And then it happens, the phone rings and my friend Virginia announces she's coming to visit. It's her first time in NYC and there's so much I want to share, to show her....
She arrives, and the first night she's here, she teaches me how to make pizza. A few days later, she's teaching me how to make wine ciambelle. The next day she teaches me how to make pies and crostata to take to her friend's party. I too was invited.
This is a first for me! I had never been to a party in the US where everyone invited spoke Italian. What a treat. It was here I heard the story of Franca Viola. Now one of my heroines. At the age of 17 she rebelled against an unjust law and won (see below). We share the same first name, the same birth date. and the same philosophy "Follow Your Heart".
I so admire her courage, her defiant, rebellious nature. I am so happy to have learned about Franca Viola from Virginia.
Now that Virginia is home, she will be in my thoughts everytime I prepare the delicious simple recipies she taught me. I will see her footprints on the streets of NYC.
Franca Viola (born in Alcamo in 1947) is a Sicilian woman that became famous in the 1960s in Italy for refusing a "rehabilitating wedding" ("matrimonio riparatore") after suffering kidnapping and rape. Instead, she and her family successfully appealed to the law to prosecute the rapists. The trial had a wide resonance in Italy, as Viola's behavior clashed with the traditional social conventions, whereby a woman would lose her honour if she did not marry the man she lost her virginity to. Franca Viola thus became a symbol of the cultural progress and the emancipation of women in post-war italy wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franca_Viola
In 1968, three years after her abduction, Franca married Giuseppe Ruisi, the man she was engaged to at the age of 14. She married the man she loved. In 1981 because of her courageous stance article 544 was repealed. Article 544 abolishes the right to cancel a violent sexual assault by subsequent marriage.
When interviewed by Riccardo Vescovo, she said.
“It was not a courageous gesture. I only did what I felt I had to do, as any other girl would do today. I listened to my heart, the rest came by itself. Today my advice to young people is to follow their own feelings; it is not difficult. I did it in a very different Sicily, they can do this by simply looking into their hearts”
She's a grandmother now, living with her family in Alcamo, Sicily.
She arrives, and the first night she's here, she teaches me how to make pizza. A few days later, she's teaching me how to make wine ciambelle. The next day she teaches me how to make pies and crostata to take to her friend's party. I too was invited.
This is a first for me! I had never been to a party in the US where everyone invited spoke Italian. What a treat. It was here I heard the story of Franca Viola. Now one of my heroines. At the age of 17 she rebelled against an unjust law and won (see below). We share the same first name, the same birth date. and the same philosophy "Follow Your Heart".
I so admire her courage, her defiant, rebellious nature. I am so happy to have learned about Franca Viola from Virginia.
Now that Virginia is home, she will be in my thoughts everytime I prepare the delicious simple recipies she taught me. I will see her footprints on the streets of NYC.
Franca Viola (born in Alcamo in 1947) is a Sicilian woman that became famous in the 1960s in Italy for refusing a "rehabilitating wedding" ("matrimonio riparatore") after suffering kidnapping and rape. Instead, she and her family successfully appealed to the law to prosecute the rapists. The trial had a wide resonance in Italy, as Viola's behavior clashed with the traditional social conventions, whereby a woman would lose her honour if she did not marry the man she lost her virginity to. Franca Viola thus became a symbol of the cultural progress and the emancipation of women in post-war italy wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franca_Viola
In 1968, three years after her abduction, Franca married Giuseppe Ruisi, the man she was engaged to at the age of 14. She married the man she loved. In 1981 because of her courageous stance article 544 was repealed. Article 544 abolishes the right to cancel a violent sexual assault by subsequent marriage.
When interviewed by Riccardo Vescovo, she said.
“It was not a courageous gesture. I only did what I felt I had to do, as any other girl would do today. I listened to my heart, the rest came by itself. Today my advice to young people is to follow their own feelings; it is not difficult. I did it in a very different Sicily, they can do this by simply looking into their hearts”
She's a grandmother now, living with her family in Alcamo, Sicily.
