Méfie-toi d’une FEMME QUI LIT

 Méfie-toi d’une

FEMME QUI LIT wants to be a strong homage to all that women in love for reading: the characters represented are not just french, but Italians, (three authors are involved in this project! Chiara di Francia, Dama Dimat and Thomas Campi) Americans, and they have marked the history of the feminine genre still in peril and still fighting for its own rights. 

The idea of involving a lot of authors, 42 for this compilation of written words and graphics has been wanted thinking at the powerful meaning of reading, and education. At the same time the book is born for fighting against racism and misogyny that some men proves. But...

Fundamental, important and central is the woman, with her desire of reading, her dignity in doing this and the posture she reaches thanks to the knowledge she accumulates along her way.

 

In this book, the creatives involved want to let us show how women are important for the good evolution of a society.

Women: a mixture of sweetness, determination, capacity, have always fought and are continuing to fight for the same opportunties that men have, and for building a society more adult, more solid and not anymore discriminative about races, genres, religion.

The Humanists thought that women represented the pefection and so they had to receive a religious education. During the Medieval period, when the birth of always new books fermented, the idea of having a proper education for reading and writing became a necessity and most women in particular nobles ones of the entire Europe could make it. Although there are not books written by women during that period, french women had authorities under many ways in universities and in particular they owned or frequented libraries massively.

All the drawings and paintings created by cartoonists are incredibly good.

Some examples?

I loved the story of Nusch Éluard by Marie Avril, because it speaks a clear message: setting us free; the homage to Coco Chanel is impressively beauty; colors are warms, the classy solitude of her reading, the back on a trunk of a tree, people close to her are continuing to live their existences with happiness, smiling and chatting together; symbols of reflection and spontaneity, projection in the inside and outside, elaboration and estemporaneity.

There is an impressive representation of Hedy Lamarr, inspired at the American documentation. 

Daphné Collignon tells that she has been captured by the virtuosism narrative of Virgina Woolf and decided of painting her, while I found wonderful the tribute to Elizabeth Eckford realized by Gildas Java; Elizabeth was the first girl attending a white high-school in Little Rock, Arkansas, with all the discriminatory existing problems that there were.

Pauline Kalioujny considering the impact that Greta Thunberg represents for the world,portrayed the girl and her imaginative world. 

You'll then see Valérie André, strong woman, doctor and pilot of helicopter! 

Guillame Sorel's homage, this one is also the cover book, goes to Adèle Blanc-Sec de

Jacques Tardi, because an independent woman, and an anarchist.

Thomas Campi, italian, focuses the attention in summer, with a story called the summer book, where we see a girl shopping in a bookstore and then reading in various segments of her days.

Chiara di Francia treats Carla Lonzi, italian. She fought for a different future for women. She met, with her friends once in a cafè in Turin a reporter of La Stampa Patrizio Cozza sharing with him their Manifesto Femminile, affirming that they were set free by books and reading.

“Méfiez-vous des femmes qui lisent…” She told him when they left.

Damien Roudeau is fascinated by Grisélidis Réal, a prostitute who fought for their rights and the ones of all women. She said that prostitution was an art an humanism and a science winning many battles, becoming a writer and a painter as well.

Hawa symbolizes the woman who, once dilaniated by sufferance in her hometown decides to afford to France, in Paris, where lives also her sister. She wants to realize a dream...

There is a funny story about the owner of a café who refused breastfeeding-women in his café- For revenge the lady "refused" will ask to other breastfeeding ladies  of joining her at the café for... feeding their babies...there!

It's an important book this one, funny, sunny, but that will also let you think a lot.

After every story or painting there is a quotation from a remarkable author on books and the power of reading.

Highly recommended.

I thank Frederick Lardoux for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori