“with ‘Age Pride’ I demonstrate that old age is not pure loss, it is transformation”

2023-07-28 17:23:19

Debunk the clichés about old age. Turn the tables by highlighting the strengths of old age by contrasting the idea that this is a period of “pure loss”. Lidia Ravera takes on the formula of the essay by publishing ‘Age Pride. To free us from prejudices about age’ (Einaudi). A book that wants to be “a rally, an indictment against ageism” with which the writer arrived among the finalists of the twelfth edition of the Caccuri prize together with Massimo Cacciari, author of ‘Paradiso e naufragio’ (Einaudi), Gaia Tortora with ‘Head up, and forward’ (Mondadori) and Marcello Veneziani with the essay ‘Discontenti. Because we don’t like the world we live in’ (Marsilio). The winner will be announced during the next edition of the award scheduled from 6 to 10 August in Caccuri, a small Calabrian town sandwiched between the Sila and the Ionian coast.

“It doesn’t scare me at all – the writer tells time.news – being old, I’m proud. I’m rich, I have something more and not less than others. Instead, old age is considered pure loss. It’s not true, it’s transformation. And it depends on you, on how you position yourself, on how you face the prejudices and the social stigma that invests you”. The text is “a rally, an indictment against ageism to free us from the prejudices on age that make you throw 30 years of life in the bucket. In fact, life has now lengthened and if from 60 onwards you are considered expired they steal 30 years of your life. While old age is a piece of life. The slogan behind my book is ‘for a life that lasts a lifetime'”. In Italy, the writer recalls, “there are 14 million of us over the age of 65, almost 24% of the population. It is not a minority, it is a majority. We were the majority when we were born, we are the baby boomers, we are still a majority. Back then – is Ravera’s hope – let’s learn to behave like a majority without shame, without hiding, without taking off our years but valuing this part of life”. In short, Ravera’s “is an essay that tends to overturn the table. I take all the clichés about old age one by one and deconstruct them. I also take it out on Freud, I have no respect for anyone. I try to follow in the footsteps of this often unconscious form of racism and first of all I try to free myself and whoever reads me. The book – says the writer – has had a crazy success probably linked to the theme. It is the first time that these 30 years of extra life exist We are therefore explorers, adventurers, not old men on the bench waiting for death”.

The essay, therefore, allowed Ravera to compete for the final phase of the Caccuri prize. “I am very honoured, I feel in excellent company. Moreover – she says – I am a storyteller, it is rare that I write something that is not a novel. So I am very surprised and happy. This is a book I care a lot about because it has to do seeing with my idea of ​​politics which for me is trying to make the citizens of this world feel as well as possible. In this book I work for the psychic, mental and physical well-being of a majority of people in the world”. For these reasons, concludes the writer, “I would like it to have as much prominence as possible and an award is a way of raising one’s voice, of making a book last”.