Anna Pramstrahler

Tempo di lettura: 7 minuti

There’s an exercise I like to do: occasionally I pause, and I put the events of my life back together, the good ones, the bad ones, the unforgettable ones because they were good, the unforgettable ones because they were bad. And I follow the thread that brought me to where I am now. I consider it a kind of healing, welcoming hug, through which I whisper to myself “go ahead, be confident: who knows how many more experiences will take you where you don’t now imagine to go.”
And then I really think that it is right to celebrate the people who have given value to our existence and to throw off a cliff those who have undermined it!
The young me never thought I could be where I am now, part of a global movement of women where I feel I can take the floor. I lived part of my life thinking that I didn’t have that many interesting things to say, as a young woman I was more of a hearer than a speaker in the public space. I assumed that it was the age that defined a feminist, and that awareness and self-awareness were things I could talk about after having had a long experience in the feminist movement. Certainly I was influenced by having experienced organized party contexts more than the actual movement, at least in my early years of militancy and activism. I used to listen to contorted reasoning of “young and already old” party leaders that seemed complicated and inaccessible. So it was necessary to stand there humbly, taking notes, learning. After 15 minutes boredom would set in, and I would convince myself that I was obviously not so culturally gifted that I could do who knows what. Until the day I forced myself to listen to and record the speeches of what appeared to be the last intelligent and gifted man on earth: after 15 minutes, he said absolutely nothing, repeated the same things, using different words, certain that attention had waned. The veil fell, the superman as well, he was just a guy who didn’t want to work in life, but pretend to be dedicated to ideals to put his ass on a seat. And eliminate anyone who could do it in his place.
But if I had not become aware of that pantomime, I would never have begun to believe in myself, to take the floor, to take back the space outside those places where the patterns are always the same, self-aggrandizing and self-referential.
A bad experience, it started the road that brought me here. After that, there were many others. Being a feminist activist, that is, choosing to take a clear and uncompromising stand, does not exactly open the door to a life free of obstacles. In fact, it even puts some where you would not expect to find them.
The moment I chose to devote my life, study, research, and work, to feminist activism, that coincidence of private and public was the beacon that guided me.
Reading my welcome article you can understand how it wasn’t at all easy to stay on my feet, but in reviewing the good and bad events, I stop to think about that encounter that helped me to definitely and without any hesitation put on the second skin of activism, to give substance to every single slogan I had encountered while studying the history of the feminist movement: Anna Pramstrahler gave sense and coherence to my path, offered shelter to my hesitations, and reinforced my awareness.
I met Anna when I was still moving in a space in which my every action was the object of manipulation, in which the feminist perspective found its place in words spent in public and not in the everydayness of deeds. I was in the space in which daily the web was built in which I was stuck and devoured by little spiders headed by a huge black widow. Anna Pramstrahler, without even meaning to, helped me to see what a purely masquerade context I was in, how much the sisterhood was just the lark’s mirror used only to generate conflict and feuds between groups of people. I understood this because she was the one who showed me that I could express who I was, my nature, my criticism, my anger at an oppressive system, without it resulting in my exclusion. Anna Pramstrahler removed the veil from the facade feminism that I had experienced up to that point. She helped me restart the feminism that was out there, the enduring bonds that are still there.
I learned to face the public space, the places of sharing, training, and work starting from me, I turned my gaze to the world enriching my network and feeling even more part of a movement that helps me every day to grow, to look beyond, to build the future keeping an eye on the past, not to disperse that history that is the heritage of every woman, written in the colors of sisterhood. That sisterhood too often abused in words, and abandoned in favor of compromise, of arrivism, of exploitation. That sisterhood that knows the real meaning of self care, and that makes us capable of leaving no one behind. I have felt so many times alone in seeking that consistency between words and actions: through Anna I realized that I was not so alone, that in the face of this perceived loneliness it is necessary to take time, to let go, to move on.
Anna is sunny, direct, enthusiastic, and imperfect: she knows how to take care of the relationship between women, she is interested in the personal story of every woman she meets. It is thanks to her that I learned to talk in public and in private about anything starting with me, my story. To talk about me before I talk about anyone else, to be able to make a connection with what I am talking about, to give body and value to feminist practice. Too bad others missed the point, but it’s not like we’ve all met Anna Pramstrahler!
With the glance and the smile of someone who always looks far, beyond all boundaries, she participates in every protest, conference, debate and confrontation as if it were the first time, because there is always something new to do, women to be involved, expertise to be shared, in that continuous being in movement that is what has always characterized her life. Never placing himself above, but always beside.
I learned to understand her silences, her pauses, as genuine as her criticism and her way of bringing out criticality.
I felt at home with her asking about the women in my ancestry, my mother, my aunts and grandmothers, giving my own existence more meaning and value than I ever had. She does this with a spontaneousness while walking around, having a coffee or a glass of wine, and as I narrate I listen to myself, my life is colored. It became colored again when it was gray, when I no longer wanted to expose myself, because doing so had cost me so much pain that I thought I could not recover. I felt believed, valued, in the moment when I could not look in front of me as I walked, for fear of meeting again those monsters who had attacked my life.
Anna Pramstrahler,-“Anna Pram”-I call her a “human heritag” so she deserves to be among the inspirations of my life, and I am sure she plays the same role in the lives of many other people. She is among the people who have influenced my life, along that timeline from my origins, from the origins of my family, to where I am now, along with other extraordinary women whom I would never have met if years ago I had not attended a meeting and she had not had an interest in my words, if she had not asked, “Why don’t you join us?”
Of course, using Alda Merini’s words, “I should apologize to myself for believing I was not enough” but beyond that, I should also give thanks to Anna Pramstrahler for helping me to do so, in sisterhood.
Unlike the other inspirations I have written about, I will not report a biography of Anna Pramstrahler, for two reasons: the first is that this is the emotional biography I have chosen to share, because it is real contact, it is lived experience; the second, is that Luca Martini has already written a perfect biography of her contained in the Women’s Encyclopedia, and I would like you to read it so that you can also consult this extraordinary resource. Anna has an amazing life behind her, and experiences that have led her up to doing today what she says is the best job ever, which is to direct the Italian Women’s Library. And I would add that the Italian Women’s Library is lucky to have her!