Robin Pickering-Iazzi

Â Â Â Despite the misogynist ideology of Italian Fascism, and contrary to the picture drawn in the most post-war literary histories and anthologies, the 1920s and 1930s were a time of wide publication and both popular and critical recognition for female authors in Italy. Focusing on the cultural pages of three major daily newspapers of the period, Robin Pickering-Iazzi discovered a wealth of contributions by famous and less-known woman that have been unavailable to readers in Italy as well as the United States for over 60 years. Expertly translated, these 16 stories are evidence not only of the high literary quality of this body of work but also of resistance to the self-sacrificing ideal of the "New Woman" of Fascism. The memorable female characters in Unspeakable Women adopt a varying strategies to create their own identities and agency regarding writing, sexuality, marriage, and family-all in opposition to the repressive norms of the culture. The stories are by Grazia Deledda, who won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1926, Maria Luisa Astaldi, Gianna Manzini, Ada Negri, Carola Prosperi, Pia Rimini, and Clarice Tartufari.

Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women During Fascism

Unspeakable Women

Maria Rosa Cutrufelli

the Story of Tina, Mafia Soldier

Song to the Desert

The past two decades have witnessed increasing opposition to mafia influence and activities in Italy. Community organizations such as Libera, founded in 1995, and Addiopizzo, originating in 2004, exemplify how Italian society has tried to come together to promote antimafia activities. The societal opposition to mafia influence continues to grow and the Internet has become a frontline in the battle between the two groups. The Italian Antimafia, New Media, and the Culture of Legality is the first book to examine the online battles between the mafia and its growing cohort of opponents. While the mafia's supporters have used Internet technologies to expand its power, profits, and violence, antimafia citizens employ the same technologies to recreate Italian civil society. The contributors to this volume are experts in diverse fields and offer interdisciplinary studies of antimafia activism and legality in online journalism, Twitter, YouTube, digital storytelling, blogs, music, and photography. These examinations enable readers to understand the grassroots Italian cultural revolution, which makes individuals responsible for promoting justice, freedom, and dignity.

The Italian Antimafia, New Media, and the Culture of Legality

Challenges assumptions about Italian women writers under fascism. In fascist Italy between the wars, a woman was generally an exemplary wife and mother or else. The "or else", mostly forgotten or overlooked in accounts of femininity under fascism, is what concerns Robin Pickering-Iazzi. Reading works by women of the period, Pickering-Iazzi shows how they refuted stereotypes that were imposed on them by the fascist regime and continue to be accepted and perpetuated into our day. The writers Pickering-Iazzi considers comprise both the popular and the critically acclaimed, including the illustrious Grazia Deledda (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926), Ada Negri, Sibilla Aleramo, Alba De Cespedes, Paola Drigo, Maria Goretti, and Antonia Pozzi. She situates their work -- short stories, romance novels, autobiographies, neorealist novels, poetry, and avant-garde writings -- not only within the context of fascist discourse but also within that of intellectuals and artists who did not keep to the fascist line. In each case, Pickering-Iazzi examines specific issues of gender and genre -- notions of women and the nation, rural life, the metropolis, technology, consumer culture, and modern forms of femininity and masculinity.

Writing Women, Culture, and Fascism

Politics of the Visible

Lawrence Baldassaro

In Terza Pagina

Using an array of cultural documents from 1990 to the present, including diaries, testimonies, fiction, online video postings, and anti-mafia social networks, Robin Pickering-Iazzi examines the myths, values, codes of behaviour, and relationships produced by the Italian mafia through a wide cross-disciplinary lens. The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature explores the ways that these literary engagements with the mafia relate to broader contemporary Italian life and offer implicit challenges, and a quiet code of resistance, to the trauma and injustice wrought by the mafia in various Italian cities. Despite the long tradition of representing the mafia in Italian literature, until now women’s contributions to this literature have been overlooked. Pickering-Iazzi’s aim is to encourage new critical reflection on a broader selection of literature through new theoretical lenses in order to enrich our understanding of crime fiction, Sicily and Sicilian identity in literature, narrative traits of the new Italian epic, and the cultural and social functions of storytelling in life and literature.

Life Sentences and Their Geographies

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature

Pickering-Iazzi uses an array of cultural documents from 1990 to the present to examine the myths, values, codes of behaviour, and relationships produced by the Italian mafia through a wide cross-disciplinary lens.

In the Mother of Invention in their analyses of literature, painting, sculptures, film, and fashion, the contributors explore the politics of invention articulated by these women as they negotiated prevailing ideologies.

Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture

Mothers of Invention

The first of its kind in English, Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature is a selection of readings from Italian fiction and non-fiction writers on the subject of the Mafia. Among the renowned writers featured are Giovanni Verga, Grazia Deledda, Anna Maria Ortese, Livia De Stefani, and Silvana La Spina, as well as famous witnesses such as Felicia Impastato, Letizia Battaglia, and Rita Atria who provide personal, often terrifying testimonies about their experiences with the Mafia. It is a historically diverse examination of criminal and outlaw institutions by some of the most significant figures in Italian literature. These newly translated writings show the ways in which Italians perceived and wrote about the Mafia and crime from the 1880s to the 1990s. Among them are stories dealing with the important legends used by the Mafia as sources for their image and ideology, legends such as the brigand and the Blessed Paulists. Some of the fascinating themes discussed are connections between the Mafia, the State, and the Catholic Church; the Mafia and children; women and the Mafia; the Black Hand; and relations between the Mafia and the Allied Forces during the Second World War. Robin Pickering-Iazzi incorporates an invaluable introduction that charts key periods in the history of Italy and the Mafia, and profiles each of the authors in the collection, noting their major works in Italian as well as those available in English. These and other features make this text especially appropriate for courses in Italian studies. Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature takes a unique and intriguing approach to the subject of the Mafia, and offers informed judgements about its historical impact on Italian society and culture.

Robin Pickering-Iazzi

Books

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