology, the spirituality of the Goddess. Too often I realize that current opinion on historical figures is distorted and vitiated by prejudices. And if it is a question of women, the blame and negative judgment on them are heavy and hard to die.
My intent is to highlight the strength of mind, wisdom, moral and intellectual qualities of many female figures who have determinedly wanted to free themselves from the limits imposed on them by others. With my writing I want to rehabilitate them and put them back in the right light, restoring the truth. I feel it as a debt of gratitude to these ancestors who preceded us in the rebellion against injustices and sexist discrimination.“.
“Maura Zamola – note in the preface, Katia Maurelli – it tells us about the life of thirteen women, as many as there are moons in a year, and of many others, named in the intertwining of relationships that every woman generates in the course of life: mothers, sisters, daughters, fellow travelers. With light style and emotional participation, she accompanies us in times, cities, houses, convents to discover the everyday and the extraordinary of women who have marked not only their time, but also the future, in the sense of a very long road towards emancipation female“.
Maura Zamola pays homage to the “stubborn Italian women who changed the world”