The Rediscovery of Alice Ceresa: "A Feminist from the First Hour. Her Criticism is Still Current"

Appreciable initiative by the publisher Casagrande of Bellinzona, Canton Ticino, to republish after 35 years the novel “Bambine“, a small masterpiece by the Swiss Alice Ceresa, who died in 2001, an unconventional feminist from the very beginning. Edited by Tatiana Crivelli from Lugano, who has been dealing with this writer who absolutely needs to be rediscovered for a long time with infinite dedication.

Tatiana Crivelli, why?

"I was able to explore her collection of papers and documents before it was opened to the public, when it was donated to the Swiss Literary Archives. And I was literally struck by the beauty and acuity of her prose. And by the topicality of her critical thinking, in reflecting on the condition of women."

Is his denunciation of power relations in the patriarchal family still relevant?

"Of course, they persist in our present, marked by repercussions, quite evident in certain contexts, to the so-called female emancipation that has taken place."

And with the frequency of feminicides (even almost child victims), which in Italy would be the consequence of inadequate sexual and social education, it is really useful to reread Ceresa, which highlights the importance of this education.

"She does so, moreover, with the cutting and ironic precision of a zoologist's tongue, observing a particular group of mammals: a bourgeois family of the twentieth century, made up of a father, a mother and two daughters, all forced into rigid roles."

Father who is not a monster, nor the mother a saint. But if it is the rigidity of the normative role, imposed by gender and age (which suffocates or kills the happiest and most total human availability), what helps to develop the imagination that women (and men) need to not simply pass from one role to another?

"Reading! Reading! It teaches you to identify with other points of view, to imagine yourself in other stories and other lives, to put yourself in someone else's shoes. As Eco says: 'He who doesn't read, at 70 will have lived only one life, 5,000 years he who reads'. And this ability to identify is fundamental in the development and preservation of democracies".

“Bambine” will be presented today at the Hoepli bookshop in Milan (via Hoepli 5) at 6 pm. And this writer, whom we thank you, Professor Crivelli, for rediscovering, will be very nice to the people of Milan...

"He considered Gadda one of the greatest writers of all time. Nor was he too concerned about the invasiveness of audiovisual media, which can actually help to rethink the quality of literature, which extends to the quality of the reader."