„ITALY REVISITED. CONVERSATIONS WITH MY MOTHER“ BY MARY MELFI, A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND A DAUGHTER

AUTHOR(S) / АУТОР(И): Rosina Martucci

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DOI: 10.46793/LLD24.226M

ABSTRACT / САЖЕТАК:

The Italian-Canadian writer Mary Melfi is the author of a memoir entitled “Italy Revisited. Conversations with my Mother”, published in Canada by Guernica Editions in 2009. This work represents an anthropological fresco of unexpected depth and richness. The memoir presents conversations between a mother and a daughter who wants to know her origins and the story of life in a village of Southern Italy. Both protagonists are women of Italian origin who have emigrated to Canada, but they demonstrate polarized forms of self-representation and compensation for their displaced circumstances. The protagonist/narrator directly articulates the oppressive stigma of her tattered identity because she is the everyone and no-one in the immigrant experience; she has a past and varied history that she will ultimately exchange for a new identity. The irony in Melfi’s narrative may be understood as a device to redeem the meaning of selfhood against value-assigning roles in society. Conversations and writing become a liberating medium that reconciles the protagonists and the same author to their past and identity. However, the memoir can be considered a reconciliatory text hinging on the figures of the mother and daughter, who finally reconstruct a past – their suffered and never forgotten family past.

KEYWORDS / КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ:

memoir, dialogue, dislocation, return, identity.

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