Musine Kokalari
| Musine Kokalari | |
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Musine Kokalari
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| Born | Musine Kokalari February 10, 1917 Adana, Turkey |
| Died | August 13, 1983 (aged 66) Rrëshen, Albania |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | Albanian |
| Nationality | Albanian |
| Education | Literature |
| Alma mater | La Sapienza University |
| Notable works | "As my old mother tells me" (1941, Albanian: 'Siç me thotë nënua plakë); "Around the Hearth (1944, (Albanian: Rreth vatrës); "How life swayed" (1944, (Albanian: Sa u tund jeta... ). |
Musine Kokalari (February 10, 1917 Adana, Turkey – August 14, 1983) was an Albanian prose writer and politician in Albania's pre-communist period. She was the founder of the Social-Democratic Party of Albania in 1943. Kokalari was the first female writer of Albania. After a short involvement in politics during World War II, she was persecuted by the communist regime in Albania, and not allowed to write anymore. She died in poverty and complete isolation.
Musine Kokalari was born on February 10, 1917 in Adana in southern Turkey of a patriotic and politically active family of Gjirokastrian origin. She returned to Albania with her family in 1920. Musine was early to acquire a taste for books and learning since her brother Vesim operated a bookstore in Tirana in the mid 1930s. In January 1938, she left for Rome to study literature at the university there and graduated in 1941 with a thesis on Naim Frashëri. Her stay in the eternal city gave her an ephemeral glimpse into a fascinating world of intellectual creativity and her sole aim in life upon her return to Albania was to become a writer.
In 1943, she declared to a friend, "I want to write, to write, only to write literature, and to have nothing to do with politics."
She had, at the age of twenty-four, indeed already published an initial 80-page collection of ten youthful prose tales in her native Gjirokastrian dialect: As my old mother tells me (Albanian: Siç me thotë nënua plakë), Tirana, 1941. This historic collection, strongly inspired by Tosk folklore and by the day-by-day struggles of women of Gjirokastër, is thought to be the first work of literature ever written and published by a woman in Albania. Their value consists of the very lively dialect of Gjirokastër and the prevailing mores of the region. Kokalari called the book, "the mirror of a world gone by, the path of transition from girlhood with its melodies and the first years of marriage to the world of the grown woman, once again bound by the heavy chains of slavery to patriarchal fanaticism."
Three years later, despite the vicissitudes of World War II, Kokalari now twenty-seven, was able to publish a longer collection of short stories and sketches entitled How life swayed (Albanian: Sa u-tunt jeta), Tirana, 1944, a total of 348-pages which established her—ever so briefly—as a writer of substance. A third volume of her folksy tales was entitled Around the Hearth (Albanian: Rreth vatrës), Tirana, 1944.
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