LA RESISTENZA DELLE DONNE

Benedetta Tobagi, one the most renowned historian of her generation, gives a voice and a face to the women of the Resistance.

Women were protagonists of the Resistance: they gave aid, fought at the front, risked their lives. A never-before-seen family album in which the pages where women are the protagonists are put back in their place. From the "good wife" who decides to take up arms to affirm an identity that goes beyond labels, to the girl who seeks and finds salvation from an existence of misery and violence, to those who experience a kind of unimagined motherhood in helping the fighters, from the schoolgirls who embark on a great adventure (including an unexpected freedom in living their bodies), to the workers fighting against fascism. The vivid description of the lives of the women of the Resistance brings to the surface questions and issues concerning the role of women that are still relevant today: mass motherhood, the question of choice, the traditional invisibility of women that becomes a point of strength, the traditional functions of care that are sublimated into forms of struggle, the concrete experience of the "staffette", the carnivalesque experience of rebels who overturn and challenge social conventions, the fierce prejudices and malicious tongues against those who live promiscuously in "gangs", the eagerness or refusal to take up arms, the experience of the body and of Eros, the unspeakable experiences of torture and rape, the sadness alongside the enthusiasm that accompanied liberation, the silences and the too many distortions, rhetorical or hypocritical, of the experience of partisan women. Benedetta Tobagi was born in Milan in 1977. She holds a degree in Philosophy and a PhD in History from the University of Bristol, and continues to work on the history of massacres. She has worked as a radio presenter for RAI. She also collaborates with 'la Repubblica'. She works on educational projects and teacher training on the history of terrorism. Her publications with Einaudi include Come mi batte forte il tuo cuore. Storia di mio padre (2009 and 2011), Una stella incoronata di buio. Storia di una strage (2013 and 2019), Piazza Fontana. Il processo impossibile (2019). La resistenza delle donne is also a theatrical reading (Info attached) and a podcast (link to the 1srt episode https://youtu.be/8e1_mgxqy6s ).