{"id":5566,"date":"2016-10-16T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=5566"},"modified":"2016-10-16T14:34:57","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T21:34:57","slug":"elena-ferrante-isnt-who-i-thought-she-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/writing\/elena-ferrante-isnt-who-i-thought-she-was\/","title":{"rendered":"Elena Ferrante Isn’t Who I Thought She Was."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"Elena<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

And I\u2019m glad she\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym for Italy\u2019s most famous author. For twenty years her true identity has remained a carefully guarded secret.<\/p>\n

Then, on October 2nd<\/sup>, the New York Review of Books published an article<\/a> on its website by Claudio Gatti. Mr. Gatti claimed that he had discovered the woman behind the pen name. In the kind of investigation usually reserved for criminals or crooked politicians, he had combed through financial records and found all the evidence he needed.<\/p>\n

Anita Raja, a Rome based translator was the real Elena Ferrante. Ms. Raja denies it, but his proof is pretty convincing.<\/p>\n

So why, you may wonder, am I glad\u2014not that she was outed\u2014but that she probably isn\u2019t who I thought she was?<\/p>\n

Over the past year or so I\u2019ve read the four books that compose her Neapolitan Quartet<\/a>. The books follow the lives and friendship of two women from a poor neighborhood of Naples. The narrator, Elena Greco, takes us through more than fifty years of their lives.<\/p>\n

If Mr. Gatti is right, the author of the Neapolitan Quartet was not a girl from a poor neighborhood in Naples. She was born in Naples, but she moved to Rome when she was three years old. And her father was not poor. He was a magistrate.<\/p>\n

The four books are a testament to the power of the imagination. The author of the Neapolitan Quartet was able to imagine herself inside the skins of people who were different than she was. In my mind, that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees with me. These critics believe authors have no right to tell other people\u2019s stories, especially if the people whose stories the author wants to tell are from a different socio-economic class or a different race.<\/p>\n

The White Englishman, Chris Cleave, was criticized<\/a> for presuming to write from the viewpoint of a Nigerian girl in his best-selling book, Little Bee. <\/em>Another book, The Help, <\/em>was made into a movie, but it was roundly criticized<\/a> for the way the white author, Kathryn Stockett, portrayed its characters of color.<\/p>\n

When I started my novel, Tiger Tail Soup<\/a>,<\/em> I knew how dangerous it was to write from the point of view of a Chinese woman. <\/em>I didn\u2019t start out with the intention of doing a high-wire act on my first novel. But I had a story to tell, and that was the only way I knew to tell it.<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n

I know. Anita Raja (if she actually is Elena Ferrante) was the same race and nationality as the characters in the Neapolitan Quartet. But she did step out of her comfortable middle-class world to write about women who lived in poverty. And that leap, which fooled everyone, gives me confidence to continue to imagine the lives of people whose experience is different from my own.<\/p>\n

The Neapolitan Quartet:<\/p>\n

#1 My Brilliant Friend<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

#2 The Story of a New Name<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

#3 Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

#4 The Story of the Lost Child<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 And I\u2019m glad she\u2019s not. Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym for Italy\u2019s most famous author. For twenty years her true identity has remained a carefully guarded secret. Then, on October 2nd, the New York Review of Books published an article on its website by Claudio Gatti. Mr. Gatti claimed that he had discovered the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[343,743,438,4],"tags":[1391,1390,1389,1107,1396,1394,1395,1392,1393,1397,925],"class_list":["post-5566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-books","category-historical-fiction","category-writing","tag-anita-raja","tag-claudio-gatti","tag-elena-ferrante","tag-fiction","tag-little-bee","tag-neapolitan-quartet","tag-novels-set-in-naples","tag-pen-name-for-elena-ferrante","tag-pseudonym","tag-the-help","tag-tiger-tail-soup"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-1rM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5580,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/writing\/how-much-privacy-do-you-really-want\/","url_meta":{"origin":5566,"position":0},"title":"Privacy Is a Moving Target.","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"November 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 From public phone books to hummingbird drones. For most of my life, my phone number and address could be found in the fat public phone book everyone received once a year. When I was a kid, we even had a \"party line\"\u2014two short rings for our phone, one for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"telephone-001","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/telephone-001-e1477355092570.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9395,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/books\/a-season-of-truth\/","url_meta":{"origin":5566,"position":1},"title":"A Season of Truth","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"January 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a sunny day here. Looking out the window, I have a crisp, clear view of the trees on my street. Still leafless, they look dull and ordinary, waiting for spring. That's the truth of it. And that makes me happy. Truth. I didn't know how much I valued truth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/IMG_2402-e1585257677394.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11619,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/books\/murderbot-and-its-pronouns\/","url_meta":{"origin":5566,"position":2},"title":"Murderbot and its Pronouns","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"August 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Murderbot. Not exactly a lovable name. But that\u2019s what Murderbot chose to call itself. Go figure. Did you notice the pronoun I used? Itself. It sounds kind of clumsy to me, but Martha Wells, the author of The Murderbot Diaries, had no such problem. The seven books in the series\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "beaches"","block_context":{"text":"beaches","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/beaches\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"night sky","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/IMG_2574-e1752003758289.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4434,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/twelve-authors-and\/","url_meta":{"origin":5566,"position":3},"title":"Twelve Authors and Their Books","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"November 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I\u2019m teaming up with eleven other authors for an ebook sale. For the next ten days you\u2019ll be able to load up your Kindle, Nook, iPad or phone with some new reading material for less than you\u2019d spend on a trip to Starbucks. This is how it works. 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Daughter #3 is known to be neat and hardworking, so naturally she stripped the beds and started the washer and dryer before they left.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"bookcase in study","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_4372-e1704317412198.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5566"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5573,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions\/5573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}