Musine Kokalari

Musine Kokalari was born on the 10^th February 1917 in Adana, Turkey; she died on the 14^th August in Gjirokaster, Albania. She was a prose writer from Albania and she was also a politician in the pre-communist era of the country. She was the founder of the Social-Democratic Part of the country in the year 1943. 

source of picture: revistakuvendi.org

Kokalari was the first woman to become a writer in the country, Albania. After a short engagement with the politics of the country at the time of the World War II, she was persecuted by the communist regime in the country and she was not permitted to write again. She died in poverty and complete isolation in the 1983.

Early Life

Mousine Kokalari was born in Adana, the southern part of the country, Turkey to a patriotic and politically active family that originated from Gjirokastrian. She went back to her country with her family in the year 1920. She was early to gain a taste for book and learning as his brother was operating a bookshop in Tirana in the mid-1930s. In January 1939, she left her country and went to Rome to study literature at the University there and she finished in the year 1941 with a thesis on Naim Frasheri. Her stay in Rome provided a glimpse into the fascinating world of intellectual creativity and her main target in life after she has gone back to his country was to become a writer.

In the year 1943, she said to a friend, "I want to write, to write, only to write literature, and to have nothing to do with politics."

Publications

At the age of 24, she had already published an initial 80 page collection of ten youthful prose tales in her native language, Gjirokastarian, and the name of the book is ‘Siç me thotë nënua plakë’, As my old mother tells me, Tirana, 1941. The collection was inspired by Tosk folklore and by the day-by-day struggles of women of Gjirokastër, was said to be the first work of literature that was ever written and published by woman in the country. The value of the book incorporates the very language of the Gjirokastër and the dominant mores of the province. She named 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."

At the end of the World War II, she opened a bookshop and was given an invitation to become a member of the Albanian League of Writers and Artist that was formed in the year 1945, under the leadership of Sejfulla Malëshova. All the time she was eerie by the execution with no trial of her two brothers called Mumtaz and Vejsim, on the 12 November 1944 by the communists of the country and she demanded justice and retribution against the government of the country. Having herself being closely linked with the Fledgling Albanian Social Democratic Party and the press organ of the party Zëri i lirisë in the year 1944, she was arrested in an age terror concomitant with the arrest of Malëshova in the year 1946, and on July of that same year, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the military court of the country as a saboteur and enemy of the people. Before she was arrested, she sent a letter to the Allied Force of the country that were based in Tirana, the capital city of the country, and in the letter she sent to them, she called for free election and freedom of expression in the country. At the trial of the Kokalari, she said the following words, ‘I don't need to be a communist to love my country. I love my country even though I am not a communist. I love its progress. You boast that you have won the war, and now you are the winner you want to extinguish those who you call political opponents. I think differently from you but I love my country. You are punishing me for my ideals!’

In the year 1964, after spending 18 years in prison of Burrel in the region of Mat, she was isolated from the people of the country and placed under constant surveillance. She spent the next 19 years of her life in the internment in the town of Rrëshen, in the northern part of the country. Terminally sick with cancer, she was refused to be admitted to a hospital by the government before she finally died on the 14^th August 1983.

Recognition

Kokalari was one of the 1^st 30 writers of the country to be sent to prison in the 1960s by the committee of the Three. In the year 1933, she was posthumously named a Martyr of Democracy by the then president of the country and a school in Tirana has her name as the name of the school.