THE GIRLS’ FACTORY

THE GIRLS’ FACTORY

Apr 26, 2025 | BOOKS

The Girls’ Factory by Ilaria Rossetti published by Bompiani: take note of this title, I recommend it.

I am again grateful to Monica: I read it thanks to her and I enjoyed it very much.

The Girls’ Factory stems from the author’s research into work-related deaths, but it is much more.

It is a historical fact that has literally been erased, it is the description of places that I recognise as familiar, and it also is a proof for the theory of the six degrees of separation.

But above all, it is a very well-written book.

My compliments to Ilaria Rossetti.

The Girls’ Factory was established in Bollate, during the First World War, to meet the need for weapons, bombs and munition to supply the front.

That is why ‘the girls:’ the only remaining workforce, particularly suited for their small hands.

You know I don’t like to reveal too much, but I would like to emphasise the importance of spreading the story of people who were used and then wiped out because the war machine could not stop, then and now.

It even goes so far as to raze it to the ground, leaving only furrows in the earth and in the hearts of those who lived, waiting for the memory to die out along with the lives of those who knew the facts.

That is why it is so important that we keep going on telling this and all equally uncomfortable stories.

The first was a storyteller of excellence: none other than Ernest Hemingway, whom fate brought from America to Castellazzo di Bollate in the wake of the factory explosion, recounted in the famous The first forty-nine stories. 

All that remains on the site, completely overgrown by trees, is an electrical cabin with a very impressive mural. 

La Fabbrica delle Ragazze

Other characters in the book take the reader to Milan, following the route of the Seveso river, painting a journey through nature and time.

Have you ever heard stories of grandparents  your own or ‘acquired’?
Grandparents can become everybody’s grannies after all, am I wrong?

Is there a story to be handed down even in the place where you live?

THE BOOKBINDER OF LOST STORIES

THE BOOKBINDER OF LOST STORIES

May 13, 2023 | BOOKS

The Bookbinder of Lost Stories is the book I read, again thanks to Monica.

 

Speaking of friendship, Sas Bellas Mariposas  and Mamaglia are skilled fan of the author: Cristina Caboni, so maybe they would like to tell us something about her.

In the meantime I would like to chat more about how I especially liked the parts that describe the binding process in the early 19th century.

Nowadays how long does it take to create a book?
There are several 24-hour delivery options on the web.

And each time we find ourselves with the usual question: have we gained or lost?

Recently with my husband we have been looking for someone who was still in a profession related to the traditions of the past, but here in the area unfortunately we do not have old style jobs anymore.

It is very sad to be aware that the precious chain of passing on knowledge and teaching patience and time needed to acquire skills has been interrupted.

By interrupting the oral tradition, we will deprive ourselves of the privilege of being able to know stories because there will be no one left to tell them.

So I would very much like to take up the concept of “binding” lost stories to unite them and to keep them living with us.

I spent a lot of time listening to one of my grandmothers telling about her childhood in a peasant family, talking to me about a seemingly distant era, about an essential lifestyle, about objects that we will never use.

My other grandmother, had less life to live but equally her tales remain indelible to me, as well as the memory her rice-fields worker  knees.

My great-grandfather, on the other hand, was a carter, and his traveling for work gave him the opportunity to meet and to marry my great-grandmother: German, in spite of the saying “wife and oxen in your own country …” jokes aside, theirs was a rather unconventional marriage considering historical period and social conditions.

But tell me please! I would love to “listen to you.”

If you have a craft to tell, if you want a story not to be lost, if you wish to pass on a tale, a thought, a concept, a proverb, an experience or even just a comment, I will be grateful and add it to the lost stories to be bound.

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