 |
 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2020) |
Maria Rosa Cutrufelli | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 (age 76–77) Messina, Italy |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Italian |
Maria Rosa Cutrufelli (born Messina, 1946) is an Italian writer and journalist. [1]
Born in Messina and raised between Sicily and Florence, she studied in Bologna and decided to live in Rome. She graduated in literature from the University of Bologna with a thesis on the structure of the novel (mentored by Luciano Anceschi). Roberto Roversi and Italo Calvino gave her advice after reading her thesis. After her university studies, she collaborated with various critical and literary magazines. She founded, and directed for twelve years, Tuttestorie, a magazine centered around "racconti, letture, trame di donne". She edited some story anthologies and wrote radio dramas for RAI; among them, Lontano da casa was published in book form by Rai Libri in 1997. In 1984 in Rome, she thought up and organized the first exhibition of books with female authors and taught "Teoria e pratica della scrittura creativa" at Sapienza University of Rome.
Her books have been translated into about twenty languages.
Cutrufelli is active in the feminist movement and has always been attentive to problems concerning the female condition. In the seventies she wrote various texts on the issue of work, women's emancipation, and a study on the question of pornography and prostitution. She chose women's point of view because it is that of "anche nella propria terra, anche nella propria casa, può sentirsi in esilio, straniera e nemica, sperimentando in questo modo direttamente – e a volte duramente – la necessità del cambiamento, di una frattura culturale, di un dialogo con le altre". [2]
“Even in her own land, in her own house, she can feel exiled, a stranger and enemy, directly experiencing in this way – and sometimes severely – the necessity for change, of a cultural divide, of dialogue with other women".
Aware of the impacts of word choice and language traps, Cutrufelli doesn't love the definition "letteratura femminile" and prefers to speak of writing "firma femminile" to not hide "il sesso dell'autore o dell'autrice dietro una presunta neutralità della scrittura, pur rifiutando di essere catalogata secondo impropri criteri di genere sessuale." / "the sex of the author or of the authoress behind a presumed neutrality of writing, while refusing to be catalogued according to incorrect criteria of sex.” “‘Letteratura femminile’ è infatti una categoria che raggruppava (e continua a raggruppare) in un'unica ombra, compatta e indistinta, tutte le opere prodotte dalle donne e che ha storicamente assunto una connotazione limitata e limitante, quasi un genere letterario a parte e minore, caratterizzato da un'attenzione pressoché esclusiva ai sentimenti." [3]
“‘Women’s literature’ is surely a category that gathers together (and continues to gather together) in a single shadow, solid and indistinct, all the works produced by women and that has historically taken on a limited and limiting connotation, almost a genre of literature set apart and minored, nearly characterized by an attention reserved for emotions.”
Many of the plots of Cutrufelli’s books were born from her numerous travels and meetings with women from all over the world; from "libri d’esperienza" that re-evoke moments from her biographies (Mama Africa, Giorni d’acqua corrente) to novels that often elaborate further on the stories of women from the past, as in the case of La donna che visse per un sogno. This book explores the last four months of the life of Marie Olympe de Gouges, a feminist during the time of the French Revolution.
With D’amore e d’odio she narrates the twentieth century through the lives of seven women tied to each other through a series of personal events, choosing a structure built on monologues of minor characters that illustrate the protagonists in the various stories. An original interpretation that, like in the case of Olympe de Gouges, unveils what Cutrufelli calls "molestie storiche"; that is, the legacy of misogyny that women who disturb (or even subvert) the traditional order carry behind them. If it is true that, as Cutrufelli writes (citing Zambrano) "le radici devono avere fiducia nei fiori" / "the roots need to have faith in the flowers"; it is a way of rereading the past with the hope that the future brings transformation.
With Il giudice delle donne we return to the beginning of the twentieth century, to Montemarciano, a country in the province of Ancona that looks over the Adriatic Sea. Ten teachers, commanded by the wife of the Socialist mayor, Luisa, welcome Maria Montessori’s appeal to ask for women's suffrage.
Cutrufelli's stories are present in many magazines and in Italian and foreign anthologies.
Dario Bellezza was an Italian poet, author and playwright. He won the Viareggio, Gatto, and Montale prizes.
Gastone Moschin was an Italian stage, television and film actor.
Angela Bianchini was an Italian fiction writer and literary critic of Jewish descent. She grew up in Italy and emigrated to the United States in 1941, after Mussolini's openly anti-Semitic racial laws were enacted.
Federico De Roberto was an Italian writer, who became well known for his historical novel I Viceré (1894), translated as The Viceroys.
Vittorio Umberto Antonio Maria Sgarbi is an Italian art critic, art historian, writer, politician, cultural commentator and television personality. He is President of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. He was appointed curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Several times a member of the Italian Parliament, in 2008 he served as Cabinet Member for Culture, Arts and Sports in Milan's municipal government for six months when Mayor Letizia Moratti terminated his mandate as she saw him 'unfit for the job'. In 2012, he was removed as Mayor of Salemi by the Ministry of Interior after he failed to acknowledge Mafia interferences in his cabinet.
Igor Sibaldi, born from Russian mother and Italian father, is an Italian writer, scholar of theology and history of religion.
Enzo Maggio was an Italian actor.
PaolaDrigo was an Italian writer of short stories, novellas, and novels. Her first collection of short stories, La fortuna, was published in 1913 and caught the attention of literary critics and the public. Her last major works were two novels, Fine d'anno and Maria Zef, both published in 1936. With a style rooted in 19th century Italian realism, she was admired for the detailed psychological analysis of her characters and her descriptions of provincial life in her native Veneto region. The protagonists of her stories were people of humble origin or those who had been "humiliated by fate".
Franco Pappalardo La Rosa is an Italian journalist, literary critic, and writer. He graduated from Turin university. He has lived in Turin since 1963. He contributed to cultural pages of Giornale del Sud, L'Umanità and Gazzetta del Popolo, and to many dictionaries, as Dizionario della Letteratura Italiana, Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico-Appendice 1991 and Dizionario dei Capolavori. Nowadays he contributes to many literary magazines, as Hebenon, Chelsea and L'Indice. He edited the publication of some works written by contemporary Italian writers, as Stefano Jacomuzzi, Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, Emanuele Occelli, Francesco Granatiero and Angelo Jacomuzzi. He took part in National and International Conferences on figures and aspects of contemporary poetry and fiction. He edits I Colibrì, fiction library between journalism and literature. He is founding member and member of the Board of Governors of the International Association “Amici di Cesare Pavese”.
Beatrice Monroy is an Italian writer and dramatist.
Emma Baeri is a Sicilian feminist historian and essayist. She has played an active role in organizing feminist political action and literary life in Italy along with her academic career.
Helle Busacca was an Italian poet, painter, and writer.
Angela Bianca Tragni is an Italian journalist and writer. Over her career, she carried out research in the culture of the Italian region Apulia and folklore of Southern Italy, especially of the Italian region Apulia. She also wrote books on history, especially the Middle Ages.
Delia Vaccarello was an Italian journalist and writer, as well as an activist for LGBT rights. She conducted lectures regarding journalism in Bologna and Urbino, and edited columns in the national periodical press related to anti-discrimination issues. A self-declared lesbian, in 2005, she collaborated on a project in the municipality of Venice for citizen education regarding homophobia. For Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, she curated a multi-volume anthology on love between women, the Principesse azzurre.
Luciana Percovich is an Italian non-fiction writer, a teacher, a translator and director of a series of books on women’s history and spirituality. She was born in Gorizia, Italy in a Mitteleuropean Italian speaking family forced to leave Fiume, Rijeka at the end of World War II, with cultural and geographical roots in Austria and Dalmatia, she spent her childhood and adolescence in Gorizia attending Classical studies. At the age of 18, she went to Milan to complete her education, and there she graduated in 1972. She has been defined as "a traveller between worlds and a weaver of space-time connections for her ability of embracing distant wide horizons with a loving insight".
Whatever I've done, it's been conceived within women's relations, in presence of women's bodies and in the flowing of awakened women's emotions.
The Rivolta Femminile refers to: the first female-only feminist group, created in Rome in 1970 with a meeting between Carla Lonzi, Carla Accardi, and Elvira Banotti; the manifesto they developed, which appeared on the walls of Rome in July 1970, is "The Manifesto of Female Revolt"; the "Women's Revolt" publishing house, founded in 1970 in Milan by Carla Lonzi, through it the writings of the group were published.
Ines Castellani Fantoni Benaglio, also known by the pseudonym of Memini, was an Italian writer.
Saveria Chemotti is an Italian writer of non-fiction and prose. She is an essayist, novelist, and literary critic, as well as a researcher with a focus area of culture and gender studies.
Gina Elena Zefora Lombroso was an Italian physician, writer, psychiatrist, and criminologist, best remembered for her uncredited writings on the subjects of criminology and psychiatry co-authored with her father Cesare Lombroso, her individual writings on the female condition and industrialisation. She was the wife of Italian historian and writer Guglielmo Ferrero (1871-1942) and hence adopted the surname Ferrero-Lombroso. Their son Leo Ferrero (1903-1933), a writer and playwright, died in a car accident in Santa Fe (USA). All three are buried at the Cimetière des Rois in Geneva, Switzerland.
Elena Gianini Belotti was an Italian writer, teacher, and activist.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
