Exposing and Exploring Modes of Motherhood: The Evolution of Motherwork in Igiaba Scego’s œuvre

ABSTRACT

This article discusses several of contemporary Italian writer Igiaba Scego’s literary works, from her 2003 children’s novella La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock [The Nomad Woman Who Loved Alfred Hitchcock] and her first 2004 novel Rhoda, to her latest novel, the 2020 work La linea del colore [The Colour Line]. I position this article as a tribute to scholar Adalgisa Giorgio and engage Giorgio’s reading of a story by Natalia Ginzburg in order to further my exploration of Scego’s work. Reading Scego through the lens of Ginzburg, I highlight Scego’s complex portrayals of women, focusing on the absence of the mother, on surrogate mother figures, and on relationships between women. Reading Scego through lenses suggested by Giorgio’s reading of Ginzburg, I establish common points between two Italian women writers from differing eras and contribute to the work of bringing recognition to writers such as Scego, who are often labelled under migration or G2 (second-generation migrant) epithets, as writers within the Italian literary canon.

KEYWORDS:

• Absence of mother
• surrogate mother
• letteratura della migrazione
• non-Italian parentage
• motherwork
• motherhood
• narratology
• child narrative viewpoint
• focalizer
• focalized

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Letteratura della migrazione sought to engrave into the Italian imaginary a variety of representations of migrants as a widely diverse group, beyond any particular national or even continental belonging. It was brought to attention especially in the 1990s through studies and collections by Armando Gnisci (1998) in Italy and introduced to scholars in the Anglophone world predominantly by Graziella Parati (1999). Caterina Romeo claims that this label ‘initially offered these writers a decisive edge in the publishing market, bringing their desire to tell their stories into alignment with the curiosity of the host society, and enabling their writings to emerge as part of a new cultural movement. Being grouped under one label and sacrificing internal differences has allowed migrant and second-generation writers a position from which to exercise a degree of cultural and political resistance, as they have been able to sensitize Italian readers to the kinds of marginalization migrants often endure and to affirm their right to migrate and settle legally in Italy’ (2017, 2). Scego has been reluctant to embrace this label, as outlined in the present article.

2. For example, Mubiayi and Scego (2007) coedited the collection of accounts by second-generation migrants, Quando nasci è una roulette [When You’re Born It’s Like a Roulette Game] in 2007. In the collection Italiani per vocazione [Italians by Vocation] (2005), Scego acts as editor of a series of stories about experiences of Italians of various non-native origins. The work of an Italo-Singaporean writer opens this collection, followed by that of people from Cape Verde, Togo, Poland, Congo and Syria, and more.

3. Barre had been president of Somalia since 1969. His dictatorial rule and abuses of power, especially in the 1980s, led to his ejection from power in the wake of the Somali Rebellion, which led to the Somali Civil War, ongoing to this day.

4. Whereas she shifts the blame for this terrible period in her life to the ‘madrepatria’ (Scego [2010] 2012, 130, 143).

5. For example, Scego says of her second novel Oltre Babilonia that it is, at its simplest level, a story of the mother-daughter relationship: ‘La storia di per se è semplice ed è basata sul rapporto madre-figlia’ (in Comberiati 2007, 82). Since critics such as Brioni and Bond have written so expansively on Scego’s ambiguous portrayal of motherhood in this text, I do not include an analysis of it in this article.

6. In Scego’s first novel, Rhoda, for example one finds women engaged in many activities, although mothering is performed largely by the character of Barni, who is in fact the aunt of the eponymous character, whose mother died during her infancy.

7. Scego’s juxtaposition of some female voices with those of male members of her family who are in favour of enforced marriage or female genital cutting is used as a mode of talking back to patriarchal Somali discourse throughout her work.

8. Edmonia Lewis and Sarah Parker Remond, African American female migrants who lived in Italy in the late nineteenth century (Scego 2020, 347–349).

9. The subplot portrays the Italo-Somali character Leila ‘discovering’ Lafanu’s story and using it as a way of promoting Italo-African art and helping her Somali cousin Binti, who has unsuccessfully attempted to flee Somalia for Europe: another female filiation involving the patronage of one woman by a wealthier one.

10. Scego herself recognizes the influences of Italo-East African writers Ribka Sibhatu, Gabriella Ghermandi and Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, upon whose works she wrote her doctoral thesis (Brioni 2015, 141). However, the influence of works of literature from other parts of the world on Scego has been especially noted. For Laura Lori, for example, Rhoda recalls African American writer Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) for its non-chronological style and the content of its final chapter (2013, 222).

11. In the subplot of La linea del colore, the character Binti attempts to flee modern-day Somalia for Italy because of her father’s desire to force her to marry a much older man: ‘Mi avrebbero fatta sposare a un vecchio’ (2020, 113).

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Christopher Hogarth

Christopher Hogarth is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature/French at the University of South Australia. His work focuses particularly on life writing and the intersections between Anglophone, Francophone and Italophone African and European literature. He has published and edited several articles and volumes on questions of Francophone, Italian and Australian literature in such journals as a/b Autobiographical Studies, Australian Journal of French Studies and Australian Literary Studies. He is currently working on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project entitled ‘Transnational Selves: French Narratives of Migration to Australia’.