The book: Secondigliano. Stephanie is ten years old and every time she comes home she complains to her mother because her cousins play outside and she doesn’t. The reason is simple: they can because they are boys, she on the other hand is a girl. After school, she sits reading on the balcony, the only outdoor space she is allowed to be in. Stephanie studies and studies because she knows that words are her only defense against the world. Her grandmother told her this during the afternoons spent at her home, two floors below in the same building: "For girls, everything is harder. You have to learn to defend yourself. You must always have the courage to speak, Stephanie." And if she says it, it must be so. After all, her grandmother is Nannina de Gennaro, known as Nannina la Cuntastroppole, the storyteller. For some, she is just a crazy old woman; for others, she is the one who, thanks to her tales, the stories recited in the courtyards, has given an identity and dignity to mothers worn out by misery and the arrogance of men. With her stories, Nannina has given a face to those who did not have one, has redeemed the weakest, has made people laugh and cry. But now it is up to Stephanie to reclaim her voice, to seek in the tales a redemption, her own redemption, that of a girl who has a dream: to study and discover freedom. Stefania Spanò takes us to the heart of a reality where among the alleys, courtyards, and squares, you 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 Secondigliano 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 the lower secondary school. She has been conducting theater workshops, creative writing, empathic communication, and visual poetry for years in the turbulent suburbs of the Neapolitan hinterland, in the rest of Italy and abroad. As a storyteller, she brings around the traditional tales of her family and those written by her. She dreams of traveling around the world with her scugnizzi 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 comes home she complains to her mother because her cousins play outside and she doesn’t. The reason is simple: they can because they are boys, she on the other hand is a girl. After school, she sits reading on the balcony, the only outdoor space she is allowed to be in. Stephanie studies and studies because she knows that words are her only defense against the world. Her grandmother told her this during the afternoons spent at her home, two floors below in the same building: "For girls, everything is harder. You have to learn to defend yourself. You must always have the courage to speak, Stephanie." And if she says it, it must be so. After all, her grandmother is Nannina de Gennaro, known as Nannina la Cuntastroppole, the storyteller. For some, she is just a crazy old woman; for others, she is the one who, thanks to her tales, the stories recited in the courtyards, has given an identity and dignity to mothers worn out by misery and the arrogance of men. With her stories, Nannina has given a face to those who did not have one, has redeemed the weakest, has made people laugh and cry. But now it is up to Stephanie to reclaim her voice, to seek in the tales a redemption, her own redemption, that of a girl who has a dream: to study and discover freedom. Stefania Spanò takes us to the heart of a reality where among the alleys, courtyards, and squares, you 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 Secondigliano 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 the lower secondary school. She has been conducting theater workshops, creative writing, empathic communication, and visual poetry for years in the turbulent suburbs of the Neapolitan hinterland, in the rest of Italy and abroad. As a storyteller, she brings around the traditional tales of her family and those written by her. She dreams of traveling around the world with her scugnizzi and returning to Secondigliano with antidotes and exotic potions of civil disobedience. This is her first novel.
