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 does not. The reason is simple: they can because they are boys, but she is a girl. After school, she reads 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 so during the afternoons spent at her house, two floors below in the same building: "For girls, everything is more difficult. You must learn to defend yourself. You must always have the courage to speak, Stephanie." And if she says so, it must be true. 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 identity and dignity to the mothers of families worn out by poverty and the arrogance of men. With her stories, Nannina has given a face to those who did not have one, redeemed the weakest, 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 into the heart of a reality where among the alleys, courtyards, and squares, the echo of traditions can still be heard. 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 Secondiglianos 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 lower secondary school. For years, she has conducted theater workshops, creative writing, empathetic communication, and visual poetry in the turbulent suburbs of the Neapolitan hinterland, throughout Italy, and abroad. As a storyteller, she carries around the tales of her family tradition and those written by her. She dreams of traveling the world with her street kids and returning to Secondigliano with exotic antidotes and potions of civil disobedience. This is her first novel.
