Ambitious or ridiculous?

Being creative when writing in another language can be considered – as Melvin Burgess pointed out to me on Skype – ambitious. He has been kind, as has almost everyone I’ve met in England, a country of encouraging and unflappable people. In Italy we generally don’t believe in aplomb in life and the most likely reaction would be – and actually sometimes has been – : “WHAT? WHY? ARE YOU NUTS? IT IS SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE, COME BACK!”.

Every so often I agree with this shouted line. Creativity is about designing your ideas but also about freeing yourself, liberating your inner voice. Instead, when using English words I need to check every single step I take. Most of all, I need a whole band supporting me: a proofreader, an English teacher, a copyeditor, a translator. Writing becomes like conducting an orchestra and the process slows down; every mistake appears as a tragedy which signals to the world just how foolish you are.

Such a little tragedy was the title of my blog, a reference to Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman Of No Importance”. I insisted on writing “WITH no importance” everywhere, on my Research Methods coursework, on my Poster Presentation, on the first chapter I sent to Melvin Burgess before the face-to face with him on Skype. I wasn’t aware of this language slip, even having read Wilde’s play.

Nobody seemed to notice though, or maybe they were being kind. Except Marinella Mezzanotte, my ex-Italian-now-British copyeditor and cultural advisor. She added: “I like it. It’s a slap in the face. It shows your uniqueness as a foreign writer”. She had an interesting point, only I wasn't sure I wanted my readers to be slapped in the face. As a foreign writer, my only desire is not to sound ridiculous. My translator, Denise Muir, agreed. However, Kate Willman, my proofreader, told me that a lot of native speakers are not sure about prepositions, spelling and other stuff.

A little word, OF, took me as long as writing a chapter of a novel in my mother tongue. During the night, it haunted my dreams: “I’m a writer OF no importance WITH no chance to be taken seriously... forgive me, readers.... forgive me, Melvin....”. The mistake had been online for a few days. How many people had read it? How many had left my blog thinking that foreigners should learn their limits? Anyway, I’m bankrolling four British people (there’s also Charlotte M., the teacher struggling to improve my pronunciation, in vain), so I’m contributing to the national GDP. I have the right to ignore my limits and make a fool of myself, don’t I? 

Totò (aka Antonio De Curtis, 1898-1967) is one of the several
examples of the Italian clever foolishness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p71q1Kh4XdU

If you are hungry. Or angry.

The expression "cultural refugee" doesn't exist. Yet. 

When we think about refugees, we see war, oppression, torture, violence. People who have lost everything and run for their lives.

I agree with Nick Cohen (You Can’t Read this Book) when he says that we can't compare the restraints we experience as citizens of Western countries with the horrors of a proper dictatorship. But I also agree with the marxist theory of the western Nation as a new, capitalist tactic to control people, using not guns but ideas, culture, values and models that we believe to be universal.

So I end up wondering what "life" means.

Being alive, surviving, not being killed?

A lot of people choose to be killed in order to defend what they believe in, though.

And anyway, when you are not hungry or desperate, in which way can your life be put at risk? What is it that sometimes makes you feel lost, as if you should actually be running for your life but you don't know why, or how? After all, we live in the most privileged part of the world. What the hell do we have to complain about?

Sometimes I feel angry and not privileged. 

I used to pronounce hungry and angry in the same way when I started to study English. I'd just put in a little gasp at the beginning of hungry because I knew that the H must be sounded. 

A couple of decades ago, in Italy, several politicians started to promote this eerie idea that when you are hungry (a metaphor that means unemployed), you don't need culture, you need to be fed. The demonising of culture is what has brought us to the collapse of part of the Pompei site, to the decline of our television, to the dismantling of our publishing. And to even more thrilling consequences of a dangerous idea which may put at risk if not our physical, our civilized life.

In my dissertation proposal I wrote:

"When European newspapers depict Italy, its economic crisis and the noticeable anomaly called Silvio Berlusconi – the man who's been holding media, political and economic power in his own hands for over twenty years – their analysis often seems to miss the worrying effects of this concentration of power, which has modified people’s moral code, values and lives. In his book Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony, Paul Ginsborg wrote on the very first page: 'Something important is happening in Italy, potentially quite sinister, and the seeming normality of life serves to mask it very well' (2004)."

Well, that's why I'm angry - even if sometimes I am actually hungry. And that's why, when I decided to join the PIGS (Portuguese, Italian, Greek and Spanish people fleeing to the UK), I felt like a cultural refugee. One day on the tube I cried because I saw a poem printed on a poster by Transport for London. 

Culture on the tube. Who needs it? I do.

I wrote this post after hearing the news that the invaluable editor in chief of the children's division of the largest publisher in Italy has been sacked with no apparent reason. Rumour has it that she's being replaced with a professional who's been working at Dukan Diet books.

In Italy people who don't fit into the regime, disappear. Of course they are not murdered. Only their skills and competence are vaporized.

"Pagnotta" (loaf of bread) is the term some Italian politicians and people use to define
what you are supposed to need in life. You can't eat culture, so it's just a waste of money.

An author, a fish, a dissertation

The most difficult English words for me to pronounce are: 

AUTHOR(S), WRITER, CHILDREN'S WRITER, LITERATURE.

When I started to study at a British university, I thought this must be a sort of sign. "You wanna try and write something in English, to fit into a British environment? Oh, well, Manuela, don't make me laugh, you can't even pronounce the words to describe your job."

Or maybe they're so difficult because I need to say them quite a lot. During group presentations, for example. In England every course starts with a presentation from each student, like in a support group. Hello, I'm Manuela, I'm a children's writer (chil- pronounced like chill, -er mumbled like clearing my throat) I haven't been writing children's stories for ten months now.

I started the MA at Roehampton in September 2013. Ten months ago.

It's been great to study children's literature for the first time. In Italy we don't have anything that could be compared to the NCRCL and actually studying in a foreign country is much more challenging because you can't be the clever (?) person you are in your real (?) life. You need to choose your words carefully and most of the time you end up looking like a fish. A lot of gasping to say nothing.

It's an experience that changes you forever.

In August 2014 I'll be handing in my dissertation. 

I have chosen to research censorship in Western children's publishing and to write a YA novella about underage prostitution, the grooming of girls and self-destructive love (and sex). I'll be sharing my progress in this blog, and I'll tell you what: I've already written, and published, a novel about prostitution, the grooming of girls and self-destructive love, but nobody cares. Apparently in Italy the gatekeepers don't like to talk about sex with children. After all, we're a virtuous country where politicians would never ever have sex with underage girls, for example.

So in this blog you will find my story, my research, some reflections about being a professional children's writer from a country in decline, and much more. Hope you'll enjoy it!