[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_89

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969, Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou's book is an autobiographical story that recounts the early life of the American author from childhood to her first pregnancy at 16. There is a powerful energy in her narration, a musical energy like a bird's song; it is the energy of those who refuse defeat and despair, of those who do not accept to live passively as victims but want to become protagonists of their existence, going beyond the sense of inferiority that society and culture impose on those who do not have the "right" skin color and responding proudly to prejudice and injustice.

The image of the caged bird trying to escape the bars of its prison is a heartbreaking metaphor that recurs throughout the book, reminding us of the instinct and importance of resistance - in Angelou and entire communities - to racist oppression.

When I read the book, another image immediately came to mind, equally heartbreaking in its metaphorical load: that of a fish struggling on the shoreline, trying to return to the water but unable to; the fish does not surrender to death and drags out its agony, with all the strength it has left, for the illusion of still being able to save itself or for the anger of being forced to die. This is the scene my mother used to describe to me for years when she had to explain her feelings. It is not an image that can be easily forgotten because - unlike that of the caged bird that fights to be free - that of the fish that struggles to return to the water and fails does not contain the possibility of a happy ending.

Hearing a parent describe in these terms their desperation for a life that cannot change is a suffering that is difficult to accept. It is the suffering of the person who witnesses the pain of their loved ones without being able to intervene, without being able to help. There is no catharsis, as in Greek tragedies: passively witnessing the agony of our loved ones causes a mirror agony in us.

I, too, felt like that fish on the shoreline. And I continue to feel this way every time I see that suffering in my mother, and I know I have no power to alleviate it. One day, I tried to suggest another image to her, hoping to offer her, together with the new image, a different look at her situation. “You feel a bit like a caged bird,” I told her, leaving a door open to hope. My mother rejected the comparison, “No,” she replied almost without thinking, “the caged bird can escape the cage; in my case, the cage is my life itself, and I can only escape from it by dying.”

My mother was raised as a servant, educated not to have desires, fed with orders and insults; she went from the house of her father-master to the home of her husband's family, always living as a guest according to the rules of others, working hard and giving her money to the family, receiving only other orders or other criticisms in return, feeling guilty like a thief on the rare occasions that she dared to buy something for herself and avoiding expressing her thoughts so as not to suffer the violence of the judgments that would come from them.

“I have never lived,” she often repeats, “I'm not even capable of understanding what I like.” The economic crisis that followed 2008 exacerbated a dangerously borderline situation: "At least before I had a job," Mother always repeats, "Now I can't even find a job to do the cleaning." So, at 63, she finds herself without work, without money, without a pension, and dependent on my factory worker father’s salary; she lives in her old father-master's house because she is forced to take care of him and suffer all his wickedness daily. Because her father, who has always been a vile and domineering creature, hasn't improved as he got older.

“Run away,” I told her many times. “Get away! Let them all die."

“My love,” she always replies. “If I had had my job and money, I would have done it long ago.”

The situation that my mother experiences – and suffers – is not unusual; on the contrary. It is that of many other women who live trapped by invisible work, by the burden of caring for the Other (be it son, husband, father, or mother), and by a gender gap that has never allowed them complete autonomy, neither psychological nor economical. Fighting oppression is a duty; giving up is letting injustice win once again. This is the song of the little bird by Maya Angelou. But how do you fight an enemy you can't see? How do you counteract oppression if that oppression itself is not visible? And I don't mean social and cultural invisibility; I'm talking about oppressions that are invisible even to those who live and suffer them every day for an entire life. For those like my mother, who was raised like nothing and trained to feel like nothing, oppression is not oppression but normality.