READ
One of the reasons why I started this project was to help fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge of geography and world history. The book I read for Italy, Eva Sleeps, by Francesca Melandri, was a perfect selection to teach me about a region and an era in Italy’s history that I knew nothing about.
South Tyrol, which is now part of
the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region of Italy, was part of Austria until it was
annexed by Italy at the end of World War I. ”Annexed” is an awfully benign word
to describe the act of telling people who have belonged to a particular country
for their whole lives that they now belong to another country entirely. The people
of South Tyrol spoke German, not Italian, and their cultural identity was
wrapped up in their Austro-Hungarian roots. Over the years, they clashed with
the government of Italy, often violently, in their desire to break free from a
country with which they felt they had nothing in common.
The story of South Tyrol is woven
through the plot of Eva Sleeps.
The title character, Eva Huber, is the only child of a single mother, Gerda
Huber, with a messy family history. Gerda’s father Hermann is a bitter hateful
man who leaves South Tyrol for awhile to become a Nazi for Hitler, and her
mother Johanna is a weak-willed woman who drops dead of a heart attack when she
discovers that her unmarried daughter is pregnant. Gerda has a sister who wants
nothing to do with her and a brother who is a terrorist fighting for South Tyrol’s
independence from Italy.
Gerda works in the kitchen of a
popular tourist hotel, and her talent and work ethic allow her to rise in the
restaurant’s hierarchy. However, her job doesn’t give her the flexibility to
also raise her daughter, so she leaves Eva in the care of a family back in her
home village. During the hotel’s off-season, Gerda brings Eva to stay with her,
and those weeks are the highlight of Eva’s young life. At some point along the
way, Gerda meets and falls in love with a soldier from the far south of Italy
who is stationed in South Tyrol. Vito is steady, intelligent, and loves Gerda
as much as she loves him. He becomes like a father to Eva, and life is good.
But this is a novel, so of course there has to be a conflict.
The book is structured so that the
story of Gerda’s life alternates with a present-day trip Eva takes to Reggio
Calabria, at the farthest southern tip of Italy, where Vito is now dying. Gerda’s
story is measured in years; Eva’s is measured in kilometers. I thought it was an
intriguing saga, made even more interesting by the history lesson contained
within.
COOK
Before I opened Eva Sleeps,
I assumed I would be making some type of pasta dish for this blog post, and
I did. It’s just not the type of pasta dish I would have expected. The cuisine
in South Tyrol has roots in German cooking, so it’s very different than what is
eaten in most of the rest of Italy. The book mentions the expectations of
people arriving from the south of Italy: “Nobody had explained to the
immigrants from southern Italy what kind of place they were going to, before
they left. It hadn’t occurred to anyone in the recruitment offices in Enna,
Matera and Crotone, where the Bolzano factories were obtaining their workforce,
to let them know that they were about to go and live among people who spoke
German, who did not eat spaghetti or even polenta, but things they called Knödel,
Schlutzkrapfen, Spatzlan. They were still in Italy, weren’t they? That was
all an immigrant needed to know.”
After googling to see what these
dishes were, I decided to make schlutzkrapfen,
a type of ravioli with a spinach and cheese filling. I found a recipe for a
vegan version on the Flavour Dreams website. The pasta itself is different from
what one usually expects with ravioli, as it is made from whole wheat and rye
flours. Soaked cashews, almond milk, and nutritional yeast replicate the taste
of the cheese in the filling. Unfortunately, I didn’t love it. The filling was
fine, but the pasta – not so much.
GIVE
Last year, I read a very poignant
piece online by the author of Eva Sleeps,
Francesca Melandri. It was written in the form of a letter to the people of
the United Kingdom to let them know what they could expect from the pandemic
that had just begun to ravage Europe. Italy was hit with it a few weeks before
the United Kingdom was, so Melandri’s essay was aptly headlined, “A
letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future.” The
letter is still relevant today, and definitely worth a read.
So when I checked the GlobalGiving website to see what
projects they had listed in Italy, it seemed only fitting to donate to one focusing
on Covid-19 aid to hospitals and children. The Francesca Rava Foundation provides
beds, ventilators, and lifesaving medical supplies to support Covid-19 intensive
care units in Italian hospitals; sends doctors, nurses, and other frontline
responders to intensive care units in critical areas; and supplies masks and
disinfectants to vulnerable communities. More information about this project is
available at Coronavirus
in Italy: aid for hospitals & children - GlobalGiving.
NEXT STOP: JAMAICA
