“Las cartas de la memoria”: Letters from the victims of Franco’s dictatorship

Inclusive searches & sources @UvA Romance Languages (17)

Reviewed last month in The Guardian on the occasion of the hardcover release (by editorial L’Encobert), and published open access earlier this year, Las cartas de la memoria is an initiative of the association Memoria y libertad (Memory and freedom), began in 2005 «by relatives of people shot by Franco’s regime in the postwar years, with the purpose of sharing data, gather information, show the results online and contact other family members and relatives of the victims to pursue a just recognition and tribute to the dead» [source].

The volume is edited by Tomás Montero Aparicio, whose grandfather Tomás Montero Labrandero – one of over 2.900 Republicans executed in Madrid between 1939 and 1944 – was shot on June 14, 1939 in the Spanish capital’s Cementerio de la Almudena (earlier Cementerio del Este). To his cousin Martín, Tomás wrote the following few lines on the day of his killing:

Recto: To be delivered to Juan Álvarez Labrandero. Gallery 3 ª, Hall 5ª, Porlier. Farewell Martín. I’m sending you the purse with 6 pesetas and my ring for you to keep as memory of me. Farewell forever, good luck to all of you. Farewell.

Verso: Martín I bid farewell to you and the whole family forever. Farewell to all, your cousin. Tomás Montero

Among the documents and stories collected in the volume, both the postcards sent (after having decorated them) by Fernando Izquierdo Montes (killed on May 19th, 1943) to his wife and son, and the letters written by some women, such as Dionisia Manzanero Salas (shot on August 5th, 1939), help make for a collective portrait and poignant monument to the victims of fascist violence.

Dionisia Manzanero Salas (with rifle) and other members of the Batallón Octubre de la JSU-Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (Unified Socialist Youth)

Postcard sent by Fernando Izquierdo Montes to his wife María Pascual Sánchez

N.B. English translations are mine. All pictures are from the book.

Jhumpa Lahiri: from London to Rome, from Bengali to Italian

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Following previous posts centered on the work of Italian (women) authors with a migrant background – Migrant women writers from & in Italy. A tentative reading list of secondary sources (open access & UvA Library), 10 Migrant women writers in Italy. Essays, novels, poetry & short stories from the UvA Library, Stories by migrant people in Italy: A book series, Stories by migrant women in Italy: A book series – we turn now to London-born Jhumpa Lahiri (1967), who at the age of three moved to Rhode Island (USA) with her Bengali parents from Kolkata, and later (2012) settled in Rome.

A professor of Creative Writing at the Lewis Center, Princeton University, from 2015 to 2022, and currently professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University, Lahiri is the author of essays, novels and short stories, both in English and in Italian. While her collection of short stories, Interpreter of maladies, earned her the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2000, her first novel, The namesake, was adapted into a film by Indian-American director Mira Nair.

source: Columbia News

Together with themes related to migration and adapting to a new environment (Dove mi trovo, 2013) – already central to the above mentioned books and to other of her English titles – Lahiri’s works in Italian have explored her experience learning the language of her new Country (In altre parole, 2015), the role book covers play at the end of the writing process (Il vestito dei libri, 2016), the (imaginary) worlds and lives conjured by found objects in the volume of poetry Il quaderno di Nerina (2020), or the exploration of Rome (hidden) identities in Racconti romani (2022).

The following books by/about Lahiri are available at the UvA Library:

• Nilanjana Chatterjee, Reading Jhumpa Lahiri: Women, domesticity and the Indian American diaspora, Routledge, 2022.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Dove mi trovo, Guanda, 2013 (English translation by the author: Whereabouts, Alfred A. Knopf, 2021).
• Jhumpa Lahiri, In altre parole, Guanda, 2015 (English translation by the author: In other words, Alfred A. Knopf, 2016).
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of maladies: Stories, Flamingo, 1999.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, The lowland, Bloomsbury, 2013.
• Jhumps Lahiri, The namesake, Flamingo, 2003.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Il quaderno di Nerina = Nerina’s notebook, Guanda, 2021.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Racconti romani, Guanda, 2022 (English translation by the author, with Todd Portnowitz: Roman stories, Alfred A. Knopf, 2023).
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Translating myself and others, Princeton University Press, 2022.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed earth, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
• Delphine Munos, After melancholia: A reappraisal of second-generation diasporic subjectivity in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Rodopi, 2013.
• Adriana Elena Stoican, Transcultural encounters in South-Asian American women’s fiction: Anita Desai, Kiran Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli in The Netherlands (and in the UvA Library)

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Organized by the Instituto Cervantes de Utrecht (Spanish Cultural Institute), the Embajada de España en los Países Bajos (Spanish Embassy in The Netherlands) and (in 2023) the University of Leiden (home to the X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux from 1 to 4 november), the Spinoza Lecture hosts each year a prominent Hispanophone author.

Among previous guests commented upon in this blog are Antonio Muñoz Molina (2011), Rosa Montero (2013), Héctor Abad Faciolince (2015) and Alicia Giménez-Bartlett (2016). An overview of all participating writers is available here.

On November 1st, Gioconda Belli (Managua, 1948) will deliver the 2023 lecture (more information and registration). One day later, at the Instituto Cervantes in Utrecht, the Nicaraguan writer will give another conference, together with fellow Guatemaltecan writer, and professor, Mónica Albizúrez (University of Hamburg): more information and registration.

source Wikimedia commons

The author of international bestsellers such as the novel La mujer habitada (1972), Belli begun her publishing career in 1972 with the volume of poetry Sobre la grana: «political commitment and the feminine being and feeling are two fundamental themes in her work, which is why her poetry was considered revolutionary in its approach to the female body and sensuality» (from the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW), where additional bio-bibliographical information on Belli is available).

When quickly searching the UvA CataloguePlus with ‘All: gioconda belli’ (and then refining the results to ‘Books’ only), the following publications by and about Gioconda Belli will be retrieved:

• Andre, Maria Claudia – Bueno, Eva Paulino (eds.). Latin American women writers: An encyclopedia. Routledge, 2008.
• Belli, Gioconda. Las fiebres de la memoria. Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 2018.
• Belli, Gioconda. El infinito en la palma de la mano. Seix Barral, 2008 (Dutch translation by Dick Bloemraad: Oneindigheid in een handpalm. De Geus, 2008).
• Belli, Gioconda. La historia de la creación de las mariposas. Circulo de lectores, 1995 (Dutch translation by Dick Bloemraad: De schepping van de vlinders. De Geus, 2009).
• Belli, Gioconda. El intenso calor de la luna. Seix Barral, 2014.
• Belli, Gioconda. Luciérnagas: Un libro de ensayos sobre los ensayos de vivir. Seix Barral, 2022.
• Belli, Gioconda. La mujer habitada. Editorial Diana, 1988 (Dutch translation by Dick Bloemraad: De bewoonde vrouw: Roman. De Geus, 1992).
• Belli, Gioconda. El país bajo mi piel: Memorias de amor y guerra. Plaza & Janés, 2001. (Dutch translations by Dick Bloemraad: Kroniek van liefde en oorlog. De Geus, 2000; De verdediging van de liefde, De Geus, 2002).
• Belli, Gioconda. El pergamino de la seducción. Seix Barral, 2005 (Dutch translation by Dick Bloemraad: Het geheim van de verleiding. De Geus, 2006).
• Belli, Gioconda. Rebeliones y revelaciones. Txalaparta, 2018.
• Belli, Gioconda. Sofía de los presagios. Vanguardia, 1990 (Dutch translation by Dick Bloemraad: Dochter van de vulkaan: Roman. De Geus, 1994).
• Belli, Gioconda. Waslala: Memorial del futuro. Emecé Editores, 1996 (Dutch translation by Dick Bloemraad: Waslala: Memorie van toekomst. De Geus, 1996).
• Braig, Marianne – Huffschmid, Anne (eds.). Los poderes de lo público: Debates, espacios y actores en América Latina. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2009.
• Craft, Linda. Novels of testimony and resistance from Central America. University Press of Florida, 1997.
• D’haen, Theo – Krüs, Patricia (eds.). Colonizer and colonized. Brill, 2000.
• Dieterich Steffan, Heinz – Belli, Gioconda (eds.). 1492-1992, la interminable conquista: Emancipación e identidad de América Latina : ensayos, diálogos, poemas y cantares. Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1991.
• Esch, Sophie. Modernity at gunpoint: Firearms, politics, and culture in Mexico and Central America. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018.
• Giudicelli, Christian. Les démons de l’écrivain en Amérique hispanique. Presses Sorbonne nouvelle, 2019.
• González, Ann. Resistance and survival: Children’s narrative from Central America and the Caribbean. University of Arizona Press, 2009.
• Large, Sophie. L’œuvre romanesque de Gioconda Belli: Révolution, utopie et féminisme au Nicaragua. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2023.
• Lavaud, Jean-Pierre. La dictadura minada: La huelga de hambre de las mujeres mineras. Bolivia 1977-1978. Institut français d’études andines, 2015.
• Mackenbach, Werner – Kohut, Karl (eds.). Literaturas centroamericanas hoy: Desde la dolorosa cintura de América. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2005.
• Salgado, María Antonia (ed.). Modern Spanish American poets. Second series. Gale, 2004.
• Valero Juan, Eva María – Estrada, Oswaldo (eds.). Literatura y globalización: Latinoamérica en el nuevo milenio. Anthropos, 2019.
• Wieser, Doris – Moreira, Luciana (eds.). A flor de cuerpo: Representaciones del género y de las disidencias sexo-genéricas en Latinoamérica, Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2021.
• Zimmerman, Marc (ed.). Nicaragua in reconstruction & at war, the people speak: A collage of chronology, analysis, poetry, etc. portraying insurrection, reconstruction, cultural revolution & U.S. intervention. Marxist Educational Press, 1985.
• Zupančič, Metka – Juez, Brigitte le (eds.). Le mythe au féminin et l'(in)visibilisation du corps. Brill, 2022.

“Le città invisibili: Poema d’amore alle città” op het Italiaans Cultureel Instituut in Amsterdam

In 2023 is het 100 jaar geleden dat de Italiaanse schrijver Italo Calvino (1923-1985) werd geboren. Naast tentoonstellingen in Italië en elders, en verschillende online initiatieven – zoals “Il centenario della nascita di Italo Calvino: Lo scrittore senza tempo” van Rizzoli Education – worden ook diverse nieuwe edities, uitgaven of vertalingen van Calvino’s werk gepubliceerd.

UvA-docenten Elio Baldi en Linda Pennings hebben gewerkt aan een nieuwe Nederlandse vertaling van Le città invisibili (Onzichtbare steden, Atlas Contact uitgeverij). Op donderdag 2 november a.s. staan de twee vertalers stil – samen met Claudia Dellacasa (University College Dublin) – «bij hoe dit reisboek door denkbeeldige steden de wereld heeft doorkruist en een groot publiek van lezers, kunstenaars, architecten en schrijvers heeft ontmoet die betoverd waren door de heldere visies van Calvino en door zijn overpeinzingen over het verleden en de toekomst van steden».

Het evenement (in het Italiaans met simultaanvertaling naar het Nederlands) wordt georganiseerd door het Italiaans Cultureel Instituut in samenwerking met de Werkgroep Italië Studies en vindt plaats aan de Keizersgracht 564 in Amsterdam: meer informatie en reserveren.

Behalve het Italiaanse origineel van Le città invisibili (een herdruk uit 1977 van de eerste 1972 uitgave) en een Engelse vertaling (zowel gedrukt als digitaal), levert een snelle zoekactie in de UvA CatalogusPlus (città invisibili calvino) ook de volgende boeken op:

• Barenghi, Mario – Canova, Gianni – Falcetto, Bruno (eds.). La visione dell’invisibile: Saggi e materiali su Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino. Mondadori, 2002.
• Bernardini Napoletano, Francesca. I segni nuovi di Italo Calvino: Da ‘Le cosmicomiche’ a ‘Le città invisibili’. Bulzoni, 1977.
• Bezzola Lambert, Ladina. Imagining the unimaginable: The poetics of early modern astronomy. Brill, 2002.
• Calcaterra, Domenico. Il secondo Calvino: Un discorso sul metodo. Mimesis, 2014.
• Dolfi, Anna (ed.). Il racconto e il romanzo filosofico nella modernità. Firenze University Press, 2013.
• Fioretti, Daniele. Utopia and dystopia in postwar Italian literature: Pasolini, Calvino, Sanguineti, Volponi. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Fuhrer, Therese – Mundt, Felix – Stenger, Jan (eds.). Cityscaping: Constructing and modelling images of the city. De Gruyter, 2015.
• Giudicetti, Gian Paolo – Lizza Venuti, Marinella. Le città e i nomi: Un viaggio tra le ‘Città invisibili’ di Italo Calvino. Nerosubianco, 2010.
• Gramigna, Giuliano. Viaggio al termine del Novecento: Il romanzo italiano da Pasolini a Tabucchi. Bruno Mondadori, 2013.
• Lanzetti, Dario. L’atlante dell’immaginario: Un viaggio attraverso Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino. Mimesis, 2017.
• Lévy, Clément. Territoires postmodernes: Géocritique de Calvino, Echenoz, Pynchon et Ransmayr. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018.
• Linder, Benjamin (ed.). Invisible cities and the urban imagination. Springer, 2022.
• Maura, Francesca. Italo Calvino. Athenaeum, 1998.
• Meschini, Michela. Visioni postmoderne: Percorsi teorici e testuali ne Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino. Edizioni Università di Macerata, 2018.

Stories by migrant women in Italy: A book series

Inclusive searches & sources @UvA Romance languages (14)

First organized in 2005 on the initiative of journalist and writer Daniela Finocchi (editor of the volumes listed below) – and supported by the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino – the Concorso letterario nazionale Lingua Madre (National literary context Mother Tongue) is open to women of foreign descent who live in Italy:
«Per dare voce a chi abitualmente non ce l’ha ma ha molto da dire, come donna e come migrante» (“To give a voice to whose who usually don’t have one but have a lot to say, as a woman and as a migrant”).

The selected short stories are collected each year in a volume. The following are available at the UvA Library.

• Lingua Madre Duemilatredici: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2013.
• Lingua Madre Duemilaquattordici: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2014.
• Lingua Madre Duemilaquindici: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2015.
• Lingua Madre Duemilasedici: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2016.
• Lingua Madre Duemiladiciassette: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2017.
• Lingua Madre Duemiladiciotto: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2018.
• Lingua Madre Duemiladiciannove: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2019.
• Lingua Madre Duemilaventi: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2020.
• Lingua Madre Duemilaventuno: Racconti di Donne Straniere in Italia. Edizioni SEB27, 2021.

In memoriam: Michela Murgia (1972-2023)

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Widely commented on in the international press – see among others The Guardian and The New York Times – Italian writer Michela Murgia passed away on last August 10th.

Thanks to both her literary achievements (her novel Accabadora won the Premio Campiello in 2010) and her thought-provoking opinions on topics such as fascism, gender-based violence, and LGBTQ+ rights, Murgia was a well-known public figure in Italy.

source: Artribune

Among Murgia’s literary output, the following – both fiction and essays – are available at the UvA Library, together with her short story L’eredità, part of Sei per la Sardegna (Einaudi, 2014), an anthology edited by fellow Sardinian writer Marcello Fois. (On the Italian island literary production you may want to check our post Sardinia: hidden treasures of Contemporary Italian literature).

• Accabadora, Einaudi, 2014.
• Ave Mary: E la chiesa inventò la donna, Einaudi, 2018.
• Chirù, Einaudi, 2016.
• Futuro interiore, Einaudi, 2016.
• God save the queer: Catechismo femminista, Einaudi, 2022.
• Istruzioni per diventare fascisti, Einaudi, 2018.
• Il mondo deve sapere: Romanzo tragicomico di una telefonista precaria, Einaudi, 2017.
• Persone che devi conoscere, Edizioni Messaggero, 2018.
• Stai zitta: E altre nove frasi che non vogliamo sentire piu’, Einaudi, 2021.

Within the scope of this blog series, Stai zitta: E altre nove frasi che non vogliamo sentire più has already been mentioned in a previous post on How to search for UvA books on inclusive language: In French, Italian, or Spanish: its feminist arguments – related or not to Murgia’s catholic faith – recur also in Ave Mary: E la chiesa inventò la donna, and God save the queer: Catechismo femminista. While Istruzioni per diventare fascisti tackles on fascism’s discriminatory and exclusionary discourse and practices, therefore resonating with this series’ focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

More (biographical) information on Michela Murgia can be found at the Enciclopedia Treccani (in Italian) and at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW), a useful resource on women authors (in the Romance languages, French, and German) from the Institute of Languages Cultures & Societies (School of Advanced Study. University of London).

Inclusive searches & sources @UvA Romance languages (12): Index

To help navigating the posts from the series – in addition to the built-in WordPress ‘Search’ function on the right-hand side of the weblog – I’ve made an index of the posts published so far, with the categories they belong to (as specified in the introduction to the series): you can find the index under a new tab in the weblog menu above.

source: Creative Multilingualism (University of Oxford)

On the occasion of Pride Month: Queer literature from North Africa and the Maghreb

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Just as previously with the post on (African) Francophone Cinema or, at Library333: UvA Social Sciences Library blog, with the one on Celebrating Black History Month, it is an issue of JSTOR Daily (a website providing «context for current events using scholarship found in JSTOR») that gives an opportunity for exploring the UvA Library collections while addressing a topic relevant to ‘Diversity Equity & Inclusion’.

JSTOR Daily June 13th article, Queer literature from North Africa and the Maghreb: A reading list, follows other ones – on Publishing Queer Berlin and Reading for LGBTQ+ Pride Month – in celebrating Pride Month: originating in 1969 in the United States, after the Stonewall uprising on June 28th of that year (see lemma in the glbtq Encyclopedia Project or browse Stonewall: The definitive story of the LGBTQ rights uprising that changed America), this has long grown into an international celebration of the LGBTQ+ community.

Aiming at «theoretical and literary works that explore themes of queerness, identity, and resistance within the context of North Africa and the Maghreb», JSTOR Daily‘s reading list mentions both scholarly publications – such as Contested borders: Cultural translation and Queer politics in contemporary Francophone writing from the Maghreb by William J. Spurlin (Brunel University London) – and works of fiction by Abdellah Taïa (Salé, Morocco, 1973), Nina Bouraoui (Rennes, France, 1967), Rachid O. (Rabat, Morocco, 1970) and Tahar Ben Jelloun (Fés, Morocco, 1944).

The following is a selection of UvA Library holdings based both on JSTOR Daily’s reading list and on additional relevant books by or about Ben Jelloun, Bouraoui and Taïa:

• Tahar Ben Jelloun, L’Enfant de sable: Roman, Éditions du Seuil, 1988 (1985). Dutch translation, by UvA Manet van Montfrans, as Zoon van haar vader, Het wereldvenster, 1987.
• Jean-Pierre Boulé, Abdellah Taïa, la mélancolie et le cri, Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2020.
• Nina Bouraoui, Garçon manqué, Stock, 2000.
• Alberto Fernández Carbajal, Queer Muslim diasporas in contemporary literature and film, Manchester University Press, 2019.
• Claudia Gronemann – Michael Gebhard (eds.), Masculinités maghrébines : nouvelles perspectives sur la culture, la littérature et le cinéma, Brill/Rodopi, 2018.
• Ralph Heyndels – Amine Zidouh (eds.), Poétique et politique du désir engagé: Autour d’Abdellah Taïa = Poetics and politics of engaged desire: Around Abdellah Taïa, Passages, 2021.
• Laurence Kohn-Pireaux, Étude sur Tahar Ben Jelloun: L’enfant de sable, La nuit sacrée, Ellipses, 2000.
• Abdellah Taïa, Celui qui est digne d’être aimé: Roman, Éditions Points, 2018.
• Abdellah Taïa, Infidèles: Roman, Éditions du Seuil, 2015.
• Abdellah Taïa, Le jour du roi: Roman, Éditions du Seuil, 2010.
• Abdellah Taïa, Une mélancolie arabe: Roman, Seuil, 2010 (2008). English translation as An Arab melancholia: A novel, Semiotexte, 2012.
• Abdellah Taïa, Un pays pour mourir: Roman, Éditions Points, 2016.
• Abdellah Taïa, La vie lente: Roman, Éditions Points, 2020.

Stories by migrant people in Italy: A book series

Inclusive searches & sources @UvA Romance Languages (10)

DIMMI Diari Migranti is the title of a book series started in 2018 to promote the outcomes of the writing context DIMMI Diari Multimediali Migranti which, since 2012, «collects and circulates the stories of people of foreign origin who live or have lived in Italy and the Republic of San Marino. The contest has two objectives: to bring together and preserve a cultural heritage otherwise at risk of loss; to counter the stereotypes about migration, through the voices of those who have experienced it from first hand» (from DIMMI’s website, translation is mine).

Both the contest and the book series are the result of a collaboration between the Fondazione Archivio Diaristico Nazionale (“National Diary Archive Foundation), the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti (“Archive of Migrant Memories”) and Terre di Mezzo, a Milan-based independent publisher first born as street newspaper in 1994.

The five volumes published so far (available at the UvA Library) collect both original Italian texts and Italian translations from other languages, documenting the first hand experiences of migrant people from all over the world (see map below, from Come alberi in cammino):

• Natalia Cangi – Patrizia Di Luca – Alessandro Triulzi (eds.), Parole oltre le frontiere: Dieci storie migranti, 2018.
• Alessandro Triulzi (ed.), Se il mare finisce: Racconti multimediali migranti, 2019.
• Natalia Cangi – Patrizia Di Luca – Alessandro Triulzi (eds.), Il confine tra noi: Storie migranti, 2020.
• Natalia Cangi – Antonio Damasco – Alessandro Triulzi (eds.), Basta un vento lieve: Racconti multimediali migranti, 2021.
• Natalia Cangi – Alessandro Triulzi (eds.), Come alberi in cammino: Storie migranti, 2022.

click to enlarge (source)

Just as with earlier posts in the series Inclusive searches & sources @UvA Romance languages – Migrant women writers from & in Italy: A tentative reading list of secondary sources (open access & UvA Library and 10 Migrant women writers in Italy: Essays, novels, poetry & short stories from the UvA Library – also the present one offers an opportunity for a further exploration of the UvA Library collections:

– physically (in the PC Hoofthuis Library), when looking for the books from the series discussed above and noticing that several other titles on the same shelf (i.e. with similar Library of Congress classification codes, ranging from JV8130 to JV8139) were related to the same topic: “Emigration and Immigration. International migration. Italy” (see detailed Library of Congress classification tables).

– digitally, when searching CataloguePlus with JV813* in order to find more books on (international) emigration and immigration in Italy, which are owned by the library and available online or at other locations than the PC Hoofthuis. Here follows a small selection of five recent acquisitions:

• Teresa Cappiali, Reframing immigrant resistance: Alliances, conflicts, and racialization in Italy, Routledge, 2021.
• Megan A. Carney, Island of hope: Migration and solidarity in the Mediterranean, University of California Press, 2021.
• Francesca Malagnini (ed.), Straniero, stranieri: Percorsi di analisi linguistica e riflessioni identitarie, Franco Cesati editore, 2022.
• Fabio Montella, Storie senza approdo di migranti italiani, Clueb, 2021.
• Ermanno Orlando, Medioevo migratorio: Mobilità, contatti e interazioni in Italia nei secoli V-XV, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2022.

New book: “Coloniality and meritocracy in unequal EU migrations: Intersecting inequalities in post-2008 Italian migration”

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The object of a recent event at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Amsterdam – with UvA’s lecturer Elio Baldi, director and writer Daniela Tasca, and the book’s author, Simone Varriale (Loughborough University) – Coloniality and meritocracy in unequal EU migrations: Interescting inequalities in post-2008 Italian migration, available online via the UvA Library, «rethinks meritocracy as a form of coloniality, namely, a social imaginary that reproduces narratives of ethnic and racial difference between European centres and peripheries, and between Europe and its others.

Drawing on interviews with working and middle class, white and Black Italians who moved to Britain after the 2008 economic crisis, the book explores the narratives of Northern meritocracy and Southern backwardness that inform migrants’ motivations for moving abroad, and how these narratives are experienced within classed, racialised and gendered migrations. Connecting decolonial theory with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, this book provides innovative insights into the relationships between meritocracy, coloniality and European whiteness, and into the social stratification of EU migrations» (from the publisher’s website, Bristol University Press).