Smarginando. Festival Migrante and Smarginando #Aspettando il MEI bring 15 events to town to tell the long story of Italian emigration. 

The Festival is the concept and creation of Leila Maiocco.

The book Migrante per sempre by Chiara Ingrao, will be presented at the Berio Library, at 16, via del Seminario, Genoa, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on 5 May.

From the Italy of emigrants to the Italy of immigrants, fifty years in the life of Lina, based on a true story: a young girl in Sicily, a teenager in Germany, a woman in Rome, a city which is actually foreign to her. 
A country of distant fathers and master priests, of pistachio nuts and almonds; a father who crosses the borders as an illegal immigrant, a mother who joins him and conditions the decisions made by Lina, first wounded by her mother's abandonment and then forced to emigrate herself, giving up her plans to study. Her farm labouring grandmother is both mother and teacher to her, but she is not the one who can decide who leaves and who stays.

Leaving is characterised by German winter, by the factory: incomprehensible sounds spat in her face, lost sisters and Turkish friendships, suffocating neighbours. She can’t breathe, her dreams are shattered and the old words are no longer enough. A season of new experiences opens up for Lina, she becomes involved in the Christian Associations of Italian Workers in Germany, she falls in love.

She manages to return, at last: but where to? Affections and hardships, loneliness and unexpected friendships, in a profoundly changed world but with the same tenacious desire to find her way, between ripped up roots and flashes of the future.

"The two of us are like a couple of artichokes, Lina. Every world we have crossed is a leaf clinging to the others without any tenderness, around a heart full of thorns".

They talk to the author:

Silvia Neonato, Journalist 
Natalia Cangi, Director of the National Diary Archive

Readings by:
Marco Benedetti, Actor
The Emigration/literature meetings are organised by Silvia Neonato;

Thanks go to Teatro Akropolis;

Availability of the book and signing organised by the Feltrinelli bookshop;

Booking is compulsory, at bibliotechedigenova.it/berio, in the "Events" section. The Super Green Pass is necessary to attend.