This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through t... more This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first investigates music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi’s characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; and the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the fate of singing and storytelling in Ghermandi’s fictional world mirrors the author’s experience of moving between orality and recorded and written forms, not as an evolutionary process but as a reciprocal process. Her fictional tradition beare...
This essay considers the question of how “coming to writing” describes the creative process, how ... more This essay considers the question of how “coming to writing” describes the creative process, how mourning becomes language, and how the emptiness of silence turns into word, in relation to the life and literary work of Italian Jewish writer Ebe Cagli Seidenberg. In other words, how did Cagli’s exile to the U.S. facilitate her voice? And how did language become, for her, nothing less than a form of “country”? In examining her journey to testimonial writing, I contend that visual imagery—a combination of visual artifacts and visual memories—plays a major role in getting past the wall of silence, overcoming the impasse of oral communication, and fashioning powerful narratives of displacement and sense of foreignness abroad, but also discrimination and disengagement within Italy.
This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi's novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through t... more This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi's novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first considers music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi's characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the fate of singing and storytelling in Ghermandi's fictional world mirrors the author's experience of moving between orality and recorded and written forms, not as an evolutionary process but as a reciprocal process. Her fictional tradition bearers (Aron, Yacob, and Mahlet) embody these malleable modes of transmission, reconfiguring stories for a new generation of Ethiopians and Italians.
This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through t... more This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first investigates music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi’s characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; and the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the fate of singing and storytelling in Ghermandi’s fictional world mirrors the author’s experience of moving between orality and recorded and written forms, not as an evolutionary process but as a reciprocal process. Her fictional tradition beare...
This essay considers the question of how “coming to writing” describes the creative process, how ... more This essay considers the question of how “coming to writing” describes the creative process, how mourning becomes language, and how the emptiness of silence turns into word, in relation to the life and literary work of Italian Jewish writer Ebe Cagli Seidenberg. In other words, how did Cagli’s exile to the U.S. facilitate her voice? And how did language become, for her, nothing less than a form of “country”? In examining her journey to testimonial writing, I contend that visual imagery—a combination of visual artifacts and visual memories—plays a major role in getting past the wall of silence, overcoming the impasse of oral communication, and fashioning powerful narratives of displacement and sense of foreignness abroad, but also discrimination and disengagement within Italy.
This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi's novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through t... more This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi's novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first considers music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi's characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the fate of singing and storytelling in Ghermandi's fictional world mirrors the author's experience of moving between orality and recorded and written forms, not as an evolutionary process but as a reciprocal process. Her fictional tradition bearers (Aron, Yacob, and Mahlet) embody these malleable modes of transmission, reconfiguring stories for a new generation of Ethiopians and Italians.
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