Fabulous Storytellers: Transgender Stories

Original title: Favolose narranti: storie di transessuali

By: Marcasciano P.

First published in Italy: Manifestolibri, 2008

Genere: Biography

Overview: Through life stories and some special witnesses, this book reconstructs transgender experience in Italy, as well as dealing with thorny — and sometimes unresolved — issues such as the comparison between T, gay and feminist worlds. Finally, it offers ideas for reflection on social and civil rights, starting from the world of labour. All themes are addressed with a lucid gaze that reveals the clear goal of breaking down prejudices and political instrumentalization on all fronts.

The Flight of the Chimera

Original title: Il volo della Chimera

By: Pellegrini D.

First published in Italy: Libreria, 2020

Genere: Autobiography

Overview: True love is the narrative and the story. Recounting is to take care of oneself, to recognize oneself and, in some way, to satisfy our need for immortality, that non-place where our name will be pronounced in times to come. Within the great story of the 20^th century, domestic micro-stories intertwine with great events and happenings.
An inquiry on the theme of identity, the self-unfolding in human relationships, its determination and genesis. Furthermore, it touches on a sense of nostalgia for the time lost inside another body, “nostalgia of the unaccomplished”. A simulacrum never fully perceived as one's own, basically borrowed, a one-occasion good dress, a costume, a mask.
We all seek to forgive ourselves for pain, both experienced and inflicted; guilt, sacrifice, and redemption.

Forever Mery: Love, Women, Sex as Told by the Young Inmates of the Malaspina of Palermo

Original title: Meri per sempre: l'amore, la donna, il sesso raccontato dai giovani detenuti del Malaspina di Palermo

By: Grimaldi A.

First published in Italy: La Luna, 1987

Genere: Dramatic novel

Overview: In a reformatory in Palermo, a professor tries to break the boys out of their ignorance, their loyalty to honor and the unwritten laws of the Mafia. The title is named after one of the detained boys: Mery.

Notes: The novel was made into the movie “Forever Mery” (Marco Risi, 1989).