Excellent opinion piece by Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym for an Italian novelist, author of the four Neapolitan novels beginning with ‘My Brilliant Friend’ that have been turned into an HBO series).
It covers the power of storytelling and the way the world needs to adapt to the way women wield power.
Elena Ferrante: A Power of Our Own
Power is a story told by women. For centuries, men have colonized storytelling. That era is over.
Power, although hard to handle, is greatly desired. There is no person or group or sect or party or mob that doesn’t want power, convinced that it would know how to use it as no one ever has before.
I’m no different. And yet I’ve always been afraid of having authority assigned to me. Whether it was at school or at work, men were in the majority in any governing body and the women adopted male ways. I never felt at ease, so I stayed on the sidelines. I was sure that I didn’t have the strength to sustain conflicts with men, and that I would betray myself by adapting my views to theirs. For millenniums, every expression of power has been conditioned by male attitudes toward the world. To women, then, it seems that power can be used only in the ways that men have traditionally used it.
Read the entire article – Elena Ferrante: A Power of Our Own
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