Stories of men and women who went against the grain and with strength and determination changed the course of events at the center of “The grandfather, the rapper and other rebels – Stories on the border between justice and legality” (Piemme), the latest literary effort by the rapper and writer from Reggio Francesco Carlo aka Kento.
The presentation is scheduled today at 6.00 pm at the Ubik Ave bookshop in Reggio Calabria.
Committed to art and social issues, he is the author of the podcast “Illegale”, holds writing workshops in juvenile prisons, schools and communities and in 2024 he was the first artist to participate in a search and rescue mission in the Central Mediterranean on board the Ocean Viking ship of SOS Méditerranée.
In the new book the author (born in 1976) addresses his nephew Yuri as a storyteller and begins his story starting from Grandfather Ciccio, a convinced anti-fascist, to reach figures such as Sandro Pertini, Giordano Bruno, Nelson Mandela; but it also mentions the Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi and two representative female figures such as Greta Thunberg and Carola Rackete. Stories of normal men and women who have performed extraordinary gestures, through which Kento invites us to think for ourselves and asks a question, perhaps the most important for the future of all: what should we do when a law is unjust?
“I believe that legality has an extraordinary value and we must keep its flag high – Kento tells us – A flag that must not become a fetish. I think that legality is essential when it is full of values, not when it becomes an excuse behind which to hide the injustices of power, the inequalities or the hypocrisy of power itself. Many beautiful things, even as regards Italy, would not have happened without illegality, so yes to legality, but still to justice first.”
These words are significant of the motivation that guided the actions of the protagonists of the book. How did you choose them?
““In the South, in Calabria and Sicily in particular, there is a very strong tradition of oral storytelling that starts from Ancient Greece and reaches fairy tales, passes from the chanson de geste and arrives at the tales of our grandparents. The book is oral in its own way, it celebrates this tradition and interprets it with today’s tools to ferry it to tomorrow. I chose large and small characters, young and old, men and women, without following a chronological order or their fame. They are bedtime stories, with which I created a puzzle in which one story completes the other. Different events, which demonstrate that you don’t need to be a man, white or a very powerful individual to do great things. It’s also a book with which I don’t want to offer excuses: there are many excellent reasons to mind your own business, but there is perhaps one for which it is increasingly important and meaningful to fight. Unfortunately in this period of wars and massacres there is a need for young people, boys and girls who take on this responsibility”.
In fact, in the book you turn to your nephew to underline this passing of the baton to future generations. But are young people capable of taking on these responsibilities?
“Today young people are no longer the “lying people” described by Michele Serra. Faced with physical and virtual repression, a fury towards them, they are giving us a great demonstration of civility. Their environmental awareness which we at their age had in embryonic form gives us hope. We hope that from the fight for the environment we move on to that for social justice, because environmental awareness cannot exist without social justice and I hope it is understood that this terrible exasperated, cruel and predatory capitalism is not the only possible system”. The preface of the volume is edited by Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International, an organization of which Kento is an activist.