Teresa Ciabatti. Falling is a resource, and power must be a moral exercise

To feel unheard and unseen. Every woman has challenged this condition of marginalization. Teresa Ciabatti, a nonconformist writer, has sublimated the pursuit of power through the alter egos in her novels, and in portraying women who break free from family expectations to define who they want to be. Her boldest experiment appears in Donnaregina (Mondadori, 2025), a novel about the journey into the complexity of emotional relationships through an encounter with a Camorra (organized criminal organization) boss.

What is your relationship with power?
I detest it. I admire people who are not influenced by the pursuit of power, for it hardens and distorts. I understood that late. I was born ambitious, restless, and this race for space made me stumble; it brought me frustration. Now, in middle age, I am living the best time of my life because I no longer have the anxiety that comes with power.

Perhaps because now, as a writer, you do have power.
Honestly? Now that power within me is very quiet -now that, after going through excess and self-destruction, I have found balance- I believe I write better. To shout for power is like fighting a battle and gaining nothing. I have learned that going in circles, and falling down, is a resource.

The stereotype goes, that women are vulnerable, and thus unfit for power. In your novels, the opposite is true. Do you really believe that?

I have always believed it, both inside and outside my novels. If it is not hidden and if it does not become complicated, fragility is a strength. That is it, power, to me, is power over oneself, a moral exercise. We get less than men do, but we are more complete as human beings.

In Donnaregina, you confront an extreme form of power, in the figure of a Camorra boss. Why?
I wanted to explore a world that is very far away from me and to enter it with a certain recklessness, while ignoring the codes. For four years, I spent time with what everyone calls “the ferocious boss”, to seek out his human side. Not to reassure or celebrate, but to disturb. Thinking of the other as a monster absolves us of responsibility. We live in the same time and space; we must question and understand. My alter ego does not exercise power; she goes to the boss with the lightness of her privileged birth and is left disoriented.

Does she scream? I do, when I am looking for a space of power.
I have a loud voice, and people have always pointed that out to me, saying, “How vulgar you are”, so I tried to correct myself. Now, I do not mind it anymore. Speaking of space, what does it mean to be in one’s proper place? If it means being in the corner, then speak very loudly.

by Carmen Vogani