Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature

Description

This book examines the meaning of home through the investigation of a series of public and private spaces recurrent in Italian postcolonial literature. The chapters, by respectively considering Termini train station in Rome, phone centres, the condominium, and the private spaces of the bathroom and the bedroom, investigate how migrant characters inhabit those places and turn them into familiar spaces of belonging. Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature suggests “home spaces” as a possible lens to examine these specific places and a series of practices enacted by their inhabitants in order to feel at home. Drawing on a wide array of sources, this book focuses on the role played by memory in creating transnational connections between present and past locations and on how these connections shape migrants’ sense of self and migrants’ identity. Acknowledgments Contents 1 Spaces of Memory, Spaces of Belonging: Home in Postcolonial Italy 1.1 Home and Home Spaces 1.2 Home Spaces in Italian Society 1.3 Home Spaces in Italian Postcolonial Literature 1.4 Outline of the Book References 2 Termini Train Station: A Place to Arrive, a Place to Leave and to Live 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Termini Train Station and its Uses 2.3 Termini Railway Station: A Motionless Journey Through Space and Time 2.4 Conclusion References 3 The Phone Centre, a Place to Call Home 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Phone Centres and Terrorism 3.3 The Phone Centre and the “Almost Home” Role 3.4 Conclusion References 4 Spaces of Residence and Transnational Microcosms in Italy 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Housing, Squatting and Mobile Homes 4.3 The Palazzo: A Failed Home Space 4.4 The Palazzina: A Transnational Microcosm 4.5 Conclusion References 5 Rooms as Home Spaces: The Bathroom and the Bedroom as Memory Containers 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Kitchen, an Absent Place 5.3 “I Hate Confined Spaces. Except This Bathroom”. Ahmed, Amedeo and the Bathroom 5.4 Smelling the Absence: “Usually She Would Shut Herself up in the Bedroom”. The Bedroom in Rhoda 5.5 Conclusion References 6 Conclusion—At Home, Everywhere References Index