This is the first year I take part in the A to Z Challenge, and I’m so excited! I first learned about it last year when it was just over, and I immediately decided I would take part next year. Then I discovered many people have a theme, and I immediately decided I would have one. I don’t know whether this is going to make things easier, as it’s supposed to do since this is the first time ever I’m doing the challenge, but it sounds like fun.

I also knew immediately what my theme would be – besides I’ve been researching Roaring Twenties America for the past four years and I’m quite familiar with the subject.
Although I had initially planned to set my story in Depression Era America, I’ve never regretted moving it back one decade. The Roaring Twenties is a fascinating time where so many things we now take for granted first came into existence. It was a time of change for so many people (women, but also minorities, especially African Americans) but also a time where ideas still stubbornly clinging to the past (the Scope Trial, for example, and to some extent, Prohibition itself). These contradictions are the heart of this era, in my opinion.

When I first started researching the decade, I was shocked to discover how modern Twenties people were. In some respect, they were even more modern than people were going to be for a few decades afterwards.
And what about aesthetics? I’ve always been fascinated with Art Deco and its streamlined lines. And the bobbed hairs, a women fashion that was at the same time a bit masculine and a lot feminine.

I was fascinated with Prohibition since the first time I read about it in my textbook at school. It was just a few lines. Italian history books aren’t particularly concerned with Prohibition, because other things concerned us most in those same years, namely, the rise of Fascism. Still, it blew my mind the idea that such a natural, everyday life activity like drinking could be made illegal. I remember thinking that would be an excellent material for a story.

And so, some thirty years later, here I am writing that story.

WELCOME TO MY

ROARING TWENTIES

"There's a modernity to the Twenties that doesn't belong to any other decade of the 1900s. Everything was evolving in the 1920s. Potentials were high #history Click To Tweet

A – Anti-Saloon League
B – Black-and-Tan
C – College
D – Drys and Wets
E – Eighteenth Amendment
F – Films
G – Gin
H – Hijacking
I – Indian Citizenship Act
J – Jazz
K – Ku Klux Klan
L – Lingo
M – Model T
N – New Woman
O – Organised Crime
P – Policy
Q – Quiff
R – Recordings
S – Speakeasy
T – Teetotal
U – United States Brewers Association
V – Volstead Act
W – Wickersham Commission
X – Xenophobia
Y – Youth Culture
Z – Zozzled

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