Six titles, 1,566 copies, will be delivered to 133 high schools across the region. These are the numbers behind the first step announced today during a press conference held at 10 a.m. in the Regional Library on Viale Trento in Cagliari, by Sardinia Region Councilor for Education and Culture, Ilaria Portas, to celebrate the centenary of the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Grazia Deledda in 1926. She was the only Italian woman and the second ever to receive it. The six volumes were chosen from among the most well-known and beloved by readers around the world: Canne al vento, La madre, Elias Portolu, Marianna Sirca, Cenere, Cosima.
"The initiative was also born to communicate to girls and boys the importance of books as material objects, the importance of putting words on paper and, in this way, allowing them to travel the world," explains Councilor for Education and Culture Ilaria Portas, noting that Deledda's work has been translated and adapted into films in numerous languages. Above all, it serves as an example for young women, given that Deledda, through writing, was able to "emancipate herself from the roles that were expected of them at the time: that of wives and mothers."
"Grazia Deledda was a pioneer of women's emancipation," says Antonella Giglio, Director General of the department, "who was able to tell the story of Sardinia from the inside with a modern and still relevant approach."
Councilor Portas's expressed hope is that these books may not only foster a discovery or rediscovery of the work of an author who was instrumental in building an imaginary, capable of powerfully bringing the particular into the universal, but may also serve as a catalyst for activities within schools themselves, such as prizes and competitions. Because Grazia Deledda was not only an example of a woman who could express herself freely, with the power of her stories and her words, but also of a Sardinian who took her homeland, too often relegated to the margins, and brought it to the center of the world. And from there, through her books, she still speaks to us.