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Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives is about identity-individual and national-and belonging. It is also an affirmation of diversity. The editors of this volume have brought together articles that analyze the literature of migration as well as creative pieces by recognized authors who have a lived experience of migration. English speakers will find their own societal struggles with diversity mirrored in Italy's colonial inheritance and its renewed nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and shifting national identity.
The artists and scholars who have contributed to this book challenge national discourses, dehumanizations, and issues of race and gender. But many also seek to move beyond the negative and critical to claim belonging-especially national belonging-in the name of diversity as part of human experience. The chapters emphasize how individuals both reflect and enact societal change, and they foreground the inescapable fact that human differences and migration drive and shape societal identity in our world.
List of contents
Section I: Diversity in Italy
Poetry
Vera Lúcia de Oliveira
"I was among warm folk in a warm country" (Ero fra calda gente in un caldo paese)
Translated by Ashna Ali
Essay
Clarissa Clò and Enrico Zammarchi
"Stran(i)ero nella mia nazione": Hip-Hop from Southern Alie-Nation to Afro-Italian Nation-Hood
Essay
Daniele Comberiati
Reading "Albania" in Italy: Reception of Elvira Dones's Piccola guerra perfetta and Ron Kubati's La via dell'eroe
Essay
Lucia Re
Migration, the Novel and the Power of Fear: A Dialogical Perspective from Baktin to Lakhous
Fiction
Amara Lakhous
"Ninth Wail" and "The Truth of Abdallah Ben Kadour," from Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
Essay
Ryan Calabretta-Sajer
Gendering the "Giallo": Gender Roles in the Opus of Amara Lakhous
Fiction
Ubax Cristina Ali Farah
"The Phoenix" (La Fenice)
Translated by Silvia Guslandi
Essay
Wendy Pojmann
Creativity as Feminist Practice: Intercultural Women's Associations in Italy
Essay
Fulvio Pezzarossa
"Arriving Too Soon is a Mistake"
Amnesia in the Postcolonial Archive: The Antonaros Case
Fiction
Adrián Bravi
"When Jacopo da Fiori Watched the Monkeys in the Treetops" (Quando Jacopo da Fiori guardava la chioma degli alberi)
Translated by Kevin Regan-Maglione
Section II: Diversity of Diversity
Poetry
Basir Ahang
"Identity" (Identità)
Translated by Ashna Ali
Essay
Caterina Romeo
Defying the Chromatic Norm: Strategies of Invisibility and Italian Transdiasporic Blackness
Essay
Marta Cariello
Reconfiguring "la donna del Sud": Trans-Mediterranean Narratives
Fiction
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel
"The Guest"
Essay
Simone Brioni
Questions of Authority and Literary Meticciato in Scrivere di Islam: Raccontare la diaspora
Essay
Lidia Radi
Albania Mon Amour: Tales of Female Love and Duty in the Italian Writings of Vorpsi, Dones, and Ibrahimi
Poetry
Gezim Hajdari
"The Nails of Exile" (I chiodi dell'esilio)
Translated by James Walker
Essay
Lidia Curti
Beyond the Canon: Women's Italian Writings of Migration
Essay
Jennifer Burns
Kinships: Relations of Care and Experiences of Locality in Transnational Italian Narrative
Fiction
Gabriella Kuruvilla
"The Two of Me" (Io siamo in due)
Translated by Eleanor Paynter
Essay
Ron Kubati
Translingual Literature and Multi-belonging
About the author
Marie Orton is professor of Italian at Brigham Young University.
Graziella Parati is the Paul D. Paganucci Professor of Italian Literature and Language at Dartmouth College.
Ron Kubati, PhD., is an independent scholar and author.
Summary
Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives brings together creative literary works and scholarly articles. Both address the changes and challenges to identity formation in an Italy marked by the migrations, populism, nationalism, and xenophobia, and analyze diversity and the affirmation of belonging.
