Noi siamo tempesta. Storie senza eroi che hanno cambiato il mondo
(We are the storm. Stories without heroes that changed the world) Book not yet available in English
Summary:
Unhappy the land that needs heroes, wrote Bertolt Brecht. But it is hard to believe that he was right if the stories of heroes are the first we hear as children, the only ones we study as teenagers and the only ones that inspire us as adults. The image of the lone champion is exciting, but it is not part of our norm: it is the exception. Everyday life, on the other hand, is made up of admirable deeds carried out by ordinary people who knew how to get together and trust each other. This is how Wikipedia came into being, how the secret code of the Nazis during the war was revealed, and how the fight against racism entered the homes of all those who watched the Olympics in 1968. Michela Murgia chooses sixteen famous or completely unknown collective adventures and tells them as choral feats, because heroism is the path of a few, but creative collaboration is a superpower that belongs to everyone. In the end, a storm is just millions of drops of water, but with the right wind. Drawn by The World of Dot, with a comic strip by Paolo Bacilieri. [Publisher’s website]
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
The voices in this book exemplify what collective power can achieve. The book is choral in its contents and narrative style: on the one hand, there are the stories told by those who experienced them, usually in the first person, with an informal, direct style, and a rhythmic, harmonious crescendo that links the facts as in a skilfully orchestrated musical performance. On the other, there are the cards that the author inserts at the end of each short story, to summarise the events with encyclopaedic details and social reflections that place these changes carried out by a community in a historical context and reveal their innovative and rupturing features for the era in which they took place. However, there is a further narrative voice that visually enriches these texts, that is, the illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Paolo Bacileri. These illustrations evoke the atmosphere of each story with different styles: from the comic strip in “Le streghe della notte” (The Witches of the Night), to the psychedelic vivacity of a poster evoking multi-ethnicity in “Settanta volte sette” (Seventy Times Seven), or the birth of the Piazza Vittorio orchestra, visual references to the graphics in vogue during the years of Fascist propaganda (as in “Felice come un cinghiale”, which recounts the homophobic persecution and confinement on the island of San Domino in 1939) or intertextual references to the famous comic strip as in “300, Battaglia delle Termopili.” Much attention is given to women’s collectives, to struggles for the rights of minority groups, and to inclusive language, as has always been the case in Murgia’s work.