Canadian HSS Commons - Publications: Article

Contributor(s): Aldo Colangelo

The article is based on a 1991-92 research, published in Sole senza Sole (1998). In his book Colangelo retraced the journey and life of 110 Italian women, residing in Toronto. He followed the stages of their lives, successes and difficulties, including those arising from their retirement onwards....

Translating Migrations, (Re)Presenting Cultures in Transit: Licia Canton’s “The Motorcycle”

Contributor(s): Luisa Marino

This essay investigates the relationship between the idea of movement and the concept of translation in Licia Canton’s short story “The Motorcycle” and in its Italian translation. The essay looks at translation both as a metaphor of negotiation and mediation that bridges two linguistic and...

Unmasking Motherhood: Journeys of Self-Discovery in Mary Melfi’s Italy Revisited: Conversations with My Mother and Genni Gunn’s Tracing Iris

Contributor(s): Laura Rorato

This paper will explore how the quest for the mother (whether the missing one of Gunn’s novel or the living one of Melfi’s memoir) leads the protagonists of both books to rediscover their mother tongue, that is a language based on communication and community building (Parmod, 2008), or as Kate...

Multicultural Little Italy: A Literary Comparison of Canadian and US Urban Enclaves

Contributor(s): Eva Pelayo Sañudo

Drawing on Paul Moses’ An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians (2015), this article explores the history and literary reflection of multicultural cities. Particularly, Louisa Ermelino’s novel The Sisters Mallone (2002) challenges accepted views of certain urban...

Queer Appetites: Embodied Desire in Monica Meneghetti’s What the Mouth Wants

Contributor(s): Domenico A. Beneventi

Drawing upon José Esteban Mufioz’s notion of queer futurity, this article examines the links between memory, food, and sexuality in Monica Meneghetti’s What the Mouth Wants: A Memoir of Food, Love and Belonging. The memoir depicts how embodiment and affect are imprinted in memory and recirculated...

What Does it Mean to Be White in America: My Multi-Metamorphoses

Contributor(s): Gil Fagiani

Gil Fagiani is a storyteller by nature and by craft, both of which he employs in his essay My Muli-Metamorphoses, a version of which originally appeared in the anthology What Does it Mean to Be White in America (Two Leaf Press). Fagiani traces the dramatic arc of his transformation from a...

Cross My Heart

Contributor(s): Eufemia Fantetti

Linked by a series of idiomatic expressions used to describe sadness, loss and love, “Cross My Heart” is a lyric essay delving into the world of journaling bad decisions and broken relationships. A deep and private self appears in diaries; intense curiosity makes resisting the off-limit contents...

Blindsided by the American Dream

Contributor(s): Maria Lisella

In her essay “Shades, Color and Internal Dialogues in White America,” from which the present contribution is taken, Maria Lisella takes a savvy streetwise approach to balancing feminism with political consciousness. By sifting through the nuances and politics of her own body language in what...

The Motorcycle

Contributor(s): Licia Canton

La moto

Contributor(s): Licia Canton, Luisa Marino

Rules, Not to Be Broken

Contributor(s): Licia Canton

Advice from a Brigantessa

Contributor(s): Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli

“My Fears Dissolve / into Tranquil Blue”

Contributor(s): Venera Fazio

A Family Secret

Contributor(s): Nic Battigelli