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@ChasingOm #integrateyourshelf

Well this has been pretty much my worst reading month since I was at school! Which is a pity cause I was so excited for women in translation month. I did manage to read this brilliant short book translated from Italian, SO ahead of its time it felt like an earlier Elena Ferrante in a lot of ways. Can‘t recommend enough.

"Time and space seemed to me to be fluid, carrying me on their stream; I was the Wandering Humanity, the aimless Humanity, yet inflamed with ideal: the Humanity enslaved by some laws and yet driven by a rebellious will to break them down, to make an existence free from them ..."
Absolutely fabulous! Please read it, especially if you're a mother, it's heatbreaking!
Please let me know if you read it, I'd like to share this reading.

"Nearly every Italian poet up to now had glorified an "ideal" woman: that Beatrice was a cypher and Laura a hieroglyph. The women the poets praised were unattainable: they never mentioned the women they lived with, who bore their children! Why? Shouldn't poets above all want their lives to be examples of frankness, honesty, coherence, and dignity?"

PREACH IT, SISTER ♡♡♡

I'm trying to figure out why this book is not more talked about. Since it came out in 1906 in Italy, A Woman has been referred to as the "Book of Genesis in the bible of feminism," and is a staple within the literary realm of feminist writings. It is a beautiful autobiographical account of a woman trying to find herself as an integral part of society outside of the conventional expectations of being a wife and mother. So far I can't put it down!

“Ero una persona, una piccola persona libera e forte; lo sentivo, e mi sentivo gonfiare il petto d'una gioia indistinta.”

Alfine mi riconquistavo, alfine accettavo nella mia anima il rude impegno di camminar sola, di lottar sola, di trarre alla luce tutto quanto in me giaceva di forte, d'incontaminato, di bello; alfine risentivo il sapore della vita.