Literary Research / Recherche littéraire, nos. 41-42, 2004

LR/RL

Literary Research/Recherche littéraire 21.41-42 (2004): 327-328

Camilla Cattarulla, Di proprio pugno. Autobiografie di emigranti italiani in Argentina e Brasile. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2003; 145 pp.; ISBN: 8881032562 (pbk.)

In Italy, few Italianists are interested in autobiographies or literary works written by migrants, and only recently has autobiography been considered an important witness of the experience of migration, worthy of publication and study. Camilla Cattarulla, author of Di proprio pugno. Autobiografie di emigranti italiani in Argentina e Brasile, is a scholar of South American literature interested in migration of Italians to South America and in autobiography. As Cattarulla remarks, migrants write their autobiographies driven by the desire to reconstruct and redefine their identities (13), that are changed by the experience of migration, which is a turning point between the past and the new identity. Migrants tend to use the autobiographical genre because they want to “mettere ordine nel disordine della memoria” (83) or they want to explain to their children who they are and where they come from.

The purpose of Cattarulla’s study is to prove that the texts she describes belong to the modern tradition of autobiography. At the same time, she aims to contribute to the study of autobiography and to enrich our understanding of migration from Italy by using the testimonies of people who travelled to South America and laboriously recreated a new life there. The author bases her literary analysis on Lejeune’s theories about autobiography, in particular on his definition of the genre as “le récit rétrospectif en prose qu’une personne réelle fait de sa propre existence, lorsqu’elle met l’accent sur sa vie individuelle, en particulier sur l’histoire de sa personnalité,” and his concept of the autobiographical pact between the author and the reader. The author comes to the conclusion that migrant autobiographies show all the characteristics of modern autobiography as far as the communicative aims and the narrative strategies adopted by their authors are concerned. She makes the interesting remark that the plot of these works is very similar to an initiation story “perché la struttura narrativa segue le tappe canoniche di uno scenario iniziatico (‘chiamata’, ‘separazione’, ‘viaggio’, ‘prove’)” (97).

Di proprio pugno is divided into two parts: the first is a literary analysis of the migrants’ autobiographies, while the second presents a short anthology of excerpts from some of the autobiographies, most of which are written in Spanish or Portuguese. In the first part of the study, the author discusses and analyses the stages of the migration experience, quoting relevant passages from the autobiographies. The first chapter, Da emigrante a scrittore, deals with the education of the migrants, discussing [end page 327] both their limited opportunities in Italy and their successes in the new country: many authors write their autobiographies to celebrate the improved social status. The second chapter, with the evocative and metaphorical title, Morte e Rinascita, begins with the discussion of a common phenomenon among future migrants, the idealization of the guest country before migration. The author then analyses how migrants describe the difficult stages of the migratory experience: the often traumatic travel across the ocean, the difficult impact with the society of the new country, the problems of adjusting to a very different reality. The third chapter, Gli spazi dell’identità, discusses memory and documents that help the authors to describe their pasts and construct their new identity. The excerpts of the anthology deal with the themes discussed in the analytical section. An exhaustive bibliography on migration to South America and on the autobiographical genre completes the book.

Di proprio pugno shows how the attitude of Italian academics towards migration is starting to change. Migrant autobiographies are like bridges linking two (or more) countries, and Catturulla’s study treats migration in different times and to different countries. The autobiographies range over a wide period of time, from the 1890s to the 1980s, and are written by people coming from different regions of Italy, so they offer a broad spectrum of experiences and backgrounds. Now that Italy has become a country of immigration, Italians are beginning to become more interested in Italians who migrated overseas. This book provides interesting information about this important and often neglected page of Italian history. For people living in Latin America, Di proprio pugno is a fascinating collection of accounts, which will encourage Italo-Argentineans and Italo-Brazilians to understand the experiences of their ancestors.

Some readers may regret that the anthological section is quite short and that some of the excerpts do not add much to the quotations in the analytical part. It is surprising that the one autobiography by a woman is by a second-generation author, while all the other writers belong to the first generation. It would have been worth discussing why women did not write or why works by women were not included.

M. Cristina Mauceri

University of Sydney