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Notes
She does not underrate its dangers for political mobilization but points out that it has been avoided by organizations such as Women against fundamentalism and Women in black; the latter, in many countries including Italy, have established a dialogue between women on both sides of a divide, Serbian and Croatian or Palestinian and Israeli. Similarly, Jennifer C. Nash sees one of the problematic aspects of intersectionality in the tension between multiple grounds of identity and the necessities of group politics (2008: 4).
In their ‘Editorial’ to Gendering diaspora (2008), Tina Campt and Deborah Thomas insist on a more expansive notion of diaspora going beyond the dichotomy home-host country, and indicate literature and performance as key sites in the transmission of diasporic culture.
‘It is thus that I, Zuhra Laamane, opened the first page of the red note book number eight. The pen runs smoothly on the lines. The tampon dances happily in my menstrual blood’. (The translations from the Italian original are all mine.)
‘Her star is red. Slightly moist and beautiful. It emanates light. A menstrual star shining only for her infinity … inside the constellation, her story as a woman’.
‘I feel in my throat the water that is not there and see the desert that never ends. I hear people shouting and shouting for the fear of dying. I am bound, squashed, constricted, kicked in the cogged wheels truck. I listen to the breath of that car spitting and sweating, up and down, up and down. Nausea that fills my throat. Thick sand is burning my throat. The desert grows and blows up inside me ….’
‘… circular story of poor people moved by desire. A desire so strong as to be able to unearth roots, to challenge cyclones. You know? To die dehydrated, gasp for breath, thrash about is not a trifle. I could imagine the boats in bad conditions and the list of objects found in the bunk. Small bag, copybook, picture, leather shoe, baby bottle, shirt, rucksack, watch, lace. Details that write a history …’
‘I speak a chosen Italian, using contorted sentences. I do it above all at the start of a talk, as I wish to demonstrate how far I can go with the language … that this language belongs to me. It is my babble, the plural subject that bred me, it is the name of my essence, it is my mother’.
‘Mother speaks to me in the maternal tongue. … in her tongue Somali becomes honey … the language of my first dreams. But then in every speech, word, breath the other mother intrudes, the Italian I grew up with and also hated as it made me feel a stranger. The harsh Italian of the street markets, the soft Italian of the radio, the serious Italian of the university. The Italian I write’.
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Acknowledgements
This paper was presented as part of Feminist Review's conference celebrating thirty years of the journal. The ‘Feminist Theory & Activism in Global Perspective’ conference was held at SOAS, The University of London, on September 26, 2009.
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Curti, L. transcultural itineraries in women's literature of migration in Italy. Fem Rev 98 (Suppl 1), e79–e92 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2011.26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2011.26