A Conversation About Women's Right to Their Own History/ Paradoxes of Existence 15

The pretext for talking about women's right to their own history and self-determination, their social position and the recovery of voices and experiences omitted in traditional historical narratives will be Anna Brzezińska's book Patience Genovefy, Shameless Magdalene. A Guide to the Middle Ages of Ordinary Women (Marginesy Publishing House 2026).

Bankers and slaves, bridesmaids and clerks, beggars and midwives, witches and mystics—fifty women of blood and bone. Not only statuary and canonical, but also those that usually remain on the sidelines of great history. Their stories show how, despite legal, social and moral constraints, women have shaped their own lives for centuries and influenced the world around them. The restoration of these histories not only allows us to look at the Middle Ages differently, but also to see how many of the mechanisms of inequality and dependence of that time remain relevant to this day. The reader will be surprised more than once how modern, liberated and courageous the women of that time were able to be.

In a conversation with Anna Brzezińska, we will look at the everyday life of medieval women, their role in social, economic and political life, and the ways in which they negotiated their own independence in a male-dominated world. We will talk about herstoria as an attempt to recover memory and restore subjectivity to women, as well as the limits of autonomy, systemic violence, economic dependence and social pressure. We will consider how expectations for women have changed and what connects the experiences of the heroines of medieval stories with modern disputes about the right to decide their own body, life and social roles. The conversation will be moderated by Natalia Soszyńska.

As part of the Paradoxes of Existence cycle, which addresses the topic of the human condition and societies in the modern world, we will meet for the fifteenth time.

The organizers of the meeting are the Gdańsk Book Fair (Jednostka Kultury sp. z o.o.) and the European Solidarity Centre.

gościni Anna Brzezińska | Writer and medievist, valued above all for her fantastic and historical literature. She graduated in History from the Catholic University of Lublin and Medieval Studies from the Central European University in Budapest. Winner of the Janusz A. Zajdl Prize — for her debut short story “A loved her, that fear”, the novel “The Viper Harp” and the short story “Waters as Deep as the Sky”. She is the author of a series about Babuna Jagódka (:Tales about Wilżyńska Dolina” and “The Witch from the Wilżyńska Dolina”), monumental novels “Daughters of Wawel” or “Water on a sieve” and the essayist “Twilight of the world of knights”, as well as many collections of short stories. Her work combines a rich historical background with elements of fantasy, and the books belong to the classics of contemporary Polish literature of this genre. She is a regular columnist for “Ale Historia”, an appendix to Gazeta Wyborcza, and also publishes in “Polityka” and “Tygodnik Powszechny”.

lead Natalia Soszyńska | Lives and works in Gdańsk. She is a creative copywriter, a promoter of reading. He runs the advertising agency Tszystkie Litery and the Gdańsk Book Club. He teaches literature at the Gdańsk University of the Third Age. She is a double winner of the “Dekameron 2020" short story competition organized by the Culture House in Łódź. She won the European Design Award 2019 and the DNA Paris Award for her creative work in projects with TOFU Studio in Gdańsk.