Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1536109
5 gozotoday | FRIDAY • 6 JUNE 2025 NEWS Reviving and understanding traditional life in Gozo Beyond nostalgia LAST month, the Banca Gi- uratale in Victoria, meanwhile a trusted venue of small exhi- bitions of Gozitan art, litera- ture, and history, presented a number of large watercolours by the artist George Apap. Ti- tled "Gaudos, Gozo my child- hood home... a collection of memories, places, and faces" and each work provided by an explanation by the artist in his own beautiful handwriting, this exhibition was a sympathetic exercise in remembering and evoking all the familiar ele- ments of traditional life in Gozo just after the War: the largely unspoilt landscape, the people, the work in the fields, the sea- sonal events, the summer heat and the cold rainy days, all ex- perienced and seen through the eyes of a young, impressionable boy. It was a happy coincidence when the artist, himself present at his exhibition, happened to meet the author of a book that miraculously aimed at the same goal but with other means, those of the cultural anthropol- ogist, evoking interest in and reflection on this definitively bygone period with all its joys but certainly also a good deal of sorrows. That author was Dra. Veron- ica Veen, and her book (one of the ten she published in Malta) is titled "Lucija tells...; women's history an experience of life in Gozo, Malta; interviews, essays, pictures, stories and songs" (IS- BN 978-99957-1-708-7) Interviews spanning 31 years And this is where the teller comes in, a woman hailing from a Gozitan village, of the same age as the author and first met with already before her cultur- al anthropological fieldwork started in 1987. The first exten- sive interviews, in the form of conversations, that took place in1988-1989 and 1990, were in- cluded in her much appreciated book "Female images of Malta", that appeared in 1994 but was soon sold out, more or less a victim of its own success. Ultimately, all the interviews made with Lucija up to 2019 would span a period of no less than 31 years. Due to this long research period, the book could clearly demonstrate the drastic changes in those crucial dec- ades of "westernisation" as the Maltese called it themselves. And also Gozo was engulfed in that sociocultural whirlpool. As a cultural anthropologist, Veronica Veen has always fa- voured a form of "participant observation", so not at a dis- tance, but personally involved and dedicated, now already more than half her life. Next year will be her 40th in the Gozitan 'field'! Moreover, as an art historian she is able to tackle visual and historical information. This is how this book could develop into a true kaleidoscopic pano- rama of the feminine in Gozo. The 8 interviews with Lucija, made over those 31 years, but actually spanning some 100 years, run through the book like a continuous thread. Together they form an impressive oral history of change. All this is in- tertwined with little, relevant essays and reflections, many original photographs by the author published for the first time, photo 'galleries', drawings by Adrian van der Blom and last but not least traditional stories, from hilarious to tragic, and songs. Other sources needed The book begins with a short essay on "women's history as an other kind of history". Women's life in the past, and their expe- rience of it, was usually only re- corded if it concerned extremes like prostitution, adultery or criminality. Yet, women had considerable informal power in traditional Maltese and es- pecially Gozitan society; they were no less than the centre of the house and the house was the centre of the world. Very little of this found its way to of- ficial, written sources. So other sources should be explored, like oral history and the rich wom- en' s telling tradition. In this case the fruits of oral history become immediately evident in the vivid picturing of the over-energetic and in- dustrious mother of the teller who could make anything out of nothing, and the colourful, a-typical and highly independ- ent character of the mother- in-law, still apart from the true abundance of details from daily life, many of them almost un- believable due to their prim- itiveness (here not meant in any denigrating sense) and the outspoken lack of the most ba- sic comfort. Image a family of six (the father working abroad) living in just one room, sleep- ing included, and the latter taking place in just one bed, the mother "right at the end - so we would not fall out (...) tight like in a matchbox". However, Lucija did not experience the grinding poverty that her (somewhat older) husband, the oldest boy of 17 chil- dren, remembered: "He shared with his brother one pair of shoes. They took a bandage for the one foot and each a shoe at the other" (...) And the next week they put the bandages on the other foot". In this vein it goes on and on, about the utter sim- plicity of the household, never getting something extra, a pot as a toilet in the same room, endless waiting for a doctor from the town and the many diseases. Women who had to cope with all this must now be regarded as heroines. Wise and detached The interview of 1990 rightly got the title "big changes, total differences" and deals with the stormy developments at that time, marked by an increasing consumerism and craving for freedom, that however "soon ended up with the freedom to toil even harder, making even more money in order to dis- tinguish oneself from others". In these conversations, like the later ones of 2010, 2014 and 2019, Lucija appears as a wise, detached observer of the socie- ty she lived and participated in, for some time also as a member of the Local Council in her vil- lage. Alternating with her sensi- ble reflections are chapters by the author about the ghonnel- la (and the markedly divergent perspectives on it), the women's storytelling tradition, the ques- tion of female power, women's spirituality, the festa and the feminine, among others. The book, multifaceted as it is, aims to be a wake up call, especially for the young wom- en and girls nowadays, in order to realise that not only a lot has been won, but certainly also lost in 'modern' women's lives. The author's main goal has al- ways been "to empower the women of Gozo and Malta with this kind of knowledge". As Lu- cija herself has stated: "We are doing well for the community to make these things known".