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This article analyzes the feminist use of space in Aritha van Herk's self-identified mixed work of geography and fiction. It fundamentally draws on scholarly work that has already focused on the spatial importance in van Herk's fiction. For example, using Marlene Goldman's insights, I examine the crucial role of space in women's search for freedom and the interrogation of traditional gender norms. Her novels primarily explore how new settings – places with different gender-based codes – may result in new roles or options for the female subject. Thus, the author's mapping consists of taking the characters to unusual venues or having them follow unconventional paths in order to expand the borders of the possible for women. Yet, the essay not only approaches the key interplay between place and gender but also aims to highlight the engagement with more recent perspectives that recognize the colonizing aspects of writings about exploration and place. In fact, I will show this colonial awareness informs to a great extent the feminist concern with mapping a new territory. Furthermore, the author is also particularly intent on inscribing the body, which has gathered less critical attention in comparison with the existing analyses of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to examine how failed family sagas have defined early Italian/American culture and female literary tradition through Julia Savarese's The Weak and the Strong (1952) and Marion Benasutti's No Steady Job for Papa (1966). The idea of failed (female) lineages is articulated in a thematic sense that is overtly expressed in the depiction of both families in the texts. These convey a doomed plot which matches the coarse realities of immigration and the depression, as well as reflects the boundaries represented by the intersecting limitations of embodying racial and gender difference. Particularly, the article focuses on how male lineage is paramount in the novels and define Italian/American culture. In this sense, the analysis also contends that, as the authors themselves also encountered similar limitations, the lost genealogy of these early precursors has equally endangered the Italian/American female literary tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with new explorations of the historical migrations that attempt to establish cultural interconnections and identify processes of transnational networks. It discusses Italian history of migration, particularly the transatlantic mass movement to the United States, which is increasingly revisited from both sides of the ocean. On the one hand, Italy is ‘rediscovering’ this past migration and redefining its cultural identity in dialogue with new discourses emerging with contemporary immigration into the country. On the other, Italian/American literature and criticism have greatly contributed to transforming views of Italian identity, thus reversing the traditional influence of the ‘mother country’ on its former emigrants. Drawing on available comparative approaches, the analyses focuses on two literary sources representative of a significant turn in the memory and discourse on migration. It examines the extent to which new forms and imaginaries of migration have emerged in Italy and their effects on creating a climate of intercultural exchange and dialogue. In doing so, I will attempt to establish and adopt a retrospective which evaluates the analytical, critical and creative retrievals of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]