Pregnancy Loss in Contemporary Transnational Literature

In the last years we have assisted to an increasing number of autobiographical accounts dealing with miscarriage and stillbirth, topics previously hardly discussed in literary texts. My chapter investigates how perinatal loss is experienced and narrated in contemporary Italophone and transnational literature. I will analyze a selection of contemporary memoirs, hybrid genre texts and novels that narrates stories of miscarriage and stillbirth. Through close reading, I will highlight how recurrent topics emerge across different texts and experiences, and I show how the authors aim at breaking taboos, by acknowledging, validate, and normalize personal experiences of loss and grief from a feminist standpoint.