Carlotta Vagnoli: “Let’s get out of our bubble”

The first time that Carlotta Vagnoli found One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was in high school. «I found it in my dad’s bookshop, it was an 82nd edition of Mondadori: beautiful, with a very colorful tree on the cover. On it I had written in pencil some notes on the kinship ties of the protagonists: I had reconstructed everything but, unfortunately, I lost that edition in a move “, Carlotta tells on the phone from her home in Florence, explaining that that microcosm told like this well da Márquez it immediately seemed familiar to her because it reminded her of where she was born and raised. It is about Marina di Castagneto Carduccia pleasant place that has always had within itself the characteristics of that slippery and imperturbable environment that reigns undisturbed even in today’s hyper-digitalized world: the bubble.

In Memory of my cheerful whoreshis new essay published by Marsilio and linked to the rehabilitation of female figures within the monumental work of Márquez, the concept of the bubble is preponderant, because it is clear that the protection it seems to guarantee is nothing but an illusion, since the progressive isolation of a community leads to a kind of captivity very dangerous. What is lacking is, in fact, a comparison with the other or with any other reality far from that small crystallized world, and this is one of the greatest risks of today’s system: incommunicability. We talk on the phone for almost an hour with Carlotta Vagnoli, a professional who has managed to use social media wisely by becoming the spokesperson for important messages related to inclusion, feminism and respect for marginalized communities. the thought and the care with which she chooses the words only confirm the sensitivity of a girl who has gained the right clarity to look at those bubbles from the outside and understand what they are doing wrong.

Let’s start with the female figures of One hundred years of solitude from which it starts Memories of my cheerful whores: critics have not been very kind to them, as they have often been described as superficial.
“Critical analysis has always branded Márquez’s women as spoiled and unpleasant. When I read the book, however, I immediately felt a great sympathy for them and I tried to understand what had prompted the critics to distance themselves in that way. The problem is that characteristics like determination about a woman don’t look good: she is a beautiful and good stereotype. However, Márquez’s women are the only ones resolved. Men, on the contrary, are very self-reported, and have no awareness of the world around them ».

In the book, in fact, he writes that the real unhappy people in the book are precisely the men.
«They become mad for a loneliness to which they condemn themselves and which leads to the demolition of the very society in which they live. Women, at least, had some active proposals ».

The bridge between the Macondo di Márquez and the Marina di Castagneto Carducci where she grew up is very beautiful, because, in the end, the villages are small kingdoms that build their own rules: is it necessary to break them, in your opinion?
«If this were not the case, the bubble would only see the things of the bubble without comparing itself with the others, and this would generate incommunicability. If it weren’t for the tourist season that forces it to open, Marina di Castagneto Carducci would be closed, and it wouldn’t take advantage of it ».

Bubbles, however, are difficult to break, because breaking that code carries the risk of being excluded.
«Often the rules of our bubble are inapplicable for the others: disorientation is created and it is not clear what the truth is. We have unlearned communication: the more we isolate ourselves, the more we demand perfection from our own bubbles. In my small way, I try to talk as much as possible with others precisely in order not to shut myself up in mine “.