The Representation of Italy in Caterina Edwards’ The Sicilian Wife and Rita Ciresi’s Sometimes I Dream in Italian

This paper wishes to explore how Caterina Edwards, an Italian Canadian writer, and Rita Ciresi, an Italian American writer, share a strong, although very different, personal and authorial relation to Italy and the Italian language. I shall be focusing on their similarities rather than differences: they are brought up in North America, their mother tongue is English, they (and their characters) travel from/to Sicily, Venice, Edmonton as well as New Haven, Venice and Rome in a complex chronotopic framework. Old and new myths, mystery and parody are intertwined in their innovative texts. These “new travelers” are part of a new cross-border literary community where Italy plays a significant role as much as their countries of origin, Canada and the US. Is Italy a place to visit, a crime scene, a mythical land, a country of passionate desire, or... just a dream?

Fuga e ritorno: Italian-Canadian Narratives

Many Italian-Canadian authors have been stimulated to explore their dual identity after a return trip to Italy. They confront the myth of nostalgia as an emotional blind-spot to the harsh realities of past miseria and present-day conflicts in Italian society. Women writers such as Mary di Michele, Caterina Edwards, Licia Canton and Rina Cralli are particularly critical of the position of women in Italy and the whole nostalgia sentimentality promoted by Italian popular culture and music. Pasquale Verdicchio’s whole writing career has been a systematic rejection of the thematics of nostalgia.