Mariapia Bonanate
I AM JOY
A Cry for Freedom from the Slavery of Trafficking - Preface by Pope Francis
1ª edizione gennaio 2021
Collana
LE VELE
Formato
14,5 x 21 cm - BROSSURA CON ALETTE
Disponibile anche in formato eBook
Numero pagine 176
CDU
82L 374
ISBN/EAN
9788892223790
Joy is 23 years old when in Benin City she is convinced by a
trusted friend to leave for Italy with the promise of a job, so
that she will be able to send money to her family and continue her studies. A few hours into her travel Joy realizes she has
been deceived and has fallen into a circle of hell: the dramatic
desert crossing, the Libyan detention camps, where she suffers cruel violence and knows indescribable horrors, the boat
adrift in the Mediterranean.
Miraculously saved from the shipwreck, upon her arrival in
Italy she discovers that the promised job is “the street”, where
the madam forces her to prostitute herself blackmailing her
through voodoo and a debt of 35,000 euros. In Castel Volturno, in Campania, she becomes a slave of merciless torturers. But Joy, even in her most dramatic moments, supported
by the atavistic strength of the women of her land, never loses
faith in that God who, since she was a child, feels like a friend
of hers living in her.
A powerful book, told in the first person by the exceptional
witness of that “crime against humanity,” as Pope Francis defined it. A story illuminated by the smile and the joy of life
of the protagonist she manages to challenge and defeat the
absurd banality of evil with.
Pope Francis personally met Joy together with Casa Ruth, the
association taking care of women victims of human trafficking
in Turin.
Mariapia Bonanate (Villeneuve, Aosta, 1940) has a degree in literature. She is married, with three children and lives in Turin.
She has worked as a high school teacher for a few years, then
she started collaborating with newspapers and magazines
and reporting from different parts of the world: America, Asia,
Africa. Her inquiries are dedicated to young people, women
and human trafficking, drugs, alcoholism, mental illness. She
regularly writes for the weekly magazine Famiglia Cristiana of
the San Paolo Group. With Edizioni San Paolo she has published: Savana on the road (2017); Polvere rossa (2015); Ad un
passo dal cuore (2013); Io sono qui (2012).
SELLING POINTS
• A touching true story about a topic of great social relevance
worldwide.
• The concrete prose of a master journalist like Mariapia Bonanate.
• Preface by Pope Francis.
«Your name is Joy but,
above all, you “are Joy:”
unique, desired,
and so loved».
Pope Francis to Joy
RIGHTS SOLD: Slovakia