Ispostavilo se da je književnost mnogim ženama pomogla da prebrode mračan period pandemije It turned out that literature helped many women to get through the dark period of the pandemic
zegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, with par- ticipants ranging in age from 17 to 84. Consider- ing that one of the goals was to develop a critical overview of women’s creativity, participants in the reading rooms discussed books by Daša Drndić, Iva- na Bodrožić, Lejla Kalamujić, Rumena Bužarovska, Lucia Berlin and Elena Ferrante, with the works of these authoresses prompting important discussions about the position of women, their mental health and the issue of collective responsibility for past and present events. The writers whose works were discussed were also invited to some of the read- ing rooms as surprise guests, which led to dynam- ic discussions. The participants had positive experiences. “The conversations I participated in were finally something good in this strange time of the corona. This project showed me that books connect people,” said Mersida Meštrović from Bosnia-Herzegovina, a retired mil- itary official and a “new” grandmother, while Croa- tian writer and activist Barbara Matejčić summed up her experience poetically in one sentence: “To read and think with rebellious women, I could do in rhythm forever”. The Rebellious reading rooms received their fol- low-up last autumn. The second part of this story implied the recording of audio podcasts during au-
tumn and encompassed discussions among partic- ipants on the works of contemporary authoresses: Sally Rooney, Margaret Atwood, Elena Ferrante, Ru- mena Bužarovska and Daša Drndić. Together with the reading rooms, the podcasts, which are availa- ble on the website bookvica.net, enabled regional networking and comparisons between the stances of women from different generations. Although lit- erature always formed the basic framework of the conversation, the participants developed their dis- cussions to a broader, socio-political level. Despite their differences, the participants agreed that the cited authoresses succeed in presenting social struc- tures that produce inequalities which break human lives, particularly the lives of women, both genera- tionally and individually. Their considerations as a whole were summa- rised by journalist Milica Milojević-Kosić and lit- erary critic Nađa Bobičić in a podcast about Elena Ferrante and her Neapolitan Novels: “Even when we are broken by structures, women aren’t just passive objects upon whom injustices are done, but rather they fight against them all the time. This is particu- larly accentuated by Elena Ferrante when speaking from an unprivileged perspective: the possibility of resistance always exists, because without it we ul- timately wouldn’t be able to survive.”
Literature » Književnost | 39
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