Laudomia Bonanni

Biography

Laudomia Bonanni was born in 1907 in L’Aquila, the capital city of the mountainous Abruzzo region of Central Italy, located about 60 miles northeast of Rome. Her parents were Giovanni, a musician turned coal merchant, and Amelia Perilli, a primary school teacher. They named her after a character in Niccoló de' Lapi (1841), a historical novel by Massimo D'Azeglio.

After graduating from the Istituto magistrale in 1924, Bonanni taught in several village schools in the mountains around L’Aquila. She witnessed first-hand the hardships of village life before moving back to L'Aquila in 1930.

In 1927 Bonanni published her first collection of fiction, Storie tragiche della montagna, Novelle d’Abruzzo (Tragic Stories from the Mountains: Novellas of the Abruzzo), and some children's books. She continued to publish stories regularly and some collected works, but did not win national award recognition for her work until the post-World War II years.

In 1927 Bonanni also started working for literary magazines and newspapers. She continued to work in journalism until 1983, publishing more than 1,300 articles. She offered an extraordinary overview of contemporary society that displayed uncommon sensitivity to the problems of the lower classes. These writings reveal the extensive experience she gained over the years working as a consultant in the Juvenile Court in L’Aquila, where she served as a lay judge for nearly 20 years, between 1946-1964.

Literary works

Bonanni’s literary works revolve around two main themes: one sociopolitical (focused on the marginalized and the oppressed in society) and a more introspective one (exploring the contradictions of bourgeois morality). The radical nature of her investigation gives Bonanni a unique and original style that distinguishes her voice from other twentieth-century writers. She also explored "the loss of childhood innocence; the Italian veneration of, and ambivalence toward, the power of maternity; the intricacy of human bonds in even the smallest of communities; the struggle against contingency in the poor mountain region that was her birthplace."

With two short stories gathered under the title Il fosso (The Ditch), in 1948 Laudomia Bonanni won a national literary contest for an unpublished work, sponsored by the Amici della Domenica, a Rome literary salon. It was hosted by the distinguished critic Goffredo Bellonci. Her work was selected by a committee that included prominent members of the contemporary Italian cultural elite. Poet and critic Eugenio Montale wrote of her two stories that won the contest: "...this Laudomia truly deserves to be brought out from the shadows. She reveals a narrative strength that must not conclude here. She is sure to go a long way."

With the addition of the stories, "Funeral Mass" and "The Seed," a collection of four stories was published in 1949 as Il fosso by the prestigious press Mondadori. The following year Il fosso won another prize, the Premio Bagutta Opera Prima for a first-book: this was the first time such a prize was awarded to a woman. Bonanni received critical acclaim; among her greatest admirers were prominent literary critics such as Emilio Cecchi, Giuseppe de Robertis, and Enrico Falqui.

In 1954 Laudomia Bonanni’s Palma e sorelle (Palma and Sisters) won the Premio Soroptimist. Her next novels, L’imputata (The Accused) and L’adultera (The Adulteress), both published with Bompiani, received two important literary awards, respectively the Premio Viareggio (1960) and the Premio Selezione Campiello (1964). Both works were translated into French and Spanish.

In 1966 Boanni retired from teaching, eventually moving to Rome where she planned to join the literary circles like the Salotto Bellonci. But interest in her work faded, and she withdrew into depression and solitary isolation.

After a long silence, in the late 1970s she published "Città del tabacco" ("Tobacco City", 1977), followed by two novels: Il bambino di pietra (The Stone Baby, 1979) and Le droghe (The Drugs, 1982). She also collected the short stories inspired by her experiences in the Juvenile Court, publishing them as Vietato ai minori (Forbidden to Minors, 1974). Bonanni was a finalist for the Strega Prize three times (in 1960, 1974, and 1979).

She completed La rappresaglia, (The Reprisal) in 1985. When the publisher Bompiani asked her to revise her last manuscript, she refused and retired into solitude.

Bonanni died at 94, almost forgotten. The posthumous publication of La rappresaglia (The Reprisal) (by Textus, L’Aquila, in 2003) attracted attention, as it dealt with World War II resistance and partisans in Abruzzo, framed within a highly structured narrative. Bonanni may have written most of the novel decades earlier, and revised it over a long period. "That extended, ambiguous gestation period and the equally ambiguous but suggestive correlations between the novel and Bonanni’s own experience in the Second World War" have added to in it.

At the same time, Il fosso and L’imputata were reprinted, and scholarly interest in her works has revived, including new perspectives from feminism and postwar literature. The Reprisal is the first of Bonanni's works to be translated into English; it was published in the United States by the University of Chicago Press in 2013. According to reviewer Steve Himmer, its "uncomfortable, unresolvable balance makes The Reprisal a challenging, bleak, and haunting read—and a vital one."

Legacy and honors

Works