Sereni’s generation was the generation of political extremism, protest, the emergence of Italian feminism, and quite simply the struggle to redefine the self in a time of turbulence and change. Moving easily amongst these topics, and shifting from the public to the private and back again, she became one of Italy’s best known contemporary writers. Her writing stands as a historical document of a particular place and time in Italian cultural and political life. At the same time, it tackles issues that strike a chord that is very personal and still new and relevant; her themes resonate with the individual and participate in a global conversation about self and community, and our responsibilities to both. As the mother of a child born with severe autism and schizophrenia, she wrote honestly about the anguish and hope of raising her son, and became a powerful voice for the rights of the disabled.
In all Sereni’s works, ideology and political events are intertwined with a deeply human retreat into the personal through the representation of the habitual and the commonplace in women’s lives: the meaning of home and family, the significance of her Jewish heritage, and the role and ritual of food and its cultural significance.
The objective of the proposed Special Session is to examine, in the wake of Sereni’s death, the ways in which her extraordinary writing continues to be relevant not simply in Italian literature, but more broadly in discourse on political engagement, the social responsibilities of the individual, and the continuing discourse on identity and diversity.
The session participants have been selected specifically for their different approaches to Clara Sereni’s work. The objective is to illustrate the richness and breadth of Sereni’s writing, and to stimulate ongoing dialogue on this important writer and how her writing will inform the next decades.
Giovanna Miceli Jeffries, (University of Wisconsin, Madison) will take a holistic approach to Sereni’s work, and will discuss the way in which her books, most of which are classified as novels, are more than novels, or even biographical novels: rather, they are testaments of civic and political activism, utopic visions, and fragments of history. They are ‘frontier writing’ in the true sense of the word, as something that evolves and adapts and finds relevance in the present. In an epoch of a growing politics of exclusion, Clara Sereni’s writing invites us and challenges us to cultivate a passion for an ethos of civic and social responsibility. Professor Jeffries was one of the co-translators of Keeping House, and in subsequent years she had an opportunity to meet Sereni frequently and to talk with her at length; she draws on her personal knowledge of the writer’s philosophy to provide insights from unpublished interviews and letters. She is also the author of numerous essays on Sereni, exploring such topics as her ethical perspective on food and mothering, her revisionist treatment of history from the perspective of woman as caretaker, and her vision of the world through the lens of textual diversity and plurality.
Giulia Po DeLisle, U. Mass Lowell, will analyze Clara Sereni’s writing in what she calls the ‘crucial decade’ of 1968-1977, through Sereni’s last work, Via Ripetta 155 (which was a finalist for the prestigious Strega Prize in 2015), In this last period of her life, and a time in which politics seems to have lost its values and dreams, Sereni found a renewed desire to bear witness to those political and revolutionary times by revisiting the experiences of her private self and her interaction with the public realm. Professor Po DeLisle’s will show how Sereni's last literary journey into the past is a final self-empowering act, a sophisticated orchestration of narrative elements in which her life time writing experience about this decade finds a new stage for a discourse between personal achievements and socio-political changes, personal conflicts and public turmoil. Professor DeLisle is the author of Scrivere la diversità: autobiografia e politica in Clara Sereni (2012 Franco Cesati) a monograph that retraces her life, writing and political engagement. “Reconstructing Memories: Writing the Self and Writing the Father in Clara Sereni’s Autobiographical and Memorial Work” appeared in Italian Women and Autobiography (Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2011). She has also translated the short story “Walzer per Siglinda” from Il lupo mercante.
Simonetta Milli Konewko (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), looks at the autobiographical novel Casalinghitudine, which uses recipes interspersed throughout her narrative to recall past events, present circumstance, and individuals. Food and recipes are the essential element in understanding the protagonist’s construction of personal identity through space. Specifically, the presentation will discuss the ways in which Sereni manipulates the element of food to underline the significance of a space where women’culture thrived in the past and could be reinvented for the present and future. Thus, this examination explores homemaking and cooking as opportunities for contemporary women to flourish in a space often abandoned in recent times. Professor Milli writes on post-war literature and film and women. She has published numerous articles and is the author of two books including, L’Italia neorealista. Compassione e identità nazionale nel dopoguerra which appeared in 2018.
Susan Briziarelli, Adelphi University, will chair the session. Along with Professor Miceli-Jeffries she co-translated Clara Sereni’s Casalinghitudine and she has just completed a translation of Sereni’s Manicomio primavera.