Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature

This book examines the meaning of home through the investigation of a series of public and private spaces recurrent in Italian postcolonial literature. The chapters, by respectively considering Termini train station in Rome, phone centres, the condominium, and the private spaces of the bathroom and the bedroom, investigate how migrant characters inhabit those places and turn them into familiar spaces of belonging. Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature suggests “home spaces” as a possible lens to examine these specific places and a series of practices enacted by their inhabitants in order to feel at home. Drawing on a wide array of sources, this book focuses on the role played by memory in creating transnational connections between present and past locations and on how these connections shape migrants’ sense of self and migrants’ identity.