Table Of ContentITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Interrupted Narratives
and Intersectional
Representations in Italian
Postcolonial Literature
Caterina Romeo
Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American his-
tory, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of special-
ists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy
(Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by
established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force
in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by
re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
Editorial Board
Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA
Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA
Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY, USA
Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School,
CUNY, USA
Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA
Caterina Romeo
Interrupted Narratives
and Intersectional
Representations in
Italian Postcolonial
Literature
Caterina Romeo
Department of Modern Literatures and Cultures
Sapienza Università di Roma
Rome, Italy
Translation by Ellen McRae (with the exception of Chapter 2 and Section 4.4).
ISSN 2635-2931 ISSN 2635-294X (electronic)
Italian and Italian American Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-10042-0 ISBN 978-3-031-10043-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10043-7
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To our wonderful planet.
And to my beloved daughter, Maddalena.
A
cknowledgments
This book came to life during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am especially
grateful to my close and extended family (human and otherwise) and
beloved friends who helped me through very difficult times and numerous
lockdowns. Thank you all for making my life easier in many creative ways.
I would like to thank the colleagues on whose support I can constantly
count: Peter Covino, Giulia Fabbri, Edvige Giunta, Beatrice Manetti, Áine
O’Healy, and Monica Cristina Storini.
I would like to thank Peter Covino for his invaluable assistance and
advice in writing the book proposal, for his affection and constant sup-
port, for his bright and precious presence in my life.
My deepest gratitude goes to the book reviewers, Rosetta Giuliani
Caponetto and Clarissa Clò, for putting their bright minds at my disposal,
for their time and intellectual energy, their hard work, pointed feedback,
and generous support. I would also like to thank Rosetta and Clarissa,
together with Edvige Giunta, Áine O’Healy, and Emma Bond, for their
wonderful and insightful blurbs.
I would like to thank Ellen McRae (translator) and Derek Pollard (edi-
tor). Thank you for your work, your competence, your professionalism,
your ability to work as a team, and for keeping me going when I did not
think this project would ever be completed.
The whole project of translating, writing, and rewriting this book began
while I was Academic Visitor at the University of Auckland. I am truly
appreciative of Bernadette Luciano for inviting me to do research at her
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
institution: our stay in New Zealand was one of the most beautiful experi-
ences in our lives. I am truly grateful to Bernadette Luciano to visit their
institutions in Australia while I was in the Southern hemisphere: Francesco
Ricatti at Monash University; John Hayek and Laura Lori at the University
of Melbourne; and Giorgia Alù at the University of Sidney.
This translation and my sabbatical in New Zealand were financed
through research funds from my institution, Sapienza University of Rome.
This volume is not a mere translation of Riscrivere la nazione. La let-
teratura italiana postcoloniale (Le Monnier-Mondadori 2018). Parts of
the Italian text have been expunged, parts have been written anew (includ-
ing the introductory chapter in its entirety), parts have been rewritten, and
the whole volume has been updated and made presentable and under-
standable to an Anglophone audience.
This book is dedicated to our wonderful planet and to my beloved
daughter, Maddalena Lehmann.
Praise for Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional
Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature
“This is an impressive study dedicated to migrant authors and their descendants
who in the last thirty years have rewritten Italy with their work, sketched a culture
in flux, presented a geography colored with new meanings, and filled a society with
faces and talents that have struggled to enter into the publishing, film, television,
or academic canon. Time and again, Romeo presents the reader with the same
question (who can call themselves Italian and based on what criteria) in order to
reveal the contradictions, the denials, and the excuses. Romeo transitions from one
argument to another with dense and rich analysis, never losing sight of the real
context and real life of the authors she so passionately describes.”
—Rosetta Giuliani Caponetto, author of Fascist Hybridities:
Racial Mixing and Diaspora Cultures under Mussolini
“With Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian
Postcolonial Literature, Caterina Romeo paints a compelling and comprehensive
picture of Italian postcolonial literature from its inception in the early 1990s
through the most recent cultural production. Adopting an intersectional and
transdiasporic methodology, Romeo lucidly highlights the political implications of
these works as they uncover how notions of race, gender and sexuality developed
during the colonial period are still present in contemporary Italy. With an ambi-
tious archive and its use of the most current scholarship, the book effectively maps
the field and forcefully argues for its relevance not only in Italy, but in relation to
other regions in Europe, the Mediterranean, and North America.”
—Clarissa Clò, Professor of Italian and European Studies,
San Diego State University
“Caterina Romeo’s brilliant analysis illuminates the layers of Italian postcolonial
literature and the ways in which it carries in its bones the weight of a haunting past.
A must-read for anyone interested in transnational Italian culture, Interrupted
Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature
shows how a vibrant literature can emerge from histories of oppression and, in the
process, forever transform the culture of a nation.”
—Edvige Giunta, coeditor of Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political
Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
“Deploying postcolonial, decolonial, and transnational perspectives, Caterina
Romeo offers a compelling exploration of the writings of Italian immigrants, their
descendants, and other authors of the Italian diaspora who have made their voices
heard over the past three decades. Attentive to questions of national identity, gen-
der, race, ethnicity, and the construction of space, her work provides an intersec-
tional analysis of one of the most innovative currents animating cultural production
at present. By mapping out the rich vein of Italian postcolonial literature, Romeo
recalibrates our understanding of contemporary Italian culture and challenges
conventional notions of Italianness.”
—Àine O’Healy, author of Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema
in a Transnational Frame
