Status Updates From Her Side of the Story

They were from the country, mostly, and lived in furnished rooms on the edge of the city; they brushed up against it, its houses, its customs without managing to become part of it.

He cheered up when he learned I had been hired by Mantovani's firm. Then again it was easy to discern, behind his apparent satisfaction, his annoyance at no longer being able to humiliate me every evening when he came home.

My relatives’ silence held me captive. I felt something establishing itself, taking form, and I intended to gauge just how far they would dare to push this barbaric dominance over my person. It was a contest between Nonna and me. And more than that: between me and a humiliating tradition.

My hands are long and thin. Looking at them, you would think they were weak: delicate, feminine hands. You would think it, I said. But they've always been extremely strong, with a taste for subduing things, ..

Não se pode comprar o corpo de um escravo, mas podia-se usufruir da propriedade do corpo de uma mulher. (.) eu decidisse abandonar o Francesco, a lei reconhecer-lhe-ia igualmente o direito de ser proprietário do meu corpo. (.) Pelo que um escravo tem mais liberdade do que uma mulher. E se eu tivesse usado da liberdade do meu corpo, teria recebido não apenas chicotadas, como os escravos, mas até prisão e desonra.