part one of many
I was born in 1967. The formative years of compulsory schooling, primary and secondary, through to high school were 1977-1985. Thirteen years! critical for the creation of the model citizen: patriotic, proud and, of course, obedient.
Anna Banti freed me from the patriotism inculcated, year after year, with the repetition of a Roman legacy and a revolutionary and republican Italy with “Noi credavamo” which, together with the lucidity of how a nation is built, opened the doors to a yet standing anti-militarism and the awareness that loving places and people does not require soaking in the patriotic paternalistic and patriarchal broth of a system that demands obedience and makes the feminine superfluous and episodic. A heroine here and there, always Anita Garibaldi, never Leda Rafanelli.
Continue reading “My Italian colonial past”