Va†er tongue

Based on a true historical event, the young South Tyrolean author Miriam Unterthiner tells of the life of a young woman and her emancipation. She artfully interweaves speech and language levels and in this way makes the narrowness of village society as well as the deformation of women and their rebellion tangible. The main character, Maria, is searching for her own identity, her own self, her own voice. Unterthiner writes Maria a new ending that she was not allowed to experience herself. In short, musical prose, a woman's fate is dealt with in an exemplary manner: born, emotionally neglected, deformed, not recognized as a daughter. This has an effect on the body: a hump forms as a kind of protective posture. Like this. Head down. Like this. Back forward. With. Face down. Like this with. Looking downShe is corrected from the outside. A wooden corset is pushed into the stream of speech and over her body. But Maria has an ally: this very floor. I am speaking here. Yes. I am speaking here. As the floor. Like the chorus in Greek tragedy, the ground cradles and cares for the "Måidel" or, even more diminutive, the "Is Måidele" and provides a firm foothold - set across the bottom of the text page, as a secure base in which Maria is in good hands. And really, as in a philosophical fable, in the struggle for language, she succeeds, defying everything, in taking a step forward, towards herself! AAAAAAAAAAAAA she makes up her birth cry and appropriates her name: MARIA ICH.