Italians like you • Online meeting with Itti Drioli
As part of the initiatives for the Day of Remembrance scrittorincittà proposes
ITALIANS LIKE YOU
Online presentation of Itti Drioli's published by Solferino.
Wednesday, February 18, 6:00 • Online (Facebook and YouTube live)
"Turn around, we are those of the exodus, we left the desert behind, we even took away the dead in coffins. We are Italians like you." This is the cry from which this book was born. The cry of the three hundred thousand Istrian, Fiume, Dalmatian, and Julian exiles forced to flee their homes between 1947 and 1954 after their lands were assigned to communist Yugoslavia. It is the cry of those who left, but also of those who tried to stay and resist, paying dearly for the consequences. Like Luigi Drioli, the only member of the National Liberation Committee of Istria not to leave that contested corner of Italy. First an irredentist, then an anti-fascist, and finally a staunch opponent of Tito's rule, Drioli was a man who lived for his values, never abandoning them, not even during his seven years of imprisonment in Slovenia. At his side, a wife and four daughters, who alone face abuse and indifference. An indifference that, in some ways, still persists, and which Itti Drioli, "Gigi's" youngest daughter, seeks to dispel once and for all with the gripping story of this book. Recounting her family's experiences, she reconstructs an intimate, personal story, yet one capable of encompassing, in its microcosm of ideals and actions, the greater national history.
Itti Drioli presents "Italians Like You. A Story of Resistance and Exile between Istria and Italy" (Solferino). Interview with Rocco Olita.
Itti Drioli was born in Isola d'Istria in 1947, when Istria was still Italian but occupied by the Yugoslav Army. She was just a few months old when her father, a member of the National Liberation Committee (CLN), an anti-fascist and anti-communist, was taken prisoner by Tito's regime; she was six years old when she was expelled from Istria along with her mother and three sisters. She saw her father again at the age of eight. The family took refuge in Trieste, where Itti remained for thirty years before moving to Rome. She worked for the newspapers "Il Piccolo" and "Quotidiano Nazionale" as a parliamentary journalist and political columnist. This is her first book.
How to participate: The meeting will be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube. You can interact through comments.
