The fastest woman in the world, an incredible fencer and an infallible archer. They are the protagonists of Custom-builtthe latest book for girls and boys by Francesca Cavallo, co-author of Bedtime stories for rebel girls.
“Fuoriserie” because all three protagonists excel in the sport they have chosen to practice at a competitive level, so much so as to win many gold medals. And custom-built also because they have bodies considered out of the norm by medicine and by the majority of people.
These are the Paralympic champions Tatyana McFadden, Bebe Vio and Zahra Nemati, whose life and sports career are told.
The book, published by Momo, is dedicated “to children and adults who do things their own way”. And the first of the common threads that run through the pages since the introduction – written by Valentina Perniciaro, author, blogger and president of the non-profit Fondazione Tetrabondi – is precisely the emphasis placed on the personal ways of moving in the world of each and every one of us.
“Imagine a huge palette with shades of all the colors that your mind can imagine”, writes Perniciaro. “Would you ever think of telling one of these colors to stay aloof because it’s not how you wanted it, because it makes you sad or perhaps scared, because it’s not how they’ve always told you?”.
McFadden, Vio and Nemati, remaining in the chromatic metaphor, are three colors that most so-called skilled people would hardly be able to imagine, and which nevertheless have found their way to shine.
Tatyana McFadden at the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021. (Buda Mendes, Getty Images)
The other common thread of the three stories is the absence of the rhetoric of the “superheroine” or “superhero” which often permeates the narratives of Paralympic athletes, described as people with “special powers” to compensate for the anomalies of their bodies. Women and men to be admired because they managed to achieve extraordinary results despite their physical condition.
This type of narrative usually coexists with another older rhetoric regarding Paralympic athletes: pietism. So much so that, in a statement released in 2018 to the monthly Superabile Inail, Luca Pancalli, president of the Italian Paralympic Committee (Cip), recalled how in the past journalists defined the Paralympics “Olympics of heart and courage”.
“The two biggest holes you can fall into when talking about Paralympic sport are pietism and superism”, comments Claudio Arrigoni, journalist and author of Paralympics.
Custom-built reverses this perspective: of the three protagonists the skills that distinguish them from the others are certainly highlighted – not all Paralympic or Olympic athletes become champions – without however transforming them into “heroines with superpowers”, but rather making them stand out humanity and recounting their way of facing the challenges of daily life, as well as sports.
Tatyana from an early age realizes that she cannot walk like other children. To move or climb trees she uses her hands, a different way that still allows her to achieve her goals. Not only that: moving in this different way from the majority meant that over time she became “incredibly strong!”. Her strength is not linked to her physical condition, which in itself has a neutral connotation, neither negative nor positive, but by the way Tatyana looks at herself.
She has become incredibly strong because she has been able to see her body not as a limitation, but as an asset. In other words, being a person with a disability is neither a misfortune nor an asset. It depends on the view that people with disabilities have on themselves, first of all. And then also from how able people look at them.
And it is always that gaze, aimed at grasping the infinite potential of different human conditions rather than underlining their limits, that defines the wheelchair that Tatyana McFadden receives as “the most beautiful gift”. The wheelchair is presented as an instrument of freedom. A big difference from expressions such as “wheelchair bound” that still appear in some articles today.
Becoming a person with a disability due to illness or another traumatic event is a major challenge. It means learning again to live with one’s body, which is always the same but also different from before, and to reorganize one’s existence, learning to carry out normal daily activities in a different way, such as eating or brushing one’s teeth.
Bebe Vio knows this well and her arms and legs had to be amputated due to meningitis. It wasn’t easy at first, and it’s not hidden in the book. “He felt like an alien from outer space who lands on a completely new planet,” writes Francesca Cavallo.
Zahra Nemati during the archery competition at the XXXI Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Matthias Hangst, Getty Images)
But it is possible to get used to a new life and discover that you are fine and Vio succeeded in a short time, with ease and without heroism, so much so that her schoolmates “were amazed at her recovery. She would take off her brand new arm and let others try it out.”
Her greatest difficulty, as Cavallo’s story suggests, was relating to the many people concentrated only “on what Bebe could not do”, while she “had already begun to imagine all the fun things she could do with the his new body.” She understood a different way of holding the foil than before, a strategy that allowed her to continue her career as a fencer.
The story of Bebe Vio offers many other food for thought. One of all is the story of her experience as a model for some fashion magazines. With a few words and a splendid illustration, the urgency to change our aesthetic canons emerges, but also the fact that in fact this aesthetic revolution has already begun.
The protagonist of the last story is the Iranian Zahra Nemati, who became a disabled woman at nineteen due to a car accident. Again it is not hidden or denied the fact that waking up in hospital and discovering that you are no longer able to move your legs was a shock.
Black belt in taekwondo, after the accident Nemati had to abandon this sport because it involves the use of the lower limbs. By telling her story, the author conveys the true meaning of the word disability, which is not an anomaly of the person, but the result of the interaction between certain individual characteristics considered outside the norm, defined as such by medicine, and a socio-cultural context. politician not ready to welcome and value them.
In fact, Zahra “couldn’t even go out with her friends, because many places were not accessible for a person in a wheelchair”.
Finding herself with half of her body paralyzed has had an emotional impact, her frustration arose above all from feeling stuck at home due to architectural barriers.
Not even in this story, however, does one fall into the trap of victimhood: even Zahra is a woman who has not given up on her desires and has been able to seize the opportunity to rebuild her identity as a woman and as an athlete, trying her hand at a new discipline, archery, until she became an Olympic champion.
The protagonists of Custom-built they managed to achieve their goals despite the difficulties due to non-inclusive life contexts but also despite their gender identity. Being a woman with disabilities means being the victim of double discrimination and even if there is no explicit reference to this in the book, there is still the choice to tell the stories of three female athletes and not also those of athletes.
The illustrations that enliven the stories were made by Louis San Vincente, for Tatyana; Irma Ruggiero, for Bebe Vio; and Valentina Toro Gutiérrez for Zahra, who contribute to one of the strengths of Custom-built: the pedagogical value and the ability to involve the reader.
Finally, at the end of each chapter, there is an appreciable card with a photo of the athlete who is the protagonist of the story and brief information on his sporting career and his history as an activist for the rights of people with disabilities.
Custom-built is a book about dreams and goals. Of determination and willpower, without pietism or heroism. It is a book that teaches us that all of us can be a resource for ourselves and for others, and that it is possible to build a world “capable of understanding everyone’s needs and leaving no one behind”, as Perniciaro writes in the introduction .
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2023-08-25 10:54:12
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