[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_28

“The Promises of Monsters” is a mapping exercise through mindscapes and landscapes of what may count as nature, mainly local or global struggles. It is also the only book I have at home that is not finished. Although I appreciate Haraway's worldview and find her eco-feminism idea fascinating, I could not finish this essay.

I read half of it and abandoned it. It was too abstract, too visionary, or perhaps too far ahead for me. I didn't want to include it in the 100 Challenge books, but I wanted to mention Haraway. So, I thought ofusing the title as a suggestion. “The promises of monsters” immediately reminds me of the future, or at least of a specific type of future: when adults imagine a thousand impossible things for their children's future and show them as attainable. These imaginary landscapes are as monstrous as adults.

I thought about when I asked: "What do you want to do when you grow up?" It has always been a blank page, like the essay day in class, when you are forced to write something but don't know what. My classmates had clear ideas: a rock star, an astronaut, and a surgeon already existed. Instead, I dreamt of invisibility, of escaping the answer. Or the future. Over time, other blank pages were added: who is your favorite artist? What musical genre? Author? Blank the page again.

You don't have clear ideas, seem confused, and don't know what you want—I've been told this many times. I started with Classical High School because I adored Greek culture, but after five years of translating dead languages, I began to feel a specific need for creative freedom; so, at nineteen, I enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts for my BA, and it was the beginning of a journey of self-discovery. However, art – I never fully understood what that was – was not enough for me; being an artist wasn't what I wanted to be when I grew up. I felt a great hunger for culture and the need to structure my knowledge more analytically. Afterfinishing the Academy, I enrolled in the Philosophy faculty for my Master of Arts. Also, in this case, it wasn't the environment I believed it would be: there was no dialogue, very often, because I was not considered an equal by my (male) colleagues on the course. It wasn't the right path for me, or maybe...

You don't have clear ideas, seem confused, or know what you want. At 29, I taught Literature at a state school without understanding what I wanted to do when I grew up. Every time I was asked, "What do you do for a living?" (the adult version of the initial question), I felt a persistent sense of annoyance. Was that my job of the future?

What is certain is that teaching has changed me profoundly. My classes have given me much more than I probably have given them: they gave me awareness. I realized it wasn't a subject that excited me but the connections between subjects. My passion wasn't reading books but researching through books. Drawingwasn't my talent but my need for expression. Above all, I am not inconsistent but overloaded with stimuli.

I realized that my strengths were everything that doesn't appear on a CV: listening, empathy, communication, intuition, and tenacity. Working with and for people gave me an energy I had never known. I had been told that I was confused, but the truth was that I had always perceived reality as something infinitely complex, impossible to reduce to a single preference. What prevented me from choosing just one thing was that I liked many things. That curiosity always led me to look in different directions.

I returned to books to specialize in new History courses and then Pedagogy, Sociology, and Anthropology. The school was absorbing my body and soul: I felt satisfaction and felt I could help my kids grow with them. However, teaching in an Italian institution soon proved precarious, poorly paid, and poorly managed. Forced to change regions of Italy every year to work, struggling to make ends meet, I started to feel frustrated again just when I thought I was on the right path. What could I do? Change again?

You don't have clear ideas, seem confused, or don't know what you want. My Damascus, the one that took me to the Centre for Women's Studies at York, was working with a class of migrant people and deciding to get another Master's degree in "Teaching Italian language and culture to foreigners." In this context, for the first time in my life, I came across post-colonial and gender studies: a shock, a sort of fallen angel revelation, a review of everything I had always believed, and putting it back into perspective. I understood how much the History (and not only it) I studied up to this point was patriarchal, how many stereotypes continue to be taught in school, and how many of the difficulties I experienced while studying in a predominantly male environment and working for lower salaries to support myself in my studies were linked to the gender issue.

Now, I know I can use everything I love (art, literature, research) to do something new. And maybe it's the first time I feel I can answer the monster’s question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with the promise, "Keep growing."