Michela Murgia’s mother: “She followed her dreams”

Costanza Marongiu is the mother of Michelle Murgiathe center of the blood family that the writer left to form what she called the queer family, the family of chosen love. Constance Marongiu tell the Corriere della Sera the daughter. She won’t be at her funeral in the Church of the Artists in Rome, «My legs are what they are», but she won’t be far away with the thought of her.

«Claudia, a friend of Michela: she called me in the night. And then this morning the television. It was a blow »she says. Thus she learned of the death of her daughter who she knew was ill (she had told her about the interview with CHours of the Evening and had sent her pictures of Vanity Fair). «Michela had been ill for a year and a half, but I didn’t expect it, because she hid the truth from me until the day before. She told me: I’m getting better. And I believed it. Then a week ago she stopped answering her phone and I realized she was sick. Yesterday it was she who called Cristiano and told him that she was leaving and that she just wanted him to tell me to be calm and not to cry. I didn’t cry, but this is even worse, because I feel a lump in my heart that is killing me».

He doesn’t know the man Michela married in articulo mortis, he says there will be time. He recalls that a family that wasn’t based on blood ties had always been her dream: «It was Michela’s will and she was fine with me too, I can’t say or add anything. I respected her choices, all of them. Indeed, the queer family was his dream, he always wanted many people around, he wanted many friends and what more could you ask for?».

Michela Murgia had left home at the age of eighteen also to escape an abusive father, she returned only after her parents separated. Somehow her mother says she has become secondary. «Children are born with wings and then fly away, no mother has the right to stop them».

The last meeting at the end of last summer. «I can no longer walk, I was waiting for her to come again. But she followed her dreams of hers: she wanted the Orient Express and she got it, she wanted to go to America and she got it. In some ways I had become secondary: she was in a hurry to do the things she had never been able to do before».

No wonder for the success of the daughter who was a very lively and very intelligent child who worried about a grade that was a little lower than usual. «He was a force of nature. Whichever path she took, I knew she would succeed. She achieved all the goals she set her mind to: she was strong, courageous, punctually critical even with herself. If she was wrong she admitted it, it was important ».

He does not hide his pride in his books, preferring essays to novels. «In everyone there is a thought of him, his choice of life. And somehow he also spoke about me. I told her: don’t get in the way, I’m shy. And she: mom, don’t you understand?, if I have to write about my life you are part of it».

Michela Murgia: 7 books to read immediately

Now that the writer has left us, let’s go re-read or discover her works. From essays to novels, here’s a quick guide

A week ago the last phone call. «She told me that she was fine, that she was serene. And that she preferred to move to her house, die at home and not in the hospital. And why are you telling me this?, I asked. And she: mom you know, it can happen at any time. Well, for me Michela hasn’t gone away: she’s still here».