La parola femminista. Una storia personale e politica

The word ‘feminist’ knows no half measures: you either love it or hate it, say it or burn it. Even years after it was first used, it continues to evoke a wide variety of meanings, images and interpretations. It seems difficult to think of a definition that encompasses its different nuances and shows how it has evolved over time and space. Yet, in this essay, Vanessa Roghi manages to do just that in a brilliant way. Combining her own story with the one with a capital F, the author recalls the feminism she was immersed in as a child, made up of fairy tales without princesses and meetings of the collective her mother belonged to, and the feminism she experienced as a young woman, between street demonstrations, Smemoranda diaries and English pop music. She then retraces the disastrous steps backwards of the 1990s, aided by the new representation of women peddled by certain highly successful television programmes, and thus weaves a story that touches on all the key themes of feminism, from motherhood to abortion, from sexuality to gender. Intertwining the voices of women of all ages, intellectuals, writers and journalists, such as Carla Lonzi, Elena Gianini Belotti and Michela Murgia, this collective biography invites us not to forget the past and to keep open the discussion on the possibilities that the act of ‘thinking and speaking’ can continue to bring in this millennium. A book for those who have lost sight of the word ‘feminist’ along the way and now feel the need to fill that void, for those who wonder ‘why this word disappeared and then reappeared in our lives, and whether it would not be better to always have it by our side’.