Girlhood In Focus: Inside Miu Miu’s Literary Club
Last month, Miu Miu’s Literary Club in Milan united women writers to discuss works by Simone de Beauvoir and Fumiko Enchi on women in society.
Taking place at the Circolo Filologico Milanese cultural centre in early April, Miu Miu’s Literary Club this year delved into the topics of girlhood, love and sex education through the two books of choice.
Released in 2020 – 66 years after it had been written by the great feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir because it had been deemed too intimate to be published during her lifetime – The Inseparables is the author’s fictionalised retelling of her passionate, if imbalanced, friendship with a girl she met at school at an early age, and the emotional and social turmoil that it inflicts.
Meanwhile, the work spotlighted on day two, Fumiko Enchi’s The Waiting Years, tells the story of female oppression during the Meiji era in Japan through the eyes of a woman tasked with finding concubines for her government official husband.
The event was held at Circolo Filologico Milanese where panels and guests explored the idea of girlhood accompanied by live music performances.
Curating the panel conversations was the writer and researcher of Italian culture, language and literature, Olga Campofreda, who used each book as a launch pad into discussions about women’s position in society and the panellists’ own experiences growing up as women. Live music performances and readings completed the event, which was inaugurated last year as part of Miu Miu’s continual efforts to promote different artistic disciplines.
Curator for Miu Miu's Literary Club, Olga Campofreda.
On the panel for day one of Miu Miu’s latest Literary Club gathering, exploring Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables: French-American writer and translator Lauren Elkin, who was behind the elegant adaptation of the book into English; Italian author Veronica Raimo, whose latest work, the coming-of-age novel Lost On Me (Niente di Vero), won the Strega Giovani and Viareggio Repaci prizes – both among the most prestigious literary awards in Italy; New Delhi-based Geetanjali Shree, best known for the empowering Tomb of Sand, the first novel translated from an Indian language to clinch the International Booker Prize in 2022; and British writer, curator and fashion front row regular Lou Stoppard, who played moderator.
The two chosen titles for this year's Miu Miu’s Literary Club.
Says Shree, when asked about female friendships, a theme that also appears in her own work: “By and large, ego plays a huge part in the way males are traditionally constructed. I think women are much simpler and more forthcoming in being vulnerable and intimate. Therefore, in their friendships, they are able to express themselves a lot more in detail than men.”
(Clockwise from bottom left) Lauren Elgin, Veronica Raimo, Geetanjali Shree, and Lou Stoppard.
Discussing Fumiko Enchi’s The Waiting Years at Miu Miu’s Literary Club last month were (clockwise from bottom right-hand corner): the award-winning American writer and poet Sarah Manguso, whose latest novel, the bracing Liars, talks about marriage, motherhood and rage; author Nicola Dinan, who grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and swept a host of accolades and ‘It girl’ status with her 2023 debut novel Bellies; Irish author Naoise Dolan, loved for her witty works that explore relationships and power dynamics; and the day’s moderator, Kai Isaiah Jamal – a model, advocate for social justice, and poet interested in the intersection of race, gender and mental health.
(Clockwise from bottom right-hand corner): Sarah Manguso, Nicola Dinan, Naoise Dolan, and the day’s Kai Isaiah Jamal.
The latter sums up the day’s conversation: “I was speaking earlier in one of the interviews and was asked, ‘What do you desire most?’ And I said, ‘Freedom to desire.’ That is it. And I feel like all three of you – and of course in Enchi’s work – that is what we all desire most: to have self-autonomy and to have freedom.”
This article first appeared in the May 2025 Travel Edition of FEMALE