Michelle Murgia she’s dead. The writer died in Rome at the age of 51 due to kidney cancer. Already in 2014, during the Sardinian elections in which she was a candidate for president, she was diagnosed with a tumor, from which she recovered. She leaves us a unique pen of the feminist movement in Italy and an influential intellectual. Her “intervention literature” – as she liked to call it – and her cultural activism on social media have influenced public debate, sparking critical reflection on crucial issues such as women’s empowerment, immigration, the rights of LGBTQ+ people and of rainbow families, just to name a few.
Michela Murgia at 17 (Instagram photo)
Life before becoming a writer
Michela Murgia lived many lives before dedicating herself to a career as a writer. After completing your studies at the commercial technical institute, you held at least five different jobs. Initially, she taught religion, then she engaged in timeshare sales. Subsequently, she has held roles such as tax operator, administrative manager and night porter. In addition, she has been an anchor, columnist and social consultant for the Gedi group.
Edoardo Buffoni and Michela Murgia al Mr. Zero of Radio Capital
Literary debut
His first book is The world must know (ISBN editions, 2006), a tragicomic novel that depicts the life of a precarious telephone operator. Originally published as a blog during the period in which Murgia worked in a call center of the multinational Kriby Company, this autobiographical text tells the story of a Sardinian employee in the sales sector of the Kirby vacuum cleaner. Through the eyes of the protagonist, motivational sales techniques, bullying at work, the dynamics between colleagues and superiors emerge. The story inspired the film Whole life ahead, written by Paolo Virzì and Francesco Bruni, in which Murgia participated in drafting the screenplay.
Michela Murgia at the Turin Book Fair in 2012
The most important novel
But it is Accabadora (Einaudi, 2009) the novel that consecrates her as a writer. The text tells the story of Bonaria Urrai, wealthy and never married, who lives in Soreni, a small Sardinian town. Urrai is an accabadora, a traditional figure capable of offering a pitiful death to the terminally ill who desire it, especially the elderly, through a compassionate act of euthanasia. The novel has been translated into many foreign languages and has received several prestigious awards, including the Dessì Prize in the narrative section in September 2009, the SuperMondello in May 2010 and the Campiello Prize in September of the same year.
The language of cultural resistance
Michela Murgia has transformed narrative language into a powerful political tool of cultural struggle and resistance. In 2011, she published for Einaudi Hail Mary. And the church invented the woman, a critical work that analyzes the concept of virginity and motherhood in religion. In 2013 you published the pamphlet against feminicide for Laterza I killed her because I loved her: false! co-written with Loredana Lipperini. A complaint against the absurd and unacceptable justification of this heinous crime with the word “love”. In 2015, again for Einaudi, the author offers the public Chirú, the story of an eighteen-year-old who dreams of becoming an artist and becomes the “soul child” of Eleonora, a 38-year-old actress. In 2016, again for Einaudi, Murgia exhorts us to take responsibility for dreaming of the future with the pamphlet Inner Future. With the same Turin publisher, the writer publishes the political essay Instructions for becoming a fascist which, translated into five languages, analyzes the dangers of populism and totalitarianism. In 2019, it comes out We are storm for Salani, a collection of illustrated stories on «creative collaboration, a superpower that belongs to everyone» (Morante prize and special mention by the Andersen prize jury). In the same year, together with Chiara Tagliaferri, he published a collection of biographical stories for Mondadori Morgana, stories about girls your mother wouldn’t approve oftaken from the podcast of the same name created by the two authors on Storie Libere since 2018.
Chiara Tagliaferri and Michela Murgia in 2019 (photo Musacchio, Ianniello & Pasqualini)
The voice of the forgotten
Michela Murgia was not only a writer but also a radio and television presenter, giving a voice to those who are often forgotten or marginalized by society. From September 2019 to August 2020, she leads together with Edoardo Buffoni the Mr. Zero on Radio Capital. In the 2016-17 television season she participates in the broadcast How many stories of Rai 3 with a daily column of literary reviews that earned her the comic imitation of Virginia Raffaele. In 2017 she leads Chakra are Rai 3, a program in which he “duels” on a topic of current affairs, politics and culture. Since January 2021, Michela Murgia has been curating – the first woman to sign it – L’Antitaliana, column of L’Espresso born in the 80s and previously edited by Giorgio Bocca and Roberto Saviano. In 2020-21 he also works for the newspapers of the Gedi group, such as La Stampa and La Repubblica.
Michela Murgia in a 2018 episode of Quanti Storie, Rai 3
Cultural activism on social media
Michela Murgia has established herself as one of the first Italian writers to embrace social media, to interact directly with readers. Thanks to this active presence, she has gained thousands of followers (130,000 on Twitter, 460,000 on Facebook and 530,000 on Instagram), creating an authentic connection with her audience. In 2018, Murgia attracted attention on the front pages of the two major Italian newspapers, Corriere della Sera and Repubblica, denouncing through social networks the absence of female commentators and the errors of journalists on female media representation. These reflections have found form in the essay Shut uppublished by Einaudi in 2021.
Catholic formation and the meeting with Pope Francis
The writer had a Catholic education and was also an animator in Catholic Action. A curiosity: in 2004 in Loreto, at the end of the religious pilgrimage, you created a theatrical show which you also attended Pope John Paul II. More recently, in June 2023, she was received by Pope Francis, to whom she gave the issue of Vanity Fair, directed by her, in which she shared her experience of a queer family. Her emotions were picked up by the magazine edited by Simone Marchetti: «During his beautiful speech – the writer said – Pope Francis made a distinction between aesthetic beauty, which he called “cosmetics”, a trick in the sense of deception, and the beauty that produces harmony. When I gave him the newspaper I told him: “Holiness, I’ll leave you this: he talks about families and harmony in many types of families”. The entire speech of the Pontiff was very precious, unedited, with the invitation to be disturbing, free and non-compliant. It had never happened before: neither John Paul II nor Ratzinger had ever invited artists to be uncomfortable».
Vatican Media / Catholic Press Photo
From feminist catechism to the queer family
And it is precisely the concept of families, in the plural, and of “queer” – among other things – that the author spoke about in one of her latest works, Good Save the Queer. Feminist catechism published in 2022 by the Einaudi publishing house. This word, originally used as a derogatory term equivalent to «faggot» in Italian, underwent a significant transformation in the 1970s, especially in England.
Michela Murgia celebrates her queer family in Rome (photo by Chiara Pasqualini)
The term “queer” (literally, “strange”, “bizarre”) has been proudly reclaimed and reappropriated by the LGBTQ+ community to describe those who do not identify as heterosexual or cisgender (i.e., in keeping with their gender assigned at birth). The word has become a powerful tool for interpreting reality, challenging the rigid binary categories of masculine and feminine, as well as the traditional labels of heterosexual and homosexual. Its meaning extends far beyond sexual orientation, supporting the right of every individual to be free from definitions or labels imposed by society. With her work, Michela Murgia embraces the concept of “queer” as an opportunity to free thought from the limits imposed by the dominant culture and to promote a more open and inclusive vision of identity and human relationships. Through a feminist approach, the author invites us to question gender norms and to consider diversity as a richness to be embraced, breaking with binarism and freeing the fluidity of every identity.
The party of Murgia & family loredana lipperini is Queer 23 July 2023
The wedding with Lorenzo Terenzi and the party without journalists
«I am marrying a man but it could also have been a woman» he had declared on the day of his civil marriage with Lorenzo Terenzi, 35-year-old actor, director and musician and graduated from the Teatro Stabile in Genoa: «We did it the moment of death – explained the writer directly on Instagram, without involving journalists – because every day there is a different physical complication, I go in and out of the hospital and now we no longer take anything for granted». Murgia shared the video of the act with the soundtrack of Nobody’s Wife (Nobody’s wife) by Anouk. After the marriage contracted “to have rights that there was no other way to obtain quickly”, the writer celebrated her idea of her family with a party in the garden of the new Roman house. A political act on parenthood communicated directly on social media, once again bypassing journalists. In the past, the writer had been married to Manuel Persico, a computer scientist from Bergamo, from 2010 to 2014.
Michela Murgia’s marriage: “A forced choice, I go in and out of the hospital” PASQUALE QUARANTA 15 July 2023