Who Josie Became Next: Developing Narratives of Ethnic Identity Formation in Italian Australian Literature and Film
Jessica Rita Carniel
Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
February 2006
Department of History (Gender Studies Program) and The Australian Centre
Produced on archival quality paper
Abstract
Using an expanded and adapted conception of the Bildungsroman (or novel of development or formation), this thesis examines representations of Italian Australian identities through an analysis of selected English-language literary and film narratives produced by individuals of Italian descent in Australia since World War II. It draws upon critiques of the genre of the traditional Bildungsroman to further contribute to the conceptualisation of a related genre, the ethnic bildungsroman. In applying an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis critically analyses the processes of ethnic identity formation in these Italian Australian narratives in various socio-historical and literary contexts, with particular reference to the intersection of gender and ethnicity. It is argued that not only can the development of individual protagonists’ identities be read in each text, but the narratives selected here chart the journeys of ethnic identification made by Italian Australian protagonists and the varying trends in their modes of identification. This study focuses upon a selection of fiction, biography and autobiography that narrates these identities. These narratives both directly and indirectly address experiences of being of Italian heritage in Australia at various times throughout the twentieth century. It argues that the narrative representation and, more importantly, the narrative self-representation of ethnic identities are integral parts of migration and settlement processes, as well as significant steps in opening up dialogues amongst and between various Australian identities. By placing narrative explorations of Italian Australian identities and experiences into their broader socio-historical and cultural contexts, this study contributes to the growing field of Italian Australian cultural studies. It also situates these narratives within the broader context of interdisciplinary Australian studies. This opens up possibilities for a future dialogue between the narratives of Italian and other diasporic cultural groups present within Australia.
i
ii Declaration
This is to certify that (i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is less than 100, 000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.
Signed: ______
iii iv Acknowledgments
Throughout the four years of my candidature I have had the great fortune to be under the supervision of three academics from various disciplines and with varying approaches. Assistant Professor Maila Stivens provided assistance in the initial stages of the project, and returned in the final stages with a welcome pair of fresh eyes to comment on the final draft. For the majority of my candidature Professor Pat Grimshaw and Dr Sara Wills have united to aid me through the pitfalls and the victories with utmost patience, and have been a great source of guidance and support. I wish to express sincere gratitude to all of my supervisors for their advice, assistance and even their occasional admonishments. My supervisors were not alone in their advisory capacity as, in the final stages, several friends generously donated their time to reading either full drafts, or chapter drafts relevant to their respective fields of expertise. I would like to thank my dear friend Sara Bice for reading the penultimate draft in the face of distractions by a houseproud partner. Her comments were insightful and, most importantly, humorous. I would also like to thank Libby Avram and Simon Sleight for their comments and advice on Chapters 7 and 2 respectively, as well as my introduction. I know I shall one day be called upon to return the favour, and I can only help to do so with the same selfless enthusiasm as they have. Reading drafts is one very important way to assist in the completion of a thesis, but many of my friends, including those already named above, have also assisted me simply by managing to remain my friends through thick and thin. Thank you to Simon Andrews, Clarisa Chase, Hamish Coates, Aidan de Graaf, Jared de Graaf, Beth Jones, Iris Ng, Cat Nicolas, Kia Yann, Matt Way and all my other lovely friends, especially our fledgling netball team. Special thanks to the following: Will Gregor, for being a wonderful flatmate for two years and an even better friend for longer; Christy Oswald, for having a sensible mind that knows the value of very silly shoes; Hayley Galvin, for the fact that she is none other than who she is; Marcel Krestan, for always having an almost convincing compliment on your lips; Joanna Mead, for her laughter and companionship but not for making me sleep in a car on a highway in the middle of nowhere; Johnny Arnold, for making our lives seem like very well-written chick-lit even when we are just working in call centres or trawling through footnotes; and Rachel Cullen, no words can express how thankful I am for our friendship. And of course, I cannot forget my lovely partner, Ronald Ng, who kindness, generosity and patience over the past two years have been immeasurable and greatly appreciated.
v I am also grateful for the financial assistance I have received throughout the course of my candidature. Not only was I fortunate enough to be the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award from the University of Melbourne, I was able to seize upon the invaluable opportunities to present aspects of my work both in Australia and overseas through the receipt of a TRIPS grant from the university’s Arts Faculty, and through postgraduate funding from the Department of History. I would also like to thank all those who I met and befriended at these conferences, as they made each of these occasions as enjoyable as they were intellectually stimulating and rewarding. Another such source of enjoyment was provided by the migration and identity reading group, through which several postgraduate students of the Australian Centre were united through the initiative of our shared supervisor, Dr Sara Wills. Our meetings became an essential source of support, inspiration and social contact in the final year of my candidature. I would like to thank Sara for starting the group, but also extend my gratitude to Joy Braddish, Pamie Fung, Vivian Gerrand, Anja Schwarz and Georgia Shiells for their support and intelligent discussion. Finally I wish to thank my family, both in Australia and Italy. Especial thanks go to my father, Umberto Carniel, for everything; his partner, Glenys Ward, for being a good friend to us all; my brother-in-law, Wadim, for the patience and pizza, and for ferrying me about Treviso; and my siblings, Cinzia, Matt and Marc, who are my home. On behalf of my family, I would like to dedicate this work to the memory of my mother, Mariella Carniel.
vi
Abstract...... i
Declaration...... iii
Acknowledgments ...... v
Chapter 1
Introduction: Developing Narratives of Ethnic Identification in Italian Australian Literature and Film...... 1
Chapter 2
Like Child to Adult, Migrant to Citizen? Reading Migrant Autobiographies as Ethnic bildungsromane...... 35
Chapter 3
The Migrant’s Inferno: Multiculturalism, Melting Pots and Mosaics in Italian Australian Autobiographical Fiction ...... 69
Chapter 4
Alibrandi and Friends: Italian Australian Young Adult Fiction as Ethnic bildungsromane...... 99
Chapter 5
Saints, Sauces and Scotty Dogs: Critically Re-imagining Italian Australian Migration for Ethnic Identification...... 137
Chapter 6
Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo? Questioning Memory, Ethnicity and Gender in the Works of Venero Armanno...... 163
Chapter 7
From Wogboys to Proxy Brides: The Journey from Melodrama to Romantic Comedy in Italian Australian film ...... 199
Conclusion: Who Josie Becomes Next...... 231
Bibliography...... 241
vii viii Chapter 1
Introduction: Developing Narratives of Ethnic Identification in Italian Australian Literature and Film
Even where they exist over long time spans, do not ethnic groups constantly change and redefine themselves? What is the active contribution literature makes, as a productive force, to the emergence and maintenance of communities by reverberation and of ethnic distinctions? … How is the illusion of ethnic “authenticity” stylistically created in a text? … [Ethnicity] is not a thing but a process – and it requires constant detective work from readers, not a settling on a fixed encyclopedia of supposed cultural essentials. Werner Sollors, The Invention of Ethnicity1
In Melina Marchetta’s highly successful and iconic Australian coming-of-age novel, Looking for Alibrandi (1992), Josie Alibrandi’s quest to establish and understand her personal and ethnic identity acknowledges the formation of ethnic identities as a process spanning the three generations of her Italian Australian family embedded within a specific socio- historical milieu: A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and thirty years on we’re still trying to fit in as ethnics and we’re still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians. I think my family has come a long way.2 Robert Pascoe, an historian of Italians in Australia, argues that each of the three significant waves of Italian migration to Australia – the late 1800s, the 1920s through to the 1930s, and the postwar era of mass migration – represent the three stages in which an Italian Australian sense of community, identity and place has developed.3 Each stage laid foundations for the next, which in turn reinforced the sense of ethnic otherness and, in so doing, helped to foster a sense of Italian Australian community and to map out Italian Australian space. Pascoe’s historical analysis of the era to which Marchetta’s characters
1 W. Sollors, "Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity," in The Invention of Ethnicity, ed. Werner Sollors (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. xiv-xv. Emphasis added. 2 M. Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1992), p. 202. Emphasis added. 3 R. Pascoe, "Place and Community: The Construction of an Italo-Australian Space," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), p. 86-87.
1 belong reaches similar conclusions to Josie’s: “throughout the 1950-80 era, urban Italo- Australians offered a style of living which was visibly distinct. They blazed the trail for ‘multicultural’ Australia.”4 Nonetheless the fictional narrative of Josie and her family reveals the nuances of the history of Italian migration to Australia as seen through third- generation eyes, as well as the complexities and idiosyncrasies of Italian Australian communities and mainstream Australian society. Most importantly, to respond to Werner Sollors’ query above, Josie’s narrative – and other such narratives found in Italian Australian writing and film – illuminate the very processes of ethnicity and ethnic identification necessarily abridged in Pascoe’s brief history and other similar historical, sociological and anthropological studies. Using an expanded and adapted conception of the Bildungsroman (or novel of development or formation), this thesis examines representations of Italian Australian identities through an analysis of selected English-language literary and film narratives produced by individuals of Italian descent in Australia since World War II.5 Drawing on critiques of the genre of the traditional Bildungsroman and its related genres, and applying an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis critically analyses the processes of ethnic identity formation in these Italian Australian narratives, with particular reference to the intersecting contexts of gender and ethnicity.6 It is argued that not only can the development of individual protagonists’ identities be read in each text, but the narratives selected here chart the journeys of ethnic identification made by Italian Australian protagonists and the varying trends in their modes of identification. This study focuses upon a selection of fiction, biography and autobiography that narrates these identities. These narratives both directly and indirectly address experiences of being of Italian heritage in Australia at various times throughout the twentieth century. The thesis analyses the themes and experiences depicted within the protagonists’ various socio-historical contexts. It argues that the narrative representation and, more importantly, the narrative self-representation of ethnic identities are integral parts of migration and settlement processes, as well as significant steps in
4 Ibid., p. 97. 5 The term ‘literary’ makes no comment on the narratives’ status but merely indicates their written medium, as opposed to the medium of film. 6 Steve Fenton’s ontological deconstruction of the term ‘ethnicity’ informs this thesis. Fenton argues that ethnicity is essentially about “descent and culture” and, more importantly, “the social construction of descent and culture, the social mobilisation of descent and culture, and the meanings and implications of classification systems built around them.” Fenton’s definition emphasises ethnicity as an ongoing process. See S. Fenton, Ethnicity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), pp. 2-4.
2 opening up dialogues amongst and between various Australian identities. By placing narrative explorations of Italian Australian identities and experiences into their broader socio-historical and cultural contexts, this study contributes to the growing field of Italian Australian cultural studies. It also situates these narratives within the broader context of interdisciplinary Australian studies. This opens up possibilities for a future dialogue between the narratives of Italian and other diasporic cultural groups present within Australia. This introductory chapter is divided into four main sections examining the key terms and debates that inform my thesis. First, I briefly outline the research that has been conducted on Italians in Australia in order to identify the place and definition of Italian Australian narratives written by Italian Australians within this broader research context. This necessarily involves a consideration of ethnic, multicultural or diasporic literatures in Australia, and the debates that have surrounded them for almost thirty years. Second, I define the Italian Australian or ethnic bildungsroman as it is used in this thesis – that is, as a conceptual framework for reading narratives that is defined by ethnic identity formation and development. This section also outlines the origins of the traditional Bildungsroman as a literary genre, charting how it has been developed and “renovated” in its application to women’s and ethnic writing. Third, literary developmental models for narratives of ethnicity are defined and explained. Last, the application of the developmental model to Italian Australian narratives is described through a chapter outline.
Reading Italians and Italianness in Australia No one can deny that Italians, as one of the largest ethnic groups to migrate to Australia, have played an important role in Australian history and culture. Over the years, Italian Australians have been the subject of various historical, sociological and cultural popular and scholarly studies. Some studies, such as Pascoe’s Buongiorno Australia: Our Italian Heritage (1987) and Tito Cecilia’s We Didn’t Arrive Yesterday (1987), are histories that present a case for Italians’ longstanding presence in Australia and their outstanding contribution to Australian society, culture and the economy.7 They might be termed ‘celebratory’ histories. Others, such as Nino Randazzo and Michael Cigler’s The Italians in Australia (1987),
7 T. Cecilia, We Didn't Arrive Yesterday: Outline of the History of the Italian Migration into Australia from Discovery to the Second World War, trans. Moira Furey, Moreno Giovannoni, and Walter Musolino (Red Cliffs, Vic: Scalabrians, 1987); R. Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia: Our Italian Heritage (Richmond, Victoria: Greenhouse Publications, 1987).
3 Gianfranco Cresciani’s The Italians in Australia (1983; 2003) and Stephen Castles, Caroline Alcorso, Gaetano Rando and Ellie Vasta’s Australia’s Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society (1992) provide more critical and all-encompassing analyses of Italian Australian experiences and historiography.8 Other studies explore the various and intersecting nuances of Italians’ history and experiences in Australia. Histories and examinations of migration and settlement patterns remain the primary concern.9 Most recent is Julia Church’s Per l’Australia: The Story of Italian Migration (2005), a lavish, large format and densely illustrated book wherein images of Italians in Australia collated from archives and personal collections are interwoven with historical summaries and personal recollections. Several studies have focused upon particular sites of Italian migration or upon groups from particular Italian regions.10 Italian migrants’ experiences and identities as working class labourers, located primarily in the construction and manufacturing industries, are also prominent in the historical research, as well as ‘migrant success stories’
8 S. Castles et al., eds., Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); G. Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); N. Randazzo and M. Cigler, The Italians in Australia (Melbourne: AE Press, 1987). 9 See, for example, C. Alcorso, "Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788- 1939," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); S. Castles, "Italian Migration and Settlement since 1945," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); F. Cavallaro, "Italians in Australia: Migration and Profile," Altreitalie 26, no. gennaio-giugno (2003); J. Church, Per L'australia (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005); G. Cresciani, Australia, the Australians and the Italian Migration (Milano: F. Angeli, 1983); G. Di Lorenzo, Solid Brick Homes and Vegie Patches: A History of Italian Migration to Moonee Ponds (Melbourne: The History Department, University of Melbourne, 2002); R. Huber, From Pasta to Pavlova: A Comparative Study of Italian Settlers in Sydney and Griffith (Brisbane: The University of Queensland Press, 1977); F. Musico, "The Contribution of the History of Italian Settlement in Australia to the Formation of an Italo-Australia Identity," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); E. Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again, Would You Migrate to Australia?' a Study of Long-Settled Italo-Australians in Brisbane (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1985). 10 A. Boncompagni, The World Is Just Like a Village: Globalization and Transnationalism of Italian Migrants from Tuscany in Western Australia (Fucecchio, Italy: European Press Academic Publishers, 2001); A. Clemens, "Crossing the Boundaries: The Veneti in Melbourne 1937-1997" (PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1997); A. Davine, "Vegnimo Da Conco Ma Simo Veneti : A Study of the Immigration and Settlement of the Veneti in Central and West Gippsland" (M.Arts Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1999); Huber, From Pasta to Pavlova; Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again...'
4 about successful entrepreneurs.11 Also of great interest to historians are Italian Australian experiences during World War II, particularly in regards to their experiences in internment camps and as prisoners-of-war.12 Other studies have explored Italian Australians’ involvement in politics,13 the construction of community networks and institutions,14 the
11 J. Collins, "Cappuccino Capitalism: Italian Immigrants and Australian Business," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); M. Loh, ed., With Courage in Their Cases: The Experiences of Thirty-Five Italian Immigrant Workers and Their Families in Australia (Melbourne: F.IL.E.F., 1980); F. Panucci, B. Kelly, and S. Castles, "Italians Help Build Australia," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); E. Vasta, "Gender, Class and Ethnic Relations: The Domestic and Work Experiences of Italian Migrant Women in Australia," in Intersexions: Gender/Class/Culture/Ethnicity, ed. Gill Bottomley, Marie De Lepervanche, and Jeannie Martin (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991). 12 C. Alcorso and C. Alcorso, "Italians in Australia During World War II," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); M. Bosworth, "Fremantle Interned: The Italian Experience," in War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1992); R. Bosworth, "Oral Histories of Internment," in War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1992); R. Bosworth and R. Ugolini, eds., War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience, 1940-1990 (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992); B. Bunbury, Rabbits and Spaghetti: Captives and Comrades: Australians, Italians and the War (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995); G. Cresciani, "The Bogey of the Italian Fifth Column: Internment and the Making of Italo-Australia," in War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience, 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992); D. Dignan, "The Internment of Italians in Queensland," in War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience, 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992); I. Martinuzzi O'Brien, "The Internment of Australian Born and Naturalised British Subjects of Italian Origin," in War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo- Australian Experience 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992); J. Talia, "Claudio Alcorso: An Adventurer's Life," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000). 13 S. Castles, G. Rando, and E. Vasta, "Italo-Australians and Politics," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); G. Cresciani, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980). 14 C. Alcorso, C. G. Popoli, and G. Rando, "Community Networks and Institutions," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); A. Grassby, "Community Leaders in Rural Australia and the Construction of 'the Godfather'," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); A. Mayne, Reluctant Italians?: One Hundred Years of the Dante Alighieri Society in Melbourne 1896-1996 (Melbourne: Dante Alighieri Society, 1997); Pascoe, "Place and Community."; J. Savill, Protagoniste Non
5 establishment of ‘Little Italies’,15 and language maintenance.16 Loretta Baldassar’s investigation of shifting expressions of home, place and identity through return visits between Italy and Australia has drawn Italian migration to Australia into discussions of globalised and transnational identities.17 Donna Gabbacia also implements the concept of transnationalism in her consideration of Italian migration to Australia as part of a series of
Spettatrici = Cinderellas No More: Ten Years of the National Italian-Australian Women's Association (Sydney: National Italian-Australian Women's Association, 1995); J. Zaia, "The Italian Australian Community - Successes and Failures of the Past, Strategies for the Future" (paper presented at the Inaugural National Italian Australian Youth Conference, Gold Coast, 5 April 2003). 15 D. Chessell, The Italian Influence on the Parade (City of Norwood, Payneham & St Peters, 1999); "The Italian Influence on Australian Mainstreets: The Parade (Norwood, South Australia) and Lygon Street (Carlton, Victoria)," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); P. Migliorino, "I Left My Heart in Norton Street," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); I. M. O'Brien, "Carlton - an Imagined Community?," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); A. Reynolds, "The Italian Heritage in Leichhardt: Sydney's 'Little Italy'," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000). 16 G. Andreoni, "Italo-Australians: Notes on Language and Literature," in Social Pluralism and Literary History: Literature of the Italian Emigration, ed. Francesco Loriggio (Toronto: Guernica, 1996); J. Gatt-Rutter, "Italian- Australian Futures: Language and Citizenship," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); P. Iagnocco, "Italian Studies in the Secondary Schools of the New Millennium - Educating the New Italian-Australians," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); J. Kinder, "Italian in Australia 1940-1990," in War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992); G. Rando and F. Leoni, "The Italian Language in Australia: Sociolinguistic Aspects," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); M. Tresca, "Dialect Maintenance Amongst First and Second Generation Italians from the Abruzzi Region in Sydney," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000). See also D. Chellini, "The Role of Language in Multicultural Australian Writing," Australian Studies 10 (1996). 17 L. Baldassar, Visits Home: Migration Experiences between Italy and Australia (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
6 diasporas that have spread Italian communities across the globe.18 Gabaccia’s inclusion of Australia in her study of Italian diasporas is of particular note given its omission in Pasquale Verdicchio’s earlier work, Bound By Distance: Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora (1997).19 Sociologist Ellie Vasta has concentrated her research on the experiences of Italian migrant women and the second generation. She has also examined the migration and settlement experiences of southern Italians in Brisbane and has used her research into Italian Australians in her more recent entry into debates about multiculturalism and racism.20 Other research into the experiences of Italian women in Australia has explored the ‘proxy bride phenomenon’,21 women’s identities and roles (for both the Italian- and Australian-born)22 and Italian Australian women’s organisations. There has also been a
18 D. R. Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas (London: UCL Press, 2000). For other studies that view Italian Australians within a broader context, see also L. F. Tomasi, P. Gastaldo, and T. Row, eds., The Columbus People: Perspectives in Italian Immigration to the Americas and Australia (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1993); E. Vasta et al., "The Italo-Australian Community on the Pacific Rim," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992). 19 P. Verdicchio, Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997). 20 Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again...'; "Gender, Class and Ethnic Relations."; E. Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); "The Second Generation," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); "Youth & Ethnicity: The Second Generation," in Ethnic Minority Youth in Australia: Challenges & Myths, ed. Carmel Guerra and Rob White (Hobart: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies (NCYS), 1995). For Vasta’s considerations of multiculturalism, see E. Vasta, "Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity: The Relationship between Racism and Resistance," The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 29, no. 2 (1993); "Dialectics of Domination: Racism and Multiculturalism," in The Teeth Are Smiling: The Persistence of Racism in Multicultural Australia, ed. Ellie Vasta and Stephen Castles (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1996). 21 S. Bella Wardrop, By Proxy: A Study of Italian Proxy Brides in Australia (Melbourne: Italian Historical Society, 1996); S. Iuliano, "Donne E Buoi Dai Paesi Tuoi (Choose Women and Oxen from Your Home Village): Italian Proxy Marriages in Post-War Australia," Australian Journal of Social Issues 34, no. 4 (1999); Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," p. 144. For a personal experiences, see also A. Signor, "Angela Signor," in Give Me Strength, Italian Australian Women Speak = Forza E Coraggio: A Bilingual Collection, ed. Anna Maria Kahan-Guidi and Elizabeth Weiss (Broadway, NSW: Women's Redress Press, 1989). Italian Australian writer Anna Maria Dell’Oso has also written a tragic opera about a proxy bride. See A. M. Dell'Oso, Bride of Fortune: Opera in Prologue and Three Acts (Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1987). 22 A. L. Bruenjes, "Doing Anthropology at Home," in Research Methods in the Field: Eleven Anthropological Accounts, ed. Malcolm Crick and Bill Geddes (Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press, 1998); T. Gucciardo
7 concerted and commendable effort to collect women’s personal experiences.23 Give Me Strength, Italian Australian Women Speak = Forza e coraggio: a bilingual collection (1989), for example, was a bilingual publication compiled from the winning entries of a national writing competition run by the Italian-Australian Women’s Association.24 Enza Gandolfo, an Italian Australian writer herself, has commented specifically on the role of gender in Italian Australian writing in her article, “In/Visible Presence: Italo-Australian Women Writers” (1998), and in her review of Venero Armanno’s novel, The Volcano (2001).25 Most recently, Susanna Scarparo and Rita Wilson have incorporated the narratives of Italian Australian women (and other women of the Italian diaspora) into their broader interest in Italian women’s life narratives.26
and O. Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife: The Italo-Australian Woman's Identity and Roles," (North Fitzroy: Catholic Intercultural Resource Centre, 1988); M. Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'," (Fitzroy: EMC Clearing House of Migration Issues, 1989); "From Coercion to Choice: The Personal Identity of the Second Generation Italo-Australian Adolescent Girl," in Multicultural Australia Papers (Melbourne: Clearing House on Migration Issues, 1990). 23 A. M. Kahan-Guidi and E. Weiss, eds., Give Me Strength, Italian Australian Women Speak = Forza E Coraggio: A Bilingual Collection (Broadway, NSW: Women's Redress Press, 1989); Loh, ed., With Courage in Their Cases. See also A. Bentley, Between Two Cultures: Italian-Australian: An Autobiography (Roleystone, WA: Gosnells Print, 1996); E. Ciccotosto and M. Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1990). 24 For a history of this association, see Savill, Protagoniste Non Spettatrici = Cinderellas No More. 25 E. Gandolfo, "In/Visible Presence: Italo-Australian Women Writers," Australian Women's Book Review 10, no. December 31 (1998); "The Volcano," review of Venero Armanno, The Volcano, JAS Review of Books, no. 6 (2002). Gandolfo’s own literary work includes E. Gandolfo, "Claudia's Grandmother," in Who Do You Think You Are? : Second Generation Immigrant Women in Australia, ed. Karen Herne, Joanne Travaglia, and Elizabeth Weiss (Broadway, NSW: Women's Redress Press, 1992); "My Life Is over Now: A Novel and Critical Commentary" (M.Arts Thesis, Victoria University of Technology, 1998); "Sicilian Portrait," Tirra Lirra 10, no. 3-4 (2000). 26 S. Scarparo and R. Wilson, "Re-Thinking the Politics and Practice of Life Writing," in Across Genres, Generations and Borders, ed. Susanna Scarparo and Rita Wilson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), pp. 7-8. For specific chapters relating to Italian Australian women’s life narratives in this collection, see M. Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Weaving Textual Tapestries: Weaving the 'Italian Woman-Writer' into the Social Fabric," in Across Genres, Generations and Borders: Italian Women Writing Lives, ed. Susanna Scarparo and Rita Wilson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004); S. Scarparo and R. Wilson, "Imagining Homeland in Anna Maria Dell'oso's Autofictions," in Across Genres, Generations and Borders: Italian Women Writing Lives, ed. Susanna Scarparo and Rita Wilson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004).
8 The second generation have been the primary preoccupation of sociologists such as Vasta.27 The term ‘second generation’ refers primarily to those who were born in Australia to migrant parents (who are defined as ‘first generation’), but is also used to refer to those who migrated to Australia at a young age, and experienced much of their childhood and education in Australia.28 In addition to being the subjects of sociological enquiry, members of the second generation have also been active in communicating their experiences and identities through autobiographical anthologies, such as Doppia identità i giovani: conoscerli per capirli: Stories by Young Italo-Australians (2002) and Growing up Italian in Australia: Eleven Young Australian Women Talk About Their Childhood (1993).29 The majority of Italian Australian writers and filmmakers whose narratives are considered in this thesis belong to this second generation.
27 For sociological studies of the Italian Australian second generation, see T. Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds: A Study of Second Generation Italo-Australians," Youth Studies and Abstracts 7, no. 1 (1988); Pallotta- Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'."; M. Pallotta-Chiarolli, "From Coercion to Choice: Second Generation Women Seeking a Personal Identity in the Italo-Australian Setting," Journal of Intercultural Studies 10, no. 1 (1989); Pallotta-Chiarolli, "From Coercion to Choice."; Tresca, "Dialect Maintenance Amongst First and Second Generation Italians from the Abruzzi Region in Sydney."; Vasta, "The Second Generation." For other studies of the second generation that do not necessarily focus on Italian Australians, see B. Birrell and S.-E. Khoo, "The Second Generation in Australia : Educational and Occupational Characteristics," (Canberra: Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, 1995); G. Bottomley, "Representing the 'Second Generation': Subjects, Objects and Ways of Knowing," in Intersexions: Gender/Class/Culture/Ethnicity, ed. Gill Bottomley, Marie De Lepervanche, and Jeannie Martin (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991); C. Guerra and R. White, eds., Ethnic Minority Youth in Australia: Challenges and Myths (Hobart: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies (NCYS), 1995); K. Herne, J. Travaglia, and E. Weiss, eds., Who Do You Think You Are? Second Generation Immigrant Women in Australia (Broadway, NSW: Women's Redress Press, 1992); S.-E. Khoo et al., "Second Generation Australians," (Canberra: Australian Centre for Population Research and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2002); M. Pallotta- Chiarolli and Z. Skrbis, "Authority, Compliance and Rebellion in Second Generation Cultural Minorities," The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 30, no. 3 (1994); M. Song, Choosing Ethnic Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003); Vasta, "Youth & Ethnicity: The Second Generation," pp. 104-19. 28 Song, Choosing Ethnic Identity, p. 104; Vasta, "The Second Generation," pp. 155-56; "Youth & Ethnicity: The Second Generation," pp. 55-56. In this thesis, I also use the term ‘successive generations’ to refer collectively to generations of Italian Australians subsequent to migration, that is, the second, third and even fourth generations. 29 See Bentley, Between Two Cultures; Doppia Identità I Giovani: Conoscerli Per Capirli: Stories by Young Italo- Australians, (Italo-Australian Youth Association, 2002); Growing up Italian in Australia: Eleven Young Australian Women Talk About Their Childhood, (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 1993).
9 Of this wide and rich body of research into Italian Australians, only a few studies have focused significantly upon Italian Australian creative output. Cresciani’s history of Italians in Australia includes a general discussion about the cultural contribution of Italian Australians, but focuses mainly on art and architecture and does not mention either film or literature.30 In Buongiorno Australia, Pascoe places his summary of Italian Australian cultural production within the context of the history of the political involvement of the Italian Australian community and its intelligentsia.31 His discussion of Italian Australian writers, artists and filmmakers, although brief, is more detailed than that of Cresciani. The proceedings for the Italian Australian Institute’s conference in 2000, In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, include a variety of papers on almost all possible facets of Italian Australian cultural production, as well as discussions on ethnic representation in film and television.32 Australia’s Italians includes a chapter on Italian Australian writing by Gaetano Rando who remains the foremost scholar in the study of Italian Australian writing, both in English and Italian. Rando includes within his critical scope novels, biographies, autobiographies, poems, plays, short stories and unpublished manuscripts. 33 He has paved the way for Italian Australian narrative studies by identifying
30 Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, pp. 146-48. 31 Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 72-100. Notably, Pascoe erroneously identifies Anna Couani as an Italian Australian writer. Couani is, in fact, of Greek and Polish descent. See also A. Couani, "Writing from a Non- Anglo Perspective," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), p. 98. 32 J. Cafagna et al., "Panel Discussion on Exploring Identity and Community through the Arts and Culture" (paper presented at the In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Melbourne, 24-26 May 2000); N. J. Caltabiano and S. Torre, "Italo-Australian Identity in Venero Armanno's Writing," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000 (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); M. Caluzzi, "SBS Radio and the Italian Program in Particular," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000); I. Vanni, "Stitches: Domestic Crafts, Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Arts," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000). 33 See G. Rando, "From Great Works to Alcheringa: A Socio-Historical Survey of Italian Writers in Australia," in Italian Writers in Australia: Essays and Texts, ed. Gaetano Rando (Wollongong: Department of European Languages, University of Wollongong, 1983); "The Italo-Australian Case," Altreitalie, no. 5 (1991); "The Literary and Paraliterary Expression of the Italo-Australian Migrant Experience," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); "Narrating the Migration Experience," in Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, et al. (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); "Italian Australian Women and the
10 important works, themes and trends.34 Rando has also written on the representation and participation of Italian Australians in film, a topic also addressed by cinema studies scholar, Mark Nicholls.35 Each of the narratives used in this thesis has been selected for two main reasons: they contain representations of Italian Australian ethnic identity formation; and they have been written by Australians of Italian descent who have either migrated here or have been born here. As Edward Said has stated, “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them.”36 Rather than imperialism as such, the power to narrate, in the context of Italian Australian narratives, constitutes an important connection between the dominant or host Anglo Australian society, Italian migrants, and their children. Narrative self-representation is thus one of the central criteria for the selection used here, and hence this thesis does not include texts featuring Italian Australian characters or themes produced by non-Italian Australian authors or
Narration of the Migration Experience," in Masks, Tapestries, Journeys: Essays in Honour of Dorothy Jones, ed. Gerry Turcotte (Wollongong: Centre for Research into Textual and Cultural Studies, Department of English, University of Wollongong, 1996); "Italo-Australiani and After: Recent Expressions of Italian Australian Ethnicity and the Migration Experience," Altreitalie 20-21 (2000); Emigrazione E Letteratura: Il Caso Italo- Australiano (Cosenza: Luigi Pellegrini Editore, 2004); "Italo-Australians During the Second World War: Some Perceptions of Internment," Studi d'italianistica nell'Africa Australe: Italian Studies in Southern Africa - Special Issue: Representing Italian Diasporas in Australia: New Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2005). Unfortunately, Rando’s most recent and in-depth study of Italian Australian literature, Emigrazione e letteratura: Il caso italoaustraliano (2004), was published only in Italian. While this creates an invaluable resource for Italophone scholars of the literature of the Italian diaspora, it effectively renders the only comprehensive study of Italian Australian literature inaccessible to Anglophone scholars of Australian migrant, ethnic and diasporic literatures, such as myself. 34 See, for example, Rando, "Italo-Australiani and After: Recent Expressions of Italian Australian Ethnicity and the Migration Experience." 35 M. Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema," The Transdisciplinary Journal of Emergence (online journal), no. 2 (2004); G. Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries," Altreitalie June-December, no. 16 (1997). Nicholls’ research has focussed primarily upon Italian national cinema and masculinities in Italian American cinema. What is most interesting about Nicholls’ work is the way in which he views Italian American and Italian Australian cinemas as a subset of Italian national cinema, as well as belonging to the bodies of American and Australian national cinemas. 36 E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), p. xiii. See also Joseph Pivato’s discussion of Said in the context of Italian Canadian writing, and ethnic minority writing more generally: J. Pivato, "Representation of Ethnicity as Problem: Essence or Construction," Journal of Canadian Studies 31, no. 3 (1996).
11 filmmakers.37 It is important to emphasise that this is a selective, not exhaustive study of Italian Australian narratives. It does not include all Italian Australian writers and filmmakers, and also excludes such forms as poetry, short stories, journalism, plays and short films. Unfortunately, this results in the exclusion of works by a number of Italian Australian writers and filmmakers, not to mention works by visual artists and musicians.38
37 The representation of Italian Australians (and Italians in Australia) by non-Italian Australians is an interesting topic in itself. Italians are present not only in the works of Anglo Australians, such as Irish Australian humorist John O’Grady, who published They’re A Weird Mob and its sequels under the name of its fictional protagonist, Nino Culotta, but also in the works of other ‘migrant’ writers. Of Hungarian descent, Susanne Gervay, for example, has admitted to having a ‘fondness’ for creating Italian Australian characters in her books, such as supporting character Fat George in The Cave (2002) and main protagonist Katherine in Butterflies (2001). Ethnic identity is not problematised in either The Cave or Butterflies, although Gervay has explored issues of migration and ethnic identity in her earlier novels, Next Stop the Moon (1995), which tells the story of a family of Hungarian migrants in Australia in the 1960s, and Shadows of Olive Trees (1996), which explores how a young woman’s participation in the women’s movement conflicts with her traditional Greek Australian upbringing. Although all of these novels can clearly and easily be read as bildungsromane, only the latter two are ethnic bildungsromane, and only Next Stop the Moon can be said to be written from Gervay’s own ethnic position. Gervay’s writing reflects the general movement, observed here also in the later works of Melina Marchetta and Archimede Fusillo, to represent Australian young adults’ experiences as culturally diverse, which is arguably a gesture in the direction of the third stage of the arc of literary development discussed in this thesis. See S. Gervay, Next Stop the Moon (Pymble, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1995); Shadows of Olive Trees (Sydney: Hodder Headline, 1996); Butterflies (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2001); The Cave (Pymble, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 2002); "Representing the Male and Female Voice in YA Literature" (paper presented at the 10th Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Conference: Gender is Dead?, The University of Newcastle, Ourimbah Campus, 27 June 2003). Regarding John O’Grady and the character of Nino Culotta, see P. Carter, "O'Grady, John See 'Culotta, Nino': Popular Authorship, Duplicity and Celebrity," Australian Literary Studies 21, no. 4 (2004); N. Culotta, They're a Weird Mob (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1957). 38 The focus on narratives published after World War II has also meant the exclusion of the first Italian Australian novel, No Escape (1932), written by second generation Italian Australian Velia Ercole, who also published under the pseudonym Margaret Gregory. The underlying principle of this limitation is that the profound effects of both the war itself and postwar immigration policies in Australia on the development and representation of Italian Australian identities are absent from such narratives as Ercole’s prewar novel. Other examples, such as Antonella Gambotto’s The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), fall into the category of synthetic or post-multicultural fiction, to be discussed below. Gambotto’s lyrical and complex novel does in fact feature a protagonist of Italian background who has moved to Australia by way of England, where she returns as an adult before returning again to Australia. While it is possible to read this narrative for its intriguing constructions of home, self and memory, ethnic signifiers are absent from the text and examinations of ethnic heritage and identity are almost completely overridden by the protagonist’s exploration of her self-identity as an astronomer and a sexual being. For an example of some of these other works, see P. Bosi, Blood, Sweat and
12 Among those not discussed here are Anna Maria Dell’Oso (writer and journalist), Enza Gandolfo (writer), Pino Bosi (writer and historian), Vince Collina (visual artist), Jan Cattoni (filmmaker), Kavisha Mazzella (musician) and Ruth Borgobello (filmmaker), to name but a few. Furthermore, my own linguistic limitations prevent me from paying critical attention to a significant number of Italian Australian narratives written in Italian or Italian dialects, such as Pino Bosi’s novel set in the Queensland cane fields, Australia cane (1971).39 Given the focus upon self-representation, it has been important to consider debates regarding authenticity and other questions relating to the study of ethnic or diasporic literatures in Australia. For some time, the ‘Demidenko affair’ resulted in a serious reconsideration within Australian literary circles regarding the importance of an author’s background, or of conflating the authorial ‘I’ with the narratorial ‘I’.40 The recent
Guts (Sydney: Kurunda Publications, 1971); J. Cattoni, Hey Sista!, (Australia: 2002); Dell'Oso, Bride of Fortune: Opera in Prologue and Three Acts; A. M. Dell'Oso, Cats, Cradles and Chamomile Tea (Hornsby, NSW: Random House, 1989); "Zia Pina," in Who Do You Think You Are? : Second Generation Immigrant Women in Australia, ed. Karen Herne, Joanne Travaglia, and Elizabeth Weiss (Broadway, NSW: Women's Redress Press, 1992); Songs of the Suitcase (Pymble, NSW: Flamingo and HarperCollins, 1998); V. Ercole, No Escape (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1932); A. Gambotto, The Pure Weight of the Heart (London: Phoenix, 1998); Gandolfo, "Claudia's Grandmother."; "My Life Is over Now: A Novel and Critical Commentary" (Thesis); "Sicilian Portrait." 39 See P. Bosi, Australia Cane (Sydney: Kuranda Publications, 1971). Bosi is an extremely prolific Italian Australian writer in both Italian and English. For more of his work, see also P. Bosi, Farewell Australia (Sydney: Kuranda Publications, 1969); Bosi, Blood, Sweat and Guts; P. Bosi, The Checkmate and Other Short Stories (Sydney: Kuranda Publications, 1973). The choice to write in the language of the dominant or host culture raises many important and complex issues. For a further discussion of these issues see Andreoni, "Italo- Australians: Notes on Language and Literature."; Chellini, "The Role of Language in Multicultural Australian Writing."; S. Gunew, Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994); Pivato, "Representation of Ethnicity as Problem: Essence or Construction." My lack of proficiency in Italian has also resulted in the omission of Italian-language criticism of Italian diasporic literatures. See, for example, P. Crupi, Letteratura Ed Emigrazione (Reggio Calabria: Casa del libro, 1979); J.-J. Marchand, ed., La Letteratura Dell'emigrazione: Gli Scrittori Di Lingua Italiana Nel Mondo (Torino: Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1991). 40 S. Gunew, Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 77. The ‘Demidenko affair’ refers to the furore surrounding Helen Darville’s novel, The Hand That Signed the Paper (1994), which she claimed to have based on her own family’s experiences during World War II. Not only was it found that Darville, of Anglo Australian descent, had laid false claim to Ukrainian ancestry, adopting the surname Demidenko, wearing clothing she claimed to be traditional Ukrainian garb and making herself a visible member in the Ukrainian Australian community, her writing came under close scrutiny by both literary critics and historians, under charges of plagiarism, and historical and cultural inaccuracies in her narrative. For further reading on the Demidenko affair, see H. Darville, The Hand That Signed the Paper (St Leonards: Allen &
13 controversy surrounding Norma Khouri’s claim to autobiographical authenticity in her book, Forbidden Love (2003), reignited these debates.41 Both Sneja Gunew and Sonia Mycak argue that the desire to conflate author and narrator is not particular to, but most certainly prevalent within, multicultural and ethnic literary criticisms.42 Mycak argues that this conflation between author and narrator possibly signals the reader’s desire to witness autobiography, therefore ethnic authenticity, when reading such works; that is, the desire to see the narratives as something that really happened as opposed to simply an Australian- born writer writing with imagination.43
Unwin, 1994); J. Jost, G. Totaro, and C. Tyshing, eds., The Demidenko File (Ringwood: Penguin, 1996); R. Manne, The Culture of Forgetting : Helen Demidenko and the Holocaust (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1996); N. J. Prior, The Demidenko Diary (Port Melbourne: Mandarin, 1996); A. Riemer, The Demidenko Debate (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1996); S. Wheatcroft, ed., Genocide, History and Fictions: Historians Respond to Helen Demidenko/Darville's the Hand That Signed the Paper (Parkville: Department of History, University of Melbourne, 1997). For specific reference to the Demidenko affair and issues of ethnic and literary authenticity, see also A. Byrne, "Does It Matter Whose Was the Hand That Signed the Paper?," Australian Academic and Research Libraries 27, no. 3 (1996); S. Egan, "The Company She Keeps: Demidenko and the Problems of Imposture in Autobiography," Australian Literary Studies 21, no. 4 (2004); T. Goldie, "On Not Being Australian: Mudrooroo and Demidenko," Australian Literary Studies 21, no. 4 (2004); S. Gunew, "Performing Ethnicity: The Demidenko Show and Its Gratifying Pathologies," Australian Feminist Studies 11, no. 23 (1996); J. Hyde, "On Not Being Ethnic: Anglo/ Australia and the Lesson of Helen Darville/ Demidenko," Quadrant 39, no. 11 (1995); S. Mycak, "The Authority of the "I": Life Stories and Ethnic Identity," Quadrant 45, no. 4 (2001); "Demidenko/Darville: A Ukrainian-Australian Point of View," Australian Literary Studies 21, no. 4 (2004); M. Nolan and C. Dawson, "Who's Who? Mapping Hoaxes and Imposture in Australian Literary History," Australian Literary Studies 21, no. 4 (2004). 41 In Forbidden Love, Khouri and her Muslim friend, Dalia, open a unisex hair salon in Amman, Jordan. Dalia falls in love with a customer who is Catholic and is stabbed to death after the love affair is discovered by her family who, it is implied, are involved in her brutal murder. Dalia’s lover then aids Khouri’s escape from Jordan. It was discovered in mid-2004, through an investigation of various narrative inaccuracies, that Khouri had not lived in Jordan since she was three years of age, when her family had migrated to Chicago, thereby indicating that her claims to autobiography in Forbidden Love were, in fact, false. See N. Khouri, Forbidden Love: A Harrowing True Story of Love and Revenge in Jordan (Milsons Point: Random House Australia, 2003); Nolan and Dawson, "Who's Who? Mapping Hoaxes and Imposture in Australian Literary History," pp. v-vi; G. Whitlock, "Tainted Testimony: The Khouri Affair," Australian Literary Studies 21, no. 4 (2004). 42 S. Gunew, "Multicultural Multiplicities: Canada, USA and Australia," in Social Pluralism and Literary History: The Literature of the Italian Emigration, ed. Francesco Loriggio (Toronto: Guernica, 1996), p. 29; Mycak, "The Authority of the "I": Life Stories and Ethnic Identity," p. 23. 43 Mycak, "The Authority of the "I": Life Stories and Ethnic Identity," p. 23.
14 Similarly, Gunew identifies the contextualisation of ethnic minority writers in terms of their communal authenticity rather than their textuality or their writing as a significant problem in the study of writing by migrants or ethnic minorities. She relates this to broader issues governing the definitions of “multicultural,” “ethnic” and “migrant” writing in Australia.44 Manfred Jurgensen agrees that the quality of writing is not often used as the criterion of classification and judgement in determining what belongs to the contentious category of “multicultural” or “migrant” writing, but rather whether or not the writer sports a foreign-sounding name.45 Jurgensen also argues that although it “may be politically correct (and electorally expedient) to seek the preservation of ghetto ‘authenticity’ … its propagation has proved a powerful disincentive to imaginative and creative transformations of cultural interaction.”46 In Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies (1994), Gunew establishes useful theoretical frameworks for the study of multicultural literary studies in Australia: the country’s contribution to multicultural literary studies, she maintains, still lags behind similar work in Canada and the United States.47 Gunew argues that the term ‘migrant writing’ is misleading as it is often used simply to refer to writers perceived to not belong to the Anglo Celtic literary tradition, although they may be Australian born, and that the phrase maintains a reductive notion of the content.48 “Non-Anglo Celtic writing” was a term previously preferred by Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley in their introduction to Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations (1992) for both its reference to and subversion of the dominant cultural group in Australia.49 The term is considered by Gunew to be a negative definition that generates unnecessary controversy in relation to
44 Gunew, "Multicultural Multiplicities: Canada, USA and Australia," p. 29. See also Gunew, Framing Marginality, pp. xii, 53-67; "Performing Ethnicity: The Demidenko Show and Its Gratifying Pathologies," p. 53. 45 M. Jurgensen, "Multicultural Aesthetics: A Preliminary Definition," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), p. 33. 46 M. Jurgensen, "Transformative Identities of Literary Multiculturalism," Southerly Spring-Summer (1999): p. 267. 47 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 4; "Multicultural Multiplicities: Canada, USA and Australia," p. 32; Haunted Nations, p. 6. For an interesting examination of ethnic minority writing in Canada and its relationship to theory, see J. Pivato, "Shirt of the Happy Man: Theory and Politics of Ethnic Minority Writing," Canadian Ethnic Studies 28, no. 3 (1996). 48 Gunew, Framing Marginality, pp. xi, 23. 49 S. Gunew and K. O. Longley, "Introduction," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), pp. xvii-xviii, xx.
15 older settler groups.50 Gunew’s dismissal of ‘multicultural writing’ as homogenising the very differences that are demanding to be analysed51 can be related to her later observation that multiculturalism is sometimes seen as covert assimilationism,52 but does not explain her decision to label her critical field as “multicultural literary studies.”53 Ultimately, Gunew nominates “ethnic minority writing” as a suitable label for the texts with which she deals as it ensures that cultural majority groups no longer remain visible. It also encourages the analysis of cultural difference as a critical category within cultural criticism.54 In her most recent work, Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (2004), Gunew’s consideration of the relationship between ethnicity and literature alters yet again. Now situating herself within the field of comparative multicultural studies with an interest in the overlap between this and postcolonial and diasporic studies, she states: Literature is conceived here as a set of relations rather than simply a list of texts, whether canonised or not. Rather than amounting to the conveniently marginalised study of ethnic literatures, ethnicity functions here to signal the ethnic component permeating literature in general.55 Gunew subsequently observes that the variety of genres – autobiographies, fictions and literary histories – function to construct models of belonging and as a means of cultural survival.56 She highlights the complicated burden of representation borne by minority writers who “have the double yoke of representation as delegation (in the political sense) and depiction (in the cultural sense).”57 Most importantly, Gunew identifies and acknowledges the important role played by writing in the processes of migration and settlement: While diasporic studies have in the past tended to focus on what is culturally retained or carried over in the sense of custom, religion, histories (always anachronistic) and languages, it may be time to consider the role of the writer as inventor
50 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 23. 51 Ibid. 52 Gunew, "Multicultural Multiplicities: Canada, USA and Australia," p. 37; Haunted Nations, p. 37. 53 For a critical history of multicultural literary studies in Australia, see J. Raschke, "Who's Knocking Now? The Rise and Fall of 'Multicultural' Literature," Overland 180 (2005). 54 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 23. 55 Gunew, Haunted Nations, p. 6. 56 Ibid., p. 107. 57 Ibid., p. 108.
16 of community where community is conceived not in the sense of the nostalgic return to the past and a lost place but as the impulse forward, the potential carried by the seeding of diaspora in hybridity, the reality of a process more easily recognised here and now as hegemonic groups within the nation are forced to accommodate the third- and fourth-generation descendents of major migrations.58 In other words, drawing upon Gunew in conjunction with Homi K. Bhabha, writing must be recognised as adjunct and adjacent cultural knowledges.59 Likewise Roger Bromley, in Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions (2000), sees diasporic cultural narratives as cultural resources which “give space and voice to the excluded and dispossessed” and which “raise the issues of what the world looks like from the margins.”60 Gillian Bottomley also argues that “stories written about migration and ethnicity … can reveal a richness of understanding not usually available in sociological studies.”61 Ross Gibson utilises an understanding of myth that also illuminates the relationship between narrative and other disciplines that seek to establish a ‘truth’, such as history, and the role that narratives play in our lives: a myth is a popular story that highlights contradictions which a community feels compelled to resolve narratively rather than rationally, so that citizens can get on with living. Myths help us live with contradictions, whereas histories help us analyse persistent contradictions so that we might avoid being lulled and ruled by the myths that we use to console and enable ourselves. Which is why we desire our myths and need our histories.62 Graeme Turner, in National Fictions: Literature, Film and the Construction of Australian Narrative (1993), further reinforces the idea that narratives, which refers to both written and film texts, are adjacent cultural knowledges. Turner argues that as narratives are ultimately produced by a certain culture “they generate meanings, take on significances, and assume forms that are articulations of the values, beliefs – the ideology – of the
58 Ibid., p. 109. Emphasis added. 59 H. K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 163. 60 R. Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 4. 61 G. Bottomley, From Another Place: Migration and the Politics of Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 64. 62 R. Gibson, Seven Versions of an Australian Badland (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002), pp. 170- 71. Original emphasis.
17 culture.”63 Bromley and Jurgensen both relate multicultural writing and the construct of diasporic narratives more specifically to processes of identity formation, articulation and representation. Bromley argues that “fictions speak of, from and across migrant identities and develop narratives of plurality, fluidity and always emergent becoming,”64 while Jurgensen asserts that multicultural writing has a “range of imaginative projection [that] has the capacity to reveal the dynamics of all interrelated dimensions of identity.”65 It is with these latter treatments of ethnicity in narratives that this thesis engages. To return to the quote from Sollors with which I began, the active contribution narrative makes – narrative used here to refer to both the written and film texts used in this study – as a productive force is that it reveals ethnicity and ethnic identity formation as processes. Narratives of ethnicity allow new and imaginative ways to articulate identities and new ways of becoming. They supplement existing and often dominating socio- historical cultural knowledges. The concept of the ethnic bildungsroman is implemented here to privilege the concepts of change, development and becoming present in each of the narratives, and a revised version of developmental models of ethnic literature is applied to situate these changes and shifts in articulations of identities and identity formation across the boundaries of generation and genre.
Developing the ethnic bildungsroman as a tool Perhaps more commonly, although incorrectly, known as the ‘coming of age’ novel, the traditional Bildungsroman is more correctly understood as the novel of formation or development, and is most often associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European literatures.66 Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is usually cited as the first and perhaps the most definitive example of the genre. Bildungsromane usually feature a male
63 G. Turner, National Fictions: Literature, Film and the Construction of Australian Narrative (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1993), p. 1. Original emphasis. 64 Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, p. 2. 65 Jurgensen, "Transformative Identities of Literary Multiculturalism," p. 267. 66 A note on capitalisation: the varying use of Bildungsroman and bildungsroman is not arbitrary, but is used to differentiate between the traditional German genre (Bildungsroman) and its subsequent adaptations (such as the female bildungsroman or the ethnic bildungsroman). This is derived from Todd Kontje’s own alteration of the term’s usual capitalisation and italicisation, in which his unitalicised “Bildungsroman” indicates its status as a critical umbrella concept incorporating all variations on the rigidly defined traditional genre, referred to as Bildungsroman, capitalised and italicised. Please also note that the plural is bildungsromane. See T. Kontje, The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre (Colombia: Camden House, 1993), pp. x-xi.
18 protagonist encountering problems and people along the road to maturation, and it has been argued convincingly that definitions of the Bildungsroman excluded writing by and about women because “their social options are so narrow that they preclude explorations of [their] milieu.”67 As most analyses demonstrate, the concept of successful development contained in Bildungsromane is predicated upon education and experiences occurring within the public sphere, resulting in the production of a responsible white, middle-class, Christian citizen.68 In addition to women, these generic limitations also exclude minority groups based upon class, ethnicity and sexuality. The genre is also a site of much contestation in the country of its genesis, Germany. It is often claimed as a specifically German literary genre linked to the expression of Germany’s national characteristics and processes of canon formation.69 Todd Kontje provides what is perhaps the most useful and comprehensive study of the Bildungsroman and its surrounding discourse, opening the genre to interpretation and adaptation beyond its traditional national boundaries and thematic limitations.70 The misuse of the genre stems largely from a disregard in non-German criticism for the genre’s historical and philosophical origins.71 What is important in adapting the Bildungsroman for use as a conceptual and critical tool – and what is drawn upon in this thesis – is the inherent interplay it implies between individual and community, and the significance and ramifications of its standing as a national (and even potentially dangerous nationalist) genre.
67 E. Abel, M. Hirsch, and E. Langland, "Introduction," in The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development, ed. Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983), p. 7. 68 See, for example, J. Hardin, "An Introduction," in Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, ed. James Hardin (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), p. xiii; Kontje, The German Bildungsroman, p. 6; J. L. Sammons, "The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists: An Attempt at Clarification," in Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, ed. James Hardin (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 41-42. 69 Kontje, The German Bildungsroman, pp. x, 28-29. 70 Many literary critics of the Bildungsroman are not as flexible as Kontje, and are skeptical of the application of the generic term and its concepts beyond its specific historical and German context. See, for example, J. Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991). 71 Jerome Hamilton Buckley is almost unanimously elected by Bildungsroman critics as the worst offender in this regard. For criticism of Buckley, see S. Fraiman, Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 135-39; Hardin, "An Introduction," p. xvii; Kontje, The German Bildungsroman, p. 70. See also Buckley’s own work, J. H. Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
19 While Kontje firmly situates the Bildungsroman as a German literary invention and closely links its history to that of Germany, this thesis draws upon his subsequent argument that it has become the “representative genre of modernity” that, for better or worse, has been “spirit[ed] … across national boundaries.”72 Recent critical examinations of the genre have highlighted its usefulness for reading the formation and development of gender and ethnic identities. Led by Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch and Elizabeth Langland’s seminal collection of essays, The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development (1983), feminist literary critics have reworked the genre to allow for readings of gender, class and ethnicity.73 Susan Fraiman maintains that feminism has allowed for a “renovated paradigm”; that is, a revision of the genre that permits featuring the development of a female protagonist through an expansion of the formal and thematic limits of the traditional Bildungsroman.74 Mary Jo Bona further argues that Fraiman’s renovated paradigm also provides an opportunity for the development of an ethnic bildungsroman.75 Julia Alexis Kushigan and Pin-chia Feng have also developed gender, ethnic and class readings of Latin American, African American and Asian American literatures within this renovated paradigm.76 Bromley remains critical of reading diasporic narratives as bildungsromane, identifying the “limitations of the realist novel, particularly the bildungsroman, as a hegemonic paradigm designed to privilege and prioritise an individualist model of development.”77 He is especially critical of the application of the bildungsroman model to autobiographical writings.78 Consequently, Bromley dismisses both the female and ethnic bildungsromane as critical and conceptual tools in his reading of diasporic cultural narratives, despite their usefulness in evaluating ways of becoming and belonging, enabled by the renovated paradigms that allow for the importance of collectivity and community in
72 Kontje, The German Bildungsroman, p. 112. 73 Abel, Hirsch, and Langland, "Introduction," pp. 12-18. 74 Fraiman, Unbecoming Women, p. 123. 75 M. J. Bona, Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), p. 322. See also M. J. Bona, "The Italian American Coming-of-Age Novel," in The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, ed. Pellegrino D'Acierno (New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1999). 76 See P.-c. Feng, The Female Bildungsroman by Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston: A Postmodern Reading (New York: Peter Lang, 1998); J. A. Kushigian, Reconstructing Childhood: Strategies of Reading for Culture and Gender in the Spanish American Bildungsroman (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003). 77 Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, pp. 113-14. 78 Ibid., p. 28.
20 diasporic communities and spaces. Despite these criticisms, Bromley’s study is extremely useful in developing reading strategies that enhance the developmental and bildungsroman models implemented here, particularly in regard to his use of Stuart Hall’s ‘third scenario’, to be discussed later.79 Whilst this critical rejuvenation of the bildungsroman has been used to great effect in the analysis of women’s, ethnic and multicultural literatures elsewhere, it remains relatively untouched within the Australian context, discussed usually only in passing with regards to young adult coming-of-age narratives,80 or dismissed as an unhelpful, rigid and outdated generic model. Nikos Papastergiadis, for example, dismisses the bildungsroman genre in his analysis of Greek Australian literature for its “conventional decadence and masculinist narcissism.”81 Similarly, Dorothy Wang is reluctant to conceptualise in terms of a bildungsroman her reading of ‘becoming’ in a novel by Asian Australian writer Simone Lazaroo. Wang viewed it as a generic trap that Lazaroo would be best to avoid, especially as an ethnic writer.82 Rather than viewing adaptations of the bildungsroman as rigid and inflexible genres – as the traditional Bildungsroman legitimately might be seen – this thesis views the bildungsroman in its gendered and ethnic forms as not only a genre of development, but a constantly developing and evolving genre. The bildungsroman, in its various revised forms, is an invaluable tool for reading Australian texts that grapple with protagonists’ problematic identity formation in a culturally diverse society. In its even broader application, charting literary development also allows for an examination of what values influence identity formation and development, and what criteria Australia offers for who is and can be Australian.
79 For Bromley’s discussion of Stuart Hall’s third scenario, see Ibid., pp. 1-3, 6. 80 W. Michaels, "The Realistic Turn: Trends in Recent Australian Young Adult Fiction," Papers 14, no. 1 (2004). Susan Midalia is the exception in this, as she engages with the feminist conception of the bildungsroman in relation to Australian women’s literary narratives. See S. Midalia, "The Contemporary Female Bildungsroman: Gender, Genre and the Politics of Optimism," Westerly Autumn (1996). 81 N. Papastergiadis, "The Journeys Within: Migration and Identity in Greek-Australian Literature," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), p. 158. 82 D. Wang, "The Making of an 'Australian' 'Self' in Simone Lazaroo's the World Waiting to Be Made," Journal of Australian Studies June (2000): pp. 48-49.
21 Developmental models and narratives of ethnicity Just as the bildungsroman has remained largely untouched in the Australian context, developmental models of ethnic literary analysis have not been applied to the narrative output of Australia’s various migrant groups. Although Rando has identified the general pattern in Italian Australian writing – observing that “the development of Italian writing in Australia follows a pattern analogous to that of the development of writing in English: an initial concentration on the description of the physical and social environment followed by creative writing”83 – there has not, until Scarparo and Wilson’s recent use of Daniel Aaron’s notion of the “hyphenate writer,”84 been any extended attempt at developing a generational model of analysis for Italian Australian narrative, such as that adapted and developed within this thesis. Gunew and Longley, in their introduction to Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations (1992), outline a view of “non-Anglo Celtic Australian” writing comprising three rough categories. They emphasise, however, that this view is not an evolutionary model.85 Gunew and Longley’s first category comprises texts which juxtapose the old and the new cultures, and are often nostalgic and elegiac. This is the only group of texts, they argue, that can be correctly referred to as ‘migrant’ writing.86 Their second category is concerned with the translation of one reality into the other and mediation between these two realities. It comprises writers who are at home in both languages and cultures.87 Gunew and Longley’s third category sees a blurring of the traditional boundaries between speech and writing, and comprises writers who forge new languages and representations.88 While their second category often corresponds to writers belonging to the second generation after migration, Gunew and Longley’s view is not developmental or organised upon strict generational lines, nor are their categories hierarchical. A single writer, they point out, could belong to all three categories.
83 Rando, "The Italo-Australian Case." 84 Scarparo and Wilson, "Imagining Homeland in Anna Maria Dell'oso's Autofictions," pp. 170-71. Scarparo is also utilising Aaron’s notion of the hyphenate writer in her current project regarding Italian Australian life writing, as discussed in S. Scarparo, "Representations of Violence in Italo-Australian Life Writing" (paper presented at the Third Biennial ACIS Conference: L'Italia globale: le altre Italie e l'Italia altrove: An International Conference of Italian Studies, Treviso, Italy, 30 June - 2 July 2005). 85 Gunew and Longley, "Introduction," p. xxi. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid.
22 Regarding developmental models for the literary analysis of ethnic literature, Werner Sollors observes: we are accustomed to think of the development of American literature as “growth,” a process of increasing formal complexity from travelogues and letters …, sermons, essays, and biographies to the increasingly successful mastery of poetry and prose fiction and drama. Analogously, we may see the historical unfolding of ethnic writing as a process of growth; and again, the beginning is with immigrants and immigrant letters. … The literature then “grows” from nonfictional to fictional forms …; from folk and popular forms to high forms …; from lower to higher degrees of complexity …; and from “parochial” marginality to “universal” significance in the literary mainstream.89 Sollors goes on to criticise developmental models for creating a false opposition between “parochial ethnicity and modern movements in art and literature.”90 As Fred L. Gardaphé points out, this connotes a further false opposition between ethnicity and the culture of the host society.91 Julia Alexis Kushigian’s approach to the growth model in her study of Spanish American bildungsromane, Reconstructing Childhood: Strategies of Reading for Culture and Gender in the Spanish American Bildungsroman (2003), differs from Sollors’ in her emphasis upon content and representation as opposed to growth of literary standing. While the model implemented in this study follows Sollors’ shift from non-fiction to fiction, focuses upon published narratives and acknowledges the literary standing some texts may have gained the critical focus remains, like Kushigan’s study, upon thematic content, as opposed to charting the movement of Italian Australian writers into the literary mainstream. (The journey into the mainstream, however, certainly remains the trajectory of Italian Australian feature film, as will be discussed in Chapter 7.) Daniel Aaron’s essay, “The Hyphenate Writer and American Letters” (1964), was seminal to later explorations of hyphenate identities and models of ethnic literary development. It continues to be useful today, although his more in-depth application of these concepts in the second half of the essay bears the marks of its era. Aaron describes the pejorative origins of the hyphen between “American” and “Italian,” for example, as
89 W. Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 240-41. 90 Ibid. 91 F. L. Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 15.
23 signifying the intention of the dominant mainstream culture to hold migrants at “‘hyphen’s length,’ so to speak, from the established community – at least until the heat of the melting pot had burned away old loyalties.”92 As with most of the developmental models for non- Anglo American literatures that followed, Aaron divides the process from “hyphenation” to “dehyphenation” into three stages: the first stage of the “pioneer spokesperson” or “local colourist” who aims to please the majority and, in so doing, win their sympathies; the second stage is described as that of the “militant protester”, wherein the writer – still hyphenated – is at conflict with both the Anglo American and ethnic communities, and is thus often doubly criticised; finally, the third stage writer passes from the margins to the mainstream – that is, from their ethnic culture to the dominant culture.93 Gardaphé and Anthony Julian Tamburri each divide Italian American literature into three stages which move along generic and generational lines, further defined by thematic content and the presence of ethnic and cultural signifiers. Gardaphé’s model has, in turn, been developed from “Vico’s stages describing the development and decay of culture”94 and Sollors’ above observations and critiques of developmental models of literary analysis. Tamburri draws upon the work of Aaron, Gardaphe and Charles Sanders Peirce, rejecting Sollors because of his “bipolar notion of oppositional discourse,”95 to develop a more post-structuralist approach to ethnicity and Italian American literature.
92 D. Aaron, American Notes: Selected Essays (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), p. 69. Aaron’s essay was originally published in Smith College Alumnae Quarterly July (1964): 213-217. It is for this reason – that is, the notion of being held at hyphen’s length – that the term ‘Italian Australian’, as opposed to ‘Italian- Australian’ or ‘Italo-Australian’, is utilised in this thesis. The gap between ‘Italian’ and ‘Australian’ symbolises a creative space in which Italianness and Australianness may interact, and in which Italian Australian narratives may form, but can also signify a distance and difference between the two cultures. 93 Ibid., 72-73. Deborah Chellini also implements a three stage model in her exploration of the role of language in Italian Australian writing. The movement into the mainstream in the third stage is signalled by writers’ use of English. It is also interesting to compare Aaron’s model for ethnic literary development and Fred L. Gardaphe’s and Anthony Julian Tamburri’s three stages of Italian American writing, and indeed the Italian Australian model developed in this thesis, to George Megalogenis’ “three stages of wogdom,” which charts a similar movement from the margins to the mainstream. See Chellini, "The Role of Language in Multicultural Australian Writing," p. 93; G. Megalogenis, Faultlines: Race, Work and the Politics of Changing Australia (Melbourne: Scribe, 2003), pp. 7-12. 94 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 14. 95 A. J. Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)Cognition of the Italian/American Writer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. vii.
24 The first stage of these Italian American models of literary development comprises migrant autobiographies and narratives based upon oral traditions. Gardaphé refers to this stage as the “poetic” or “pre-modernist”, arguing that these narratives are strongly located within Italian oral folkloric traditions, demonstrate a dominance of Italian over American traits, and often use Italian language extensively. He also observes an assimilation trope as “there is a movement of the Italian alien subject toward conformity with mainstream American society.”96 Tamburri describes this stage as “expressive”, describing the first-stage writer as “a type of self-deprecating barterer with the dominant culture … [who] no more writes about what s/he thinks than what s/he experiences, that is, his/her surroundings.”97 In the second, “mythic/modernist” (Gardaphé) or “comparative” (Tamburri) stage, Gardaphé identifies the emergence of a hybrid Italian American culture and traits within the narratives, and observes a transition from autobiography to autobiographical fiction.98 Tamburri identifies the second-stage writers as belonging to “the generation that (re)discovers and/or reinvents his/her ethnicity.”99 Ethnicity, Tamburri continues, is used in more of a descriptive than expressive manner, becoming “the tool with which s/he communicates her/his ideology”100 whereas his criteria for the first-stage writer excluded them from this “form of objective rhetorical literary paradigm.”101 Finally, the third stage is marked by the apparent invisibility of the writer’s ethnicity within their narratives. Labelled by Gardaphé as the “philosophic” or “postmodernist” stage, he argues that while American traits dominate over overt displays of Italian or Italian American ethnicity, signs of Italianness in these third-stage narratives are “visible to the trained reader.”102 Both Tamburri and Gardaphé locate the transition from autobiographical fiction to experimental writing within this last stage, wherein the experiential is transcended. In this “synthetic” stage, Tamburri argues, the writer “transcends ‘mere parochial allegiance’ and passes completely out of the expressive and descriptive stages into a third – and final – reflexive stage in which everything becomes fair game.”103
96 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 16. 97 Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity, p. 10. Original emphasis. 98 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 16. 99 Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity, p. 10. 100 Ibid., p. 11. 101 Ibid., p. 10. 102 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 16-17. 103 Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity, p. 11. Original emphasis.
25 Gardarphè and Tamburri view the bildungsroman as merely a narrative genre that occurs within their second stages. Despite this, the formation of Italian American and American identities is central to their readings of the literature, as well as Gardarphè’s particular interest in the creation and ultimate demise of ‘Little Italies’.104 Issues regarding gender are addressed by both Gardaphè and Tamburri, but these tend to be located predominantly within the domain of women’s writing, or observations about female characters in texts by men; gender is not used to read narratives by male writers. Questions of gender remain important to the analysis of the Italian Australian narratives discussed in this thesis. Joan Scott once famously observed that “‘gender’ is a synonym for ‘women’…. ‘[G]ender’ is meant to denote the scholarly seriousness of a work, for ‘gender’ has a more neutral and objective sound than does ‘women’.”105 Terry Threadgold also noted as recently as 2000 that the “term gender must come to include both sexes.”106 C. Nadia Seremetakis, examining the shift from women’s studies to gender studies within her own context of cultural anthropology and Mediterranean Studies in the mid-1990s, argued that the academic category of ‘Gender Studies’ restricts the conceptualisation of women’s experiences and empowerment by circumscribing women in terms of their objectification by the category of gender; that is, their points of social intersection with men. Here Seremetakis certainly limits her definition of gender to women in her assumption that gender studies is limited to the study of women only, and presents a problematic perception of the relationship between men and gender. She argues that many male scholars exploit the concept of gender studies by assuming that speaking as men on men they are also automatically addressing women’s issues, thereby colonising the representation of women.107 Initially proposed as an investigation of the intersection of gender and ethnicity in Italian Australian women’s writing, this project expanded to incorporate men’s writing partially to challenge the constant equation of ‘gender’ with ‘women’ but mainly to investigate both men’s representations of women and their depiction of ethnic
104 F. L. Gardaphé, Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian American Culture (Albany: SUNY, 2004). For further reading on Little Italies, see also W. Boelhower and R. Pallone, eds., Adjusting Sites: New Essays in Italian American Studies (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1999). 105 J. W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis," in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 31. 106 T. Threadgold, "Gender Studies and Women's Studies," Australian Feminist Studies 15, no. 31 (2000): p. 39. 107 C. N. Seremetakis, "Gender Studies or Women's Studies: Theoretical and Pedagogical Issues, Research Agendas and Directions," Ibid.20, no. Summer (1994): pp. 108-10.
26 masculinities. Incorporating Italian Australian men’s cultural narratives allows us to observe shifts in their perceptions and representations of women, as well as their own changing conceptions of Italian Australian masculinities, and encourages a more holistic approach to questions of Italian Australian identities.
‘I think my family has come a long way’: the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities The narratives used here to chart the shifting representations of Italian Australian identities move along similar lines to the patterns outlined by Gardaphé and Tamburri above. In this study, the trajectory of Italian Australian narrative and identity development moves from migrant autobiographies into fiction by the successive generations, of which there are varying trends between the adult and young adult markets. This Italian Australian model, however, differs from its Italian American predecessors on several significant points. First, it identifies an intermediary stage between the first stage, that of the realist and expressive migrant autobiographies, and the second stage, that of the modernist and comparative fictions of the successive generations. Second, the third stage of the Italian Australian narrative trajectory remains uncharted in this study, seen as only newly emergent. Third, it incorporates a study of feature film narratives in order to explore the motif of development represented within that genre, but also as reflected in aspects of production.108 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the thesis draws upon the motif of an Italian Australian development as a journey as opposed to the focus on hierarchical development found in other models. This serves the purpose of indicating movement and change without necessarily
108 Tamburri briefly comments on Italian American films and filmmakers in his epilogue, within a broader discussion about Italian American cultural studies as an emerging field. Tamburri, A Semiotic of Ethnicity, pp. 127-28. There is, of course, a rich body of work on Italian American film and filmmakers, with significant and ongoing discussions on the representation of Italian Americans in film and television. See P. D'Acierno, "Cinema Paradiso: The Italian American Presence in American Cinema," in The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, ed. Pellegrino D'Acierno (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999); P. Verdicchio, "Unholy Manifestations: Cultural Transformation as Hereticism in the Films of De Michiel, Ferrara, Savoca, and Scorsese," in Adjusting Sites: New Essays in Italian American Studies, ed. William Boelhower and Rocco Pallone (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1999). For an interesting discussion on the prevalence of mafia imagery in representations of Italian Americans in film and television and its overall role in American culture, see C. Messenger, The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became "Our Gang" (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002).
27 seeming to impose a hierarchy upon the stages beyond the necessary (but ultimately permeable) boundaries of genre and generation. Similar to the models of both Tamburri and Gardarphè, Chapter 2 begins the arc of Italian Australian narrative and identity development with a discussion of migrant autobiographies. While the principal focus of this thesis is upon the fictional output of the successive generations, the exploration of two migrant autobiographies in Chapter 2 provides useful background for understanding these later narratives, particularly within an historical context. The chapter focuses upon two of the best known narratives in both Italian and Australian communities: Osvaldo Bonutto’s A Migrant’s Story (1963) and Emma Ciccotosto’s oral history collaboration with Michal Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life (1990). Bonutto and Ciccotosto are by no means the only Italian migrants of their generations who sought to record and publish their experiences, but their narratives are arguably the best known and are the most frequently drawn upon in historical studies of Italian migration to Australia. Their narratives have been selected because of the role of spokesperson placed upon these individuals in various critical contexts, as well as the interesting ways in which their lives may be read against one another. Bonutto and Ciccotosto both migrated to Australia during the pre-war era when migrants were expected to shed their Italian identities and assimilate to Anglo Australian cultural norms, but wrote their narratives after the war had ended – in the case of Ciccotosto, this was not until the late 1980s. In reading these migrant autobiographies as ethnic bildungsromane, it becomes evident that assimilation is, rather problematically, both the protagonist’s quest and the greatest threat to the future of ethnic communities and identities. This chapter explores migrant autobiographical bildungsromane as narratives of assimilation. It argues that in order to continue the Italian Australian developmental trajectory and to make future Italian Australian identities at all possible, it is necessary that these migrant protagonists in some way actually fail in their quest to assimilate to the dominant culture. It explores Bonutto’s fervent belief in assimilationism, and the ways in which his experience of internment as an enemy alien during World War II affected his carefully-constructed identity as a ‘New Australian’. Similar themes are explored in Ciccotosto’s account of her and her mother’s experiences during her father and brother’s internment and her own husband’s imprisonment for absconding from the army. I pay particular attention to how the internment of husbands, brothers, fathers and sons affected Italian Australian women. This chapter reveals the role of gender in each narrative; Bonutto is almost silent regarding women’s experiences of migration, whereas Ciccotosto’s narrative can be seen as a
28 response to such silences. This chapter reveals also the role played by children in the protagonists’ articulations of identity development across the generations. The intermediary stage inserted between the first and second stages of the Italian Australian developmental model and explored throughout Chapter 3 represents the overlap between autobiography and fiction, and between the first and second generations. This overlap, I argue, creates a generic and generational bridge wherein more nuanced representations of Italian Australian identities and experiences begin to emerge in these autobiographical fictions and creative autobiographies. In Tamburri and Gardaphé’s models, these autobiographical fictions and creative autobiographies would be located within the second stage.109 Autobiographical fiction, in the terms used here, refers to fiction with deliberate autobiographical content, and vice versa, or deliberate confusion of the boundaries between fiction and autobiographical non-fiction.110 Rosa Cappiello’s Oh Lucky Country (1984) and Peter Dalseno’s Sugar, Tears and Eyeties (1994) present themselves as autobiographical novels, simultaneously encouraging and challenging a conflation between, author, narrator and protagonist. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli’s creative autobiography and family history, Tapestry (1999), has been included in this intermediary stage because of her deliberate engagement with the narrative techniques of fiction, such as narrating her own experiences in the third person. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 explore the second clearly identifiable stage in the arc of Italian Australian narrative and identity development, comprising the large body of narrative fiction produced by the successive generations. This second stage is marked by a return to origins by successive generation protagonists and involves a renewed understanding and re-evaluation of the past, the previous generations and their stories of migration, often played out through plotlines involving generational conflict. Several of the narratives, particularly those aimed at the adult market, also involve a ‘return’ to Italy, be it actual or symbolic. Italian Australian identities of the second stage, I argue, are predicated upon reconciliation between the individual and the community or family, between the past and the present, between Italianness and Australianness; in short, the second stage is about protagonists negotiating a cultural and personal balance.
109 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, pp. 55-85. 110 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 186. See also their discussion of the relationship between life narratives and fiction, ibid., pp. 7-8.
29 In Chapter 4, the ethnic bildungsroman appears in its most commonly understood form, the young adult coming of age narrative, exemplified by Melina Marchetta’s award-winning novel, Looking for Alibrandi (1992). This novel, from which I briefly quoted at the beginning of this chapter, has found great critical and commercial success and achieved a somewhat iconic status in Australian culture. The young adult narratives selected for this chapter – Looking for Alibrandi, Sparring with Shadows (1997), The Dons (2001) and Wogaluccis (2002) – focus predominantly on generational and cultural conflict. This chapter argues that coming into young adulthood or maturity in these narratives is represented as analogous to coming into ethnic identity. Also under investigation in this chapter is the interplay between gender and ethnicity in the young protagonists’ developing identities. I argue that constructions of masculinities and femininities in these narratives are heavily couched in ethnic and cultural terms; not only must the young protagonists develop into young men and women, they must develop into young Italian Australian men and women. Finally, this chapter briefly explores recent developments in Marchetta and Fusillo’s representations of ethnicity, arguing that they are moving away from ethnic bildungsromane and into more general young adult coming of age narratives that depict cultural diversity in an uncomplicated and matter-of-fact way. This indicates a movement into the third stage of the Italian Australian literary trajectory. With the exception of Julie Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home (1996), second stage fictional narratives by the successive generations for the adult market move away from the overt explorations of Italian Australian identities found in the young adult narratives. However, these narratives make use of Italian Australian characters, culture and settings and the incorporation or acceptance of Italian Australian identity is central to the novels’ ultimate resolutions. Most significantly, stories of migration become central to the development of the main protagonist’s development in more complex and nuanced versions of the generational conflict depicted in their young adult counterparts. Both Chapters 5 and 6 argue that reconciliation between the Italian past and the Australian present is necessary to the protagonists’ identity formation in contemporary Italian Australian adult fiction. This is played out through the authors’ critical re-imagination of migration stories, wherein experiences of migration are depicted by these successive generation writers with heavy criticism of the traditional tropes of migration narratives, such as assimilation, success and nostalgia. Chapter 5 addresses narratives by Capaldo and Elise Valmorbida. In this chapter I argue that Capaldo’s use of food and eating in Love Takes You Home is central to
30 her representation of ‘healthy’ Italian Australian identity formation, and to her criticism of past assimilation rhetoric. In regards to Matilde Waltzing (1997), I argue that Valmorbida aims to challenge narratives of ‘successful’ migration and identity formation by writing against the silences of women’s experiences of migration, and by juxtaposing this against the hagiography of a fictional saint. This reading of Matilde Waltzing is informed by Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “historiographic metafiction,” a literary genre that critically re- thinks and re-imagines the past.111 By explicitly re-imagining a migration narrative, Valmorbida also returns to the problematic relationship between citizenship and the sense of cultural identity discussed in relation to the migrant autobiographies of Chapter 2. Chapter 6 looks exclusively at the works of Armanno, perhaps the most prolific of this generation and of this stage. In this chapter, I argue that the ethnic identity formation of Armanno’s protagonists is necessarily played out against the demise of symbolic Little Italies and the changing urban landscape of Brisbane, where all but one of his novels are set. These protagonists must return to these sites in order to reconcile their pasts and, in so doing, successfully negotiate their ethnic identities. Aware of the obvious gender division of these two chapters that deal with predominantly the same theme and stage in Italian Australian literary development, I have created this division because of the way in which gender is a significant factor in the narratives and the development of the protagonists. Whilst Capaldo, Valmorbida and Armanno all use stories of migration and migrant characters in a distinct way, both Capaldo and Valmorbida demonstrate a greater awareness of the role of gender in identity formation and experiences of migration. Where Capaldo’s explorations of Italian Australian gender roles is perhaps more subtle, Valmorbida’s challenge to historical fact is more explicitly about the silencing of women’s experiences in migration and religious histories. A gendered reading of Armanno is not only possible but entirely necessary. Whilst women are not entirely absent from Armanno’s novels, I argue that he situates his narratives within particularly masculine contexts. Most importantly, Armanno creates protagonists whose (ethnic) masculinities hinge almost entirely upon their idealisation of femininities. Until the protagonists recognise and unpack their idealisations, they are unable to understand their ethnic and masculine selves, and thus attain maturation within the context of the ethnic bildungsroman. Lastly, Chapter 7 explores the related but separate trajectory of narrative representations of identities in Italian Australian film. In this chapter, I align the rite de
111 L. Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 5.
31 passage or coming of age film with the concept of the ethnic bildungsroman explored in the previous chapters, and chart the similar but separate development of Italian Australian self- representation in film. This chapter focuses on feature films by Italian Australians since 1980, which largely correspond to the second stage of Italian Australian narrative and identity development and representation. With the exception of first generation Italian Australian and pioneering filmmaker Giorgio Mangiamele, feature film production by Italian Australians has mainly been located within the successive generations. I argue that the Italian Australian literary development is not necessarily a movement towards the literary mainstream, but rather towards more nuanced and complex explorations of Australian identities. Chapter 7, however, argues that the trajectory in Italian Australian feature film is critically about mainstream and commercial acceptance, which in turn affects the representation of Italian Australian identities in film narratives. In the filmic trajectory, we witness a movement from gritty realist migrant melodrama in Moving Out (1983) to comedy, including Monica Pellizzari’s unique style of culturally hybrid, neo-realist black comedy, Fistful of Flies (1996) and the more mainstream approach of Looking for Alibrandi (2000), and finally to the emergence of the nostalgic memory film in Jan Sardi’s Love’s Brother (2003). The latter seeks to represent not that which is remembered but that which it is desirable to remember. The movement of my argument from a consideration of autobiographies in Chapter 2, to creative autobiographies and autobiographical fiction in Chapter 3 through to the focus on fictional narratives in Chapters 4 to 7 performs several functions. First, it fits into a loose generational framework, moving from the predominantly autobiographical (literary) output by migrants to the largely fictional (literary and film) works of the successive generations.112 Second, it best represents the thematic arc of Italian Australian development, moving from a mid-twentieth century focus upon assimilation, becoming and being New Australians to the late twentieth- and early twenty-first century emphasis on multiculturalism and cultural diversity, as well as more overt considerations of gender issues. Finally, related very much to the previous function, it also begins to chart the movement away from emphasis on ‘authenticity’. Or, rather, in this movement the Italian
112 There are, of course, exceptions to this general movement, as there are examples of migrants writing fiction and the second and third generations writing biography and autobiography. See, for example, M. Alafaci, Savage Cows & Cabbage Leaves: An Italian Life (Alexandria, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 1999); A. Casella, The Sensualist (Rydalmere, NSW: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991); T. De Bolfo, In Search of Kings: What Became of the Passengers of the Re D'italia (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2002).
32 Australianness of the characters and settings become less foreign to the average (non- ethnic-specific) Australian reader. Rando argues that this signals “an opening out for all Australians towards the various cultural Presences and the resultant interchange through the expressive medium offered by a new ‘Australian’ literature which opens out into much wider horizons than has been the case in the past.”113 In Tamburri’s terms, reading Italian Australianness in the later texts becomes synthetic; in Meredith Austin’s terms, it is “virtually post-multicultural.”114 I have not categorised any narratives definitively as belonging to this projected third stage. It remains, I argue, a future possibility that is only newly emerging as diasporic narratives in Australia begin now to interact on a meaningful level and to create a dialogue with each other, as opposed to a two-way dialogue with hegemonic Anglo Australian culture and society. As such it remains, from the perspective of this study, a prospect for future consideration. The third stage of the Italian Australian narrative journey cannot be comfortably contained by either Tamburri’s or Austin’s terms. Rather, it may be best understood in terms of Stuart Hall’s third scenario, as a “non-binarist” space of reflection, and Homi K. Bhabha’s third space, which is not a position itself but a space in which other positions might emerge, as argued in the work of Roger Bromley.115 I emphasise this third stage/space/scenario as non-binarist, as a bi-cultural view is central to the Italian Australian narratives of the first and second stages. In the third stage, however, different cultural groups interact on a significant level with each other – are not constructed simply in reaction to a perceived dominant Anglo Celtic culture – and enter into cultural dialogues and conversations. Perhaps the best way of understanding this third scenario or space is through concepts of arrivals and departures. Bromley, reading American and British diasporic cultural narratives as emerging within this third scenario, asks, “Is it possible for identity to be conceived of as a point of arrival or, more hopefully, as a point of departure?”116 The difference between the first two stages of the Italian Australian narrative trajectory and the third is, I argue, that in the first two stages, particularly in the
113 Rando, "The Italo-Australian Case." 114 Meredith Austin, ‘The Australian Multicultural Children’s Literature Awards’ in Michael Stone (ed.) Australian Children’s Literature: Finding a Voice, New Literatures Research Centre, Wollongong, 1993, p 203. Original emphasis. 115 Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, p. 6. See also Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 36-39; S. Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, ed. Willliams and Chrisman (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 402. 116 Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, p. 67.
33 application of the ethnic bildungsroman model, identity is certainly conceptualised as a point of arrival; in the third stage, it is a point of departure.
* * * Examining narratives of identity formation and development in Italian Australian literature and film allows us to chart the development of certain protagonists within individual texts. It allows us also to place these journeys of development within a broader social, cultural and historical context that provides a framework for understanding what it has meant to be of Italian heritage in Australia at various times since World War II. Representations of Italian Australian identities move from the migrants trying to find a sense of place and home, and an identity as a ‘New Australian’, to their children who often feel trapped between two cultures, and characters whose search for identity and its link to ethnicity becomes increasingly subtle. The journey of the second generation necessitates an imaginative return to the migrant past in order to understand the personal and cultural politics of the present. These narratives are marked by their negotiation between concepts of Italianness and Australianness, and the quest to arrive at an Italian Australian identity, the point of departure for further multicultural dialogues and conversations.
34 Chapter 2
Like Child to Adult, Migrant to Citizen? Reading Migrant Autobiographies as Ethnic bildungsromane
A bad Italian will never make a good Australian, but a good Italian will. Osvaldo Bonutto, A Migrant’s Story 1
As Gaetano Rando observes, the “production of memoirs and personal accounts is almost as old as the beginnings of an identifiable Italian migrant presence in Australia.”2 The first significant period of autobiographies and memoirs occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century. This genre was revived, Rando argues, after the Second World War.3 This renewed desire to record experiences of migration to and settlement in Australia correlates to a period of significant place-making and community building.4 Almost thirty years separates the two autobiographical narratives selected for examination in this chapter. Osvaldo Bonutto’s A Migrant’s Story was originally published in 1963 and Emma Ciccotosto and Michal Bosworth’s Emma: A Translated Life in 1990. Edited, expanded and updated editions of each were also published in the mid-1990s. Both Bonutto and Ciccotosto were prewar migrants who experienced internment during World War II, either as an actual internee or as the relative of an internee. Both were migrants who lived and raised children in Australia during the heyday of assimilation rhetoric, when migrants were urged to conform to the ‘Australian’ culture and way of life. This chapter uses these two narratives to explore the possibilities of reading migrant autobiographies within the framework of the ethnic bildungsromane. These narratives are also used to explore the key parameters of the first stage in the model of development of Italian Australian narratives and identities. Bonutto’s and Ciccotosto’s narratives are arguably two of the best known migrant autobiographies from the postwar period.5 They
1 O. Bonutto, A Migrant's Story (Brisbane: H. Pole & Co. Pty. Ltd., 1963), p. 97. 2 Rando, "Narrating the Migration Experience," p. 184. 3 Ibid., p. 185. 4 See R. Pascoe, "Place and Community: The Construction of an Italo-Australian Space," Ibid., ed. Stephen Castles, et al. This will be discussed in further depth below. 5 For reasons stated in Chapter 1, Bonutto’s and Ciccotosto’s narratives have been selected out of several available autobiographies and biographies by Italian migrants to Australia. Other such autobiographical narratives include: C. Alcorso, The Wind You Say: An Italian in Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1993); R. A. Baggio, The Shoe in My Cheese: An Immigrant Family Experience (Melbourne: R. A. Baggio, 1989); Bosi,
35 are frequently used in various historical, sociological and literary studies of Italian experiences in Australia, which often elevates Bonutto and Ciccotosto to the problematic role of spokesperson. Their experiences are marked by their divergent generational, gender and class statuses; a comparison of their work yields rich and interesting results. It is for these reasons that these narratives have been selected for an exploration of the possibilities of reading migrant autobiographies as ethnic bildungsromane. In the context of assimilation policies prevalent at the time recalled in both Bonutto’s and Ciccotosto’s accounts, the migrant’s official quest was to assimilate culturally and linguistically to Anglo Australian life. This chapter argues that, paradoxically, the protagonists must fail this quest in order to ensure the future of Italian Australian identities and communities. That is, while the dominant political rhetoric of the time demanded that they assimilate to Anglo Australian culture, the Italian Australian developmental trajectory requires them to foster Italian cultural traditions and identities in Australia for both themselves and their children. The two narratives demonstrate complementary approaches to this quest: while Bonutto engages fervently with the concept of assimilation, Ciccotosto appears almost ambivalent, or even unconscious of the pressure to assimilate, and instead presents a narrative of gradual change, adaptation and cultural negotiation. Essential to both these narratives is the question – like child to adult, migrant to citizen? Raised and contested within these narratives is the notion of citizenship as civic maturation, explored through the protagonists’ experiences of internment during World War II. Perspectives on identity and cultural maintenance in the relationships between the first and second generations also come into question. In order to explore these narratives further, it is necessary to outline briefly the socio-historical context of Italian migration to Australia, and the relationship between assimilation, identity formation and development in reading migrant autobiographies as ethnic bildungsromane.
Farewell Australia; C. Caruso, Under Another Sun, trans. Gaetano Rando (Italy: Congedo Editore, 1999); A. Strano, Luck without Joy : A Portrayal of a Migrant (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1986). There are also several first generation writers, poets and playwrights who unfortunately cannot be included in this study due to the limitations of language, genre, medium and form specified in Chapter 1. See, for example, the works of poet Enoe Di Stefano, writer and journalist Gino Nibbi and playwright Nino Randazzo: E. Di Stefano, L'avventura Australiana : Vivere Il Mondo Con Fede Tenace (Camposampiero: Edizioni del Noce, 1996); L'itinerario (Sydney: 1997); G. Nibbi, Cocktails D'australia (Milan: Martello, 1965); N. Randazzo, Victoria Market: (Genesis of a Myth): An Italo-Australian Drama in 3 Acts, trans. Colin McCormick (Carlton: Co.As.It, 1992).
36 A brief history of Italian Australian migration, late 1800s-1975 It is most useful to consider Italian migration to Australia in its three significant waves – the late 1800s, the 1920s to 1930s, and postwar mass migration. These waves also represent the three stages in the development of Italian Australian settlement, community and identity.6 Pascoe describes each of these three phases as the “scouts” (late 1800s- 1914), the “farmers” (1920s-1930s) and the “builders” (1946-1975).7 While Bonutto and Ciccotosto migrated during the second wave of Italian migration to Australia, in 1924 and 1939 respectively, their narratives were written during and after the third, postwar era of mass migration and the advent of Australian multiculturalism. Ciccotosto also describes the arrival of several of her family members, whose migrations belong also to the postwar era. Consequently, their narrative perspectives are marked by retrospect and comparison – of their views now and their feelings then, and their experiences in Australia during and after the war as compared to the experiences of those who came later. The ‘scouts’ of the first wave were predominantly male, migrating as individuals or in small groups, and were highly mobile and transient.8 A number of Italians came to Australia for the goldrushes and subsequently settled; the Swiss-Italian community near the goldfields at Daylesford, Victoria, is an example of such settlement.9 There were also a large number of exiles, expatriates and liberal and republican refugees, many of whom belonged to the middle- and upper- classes of Italian society.10 In place at the time was the Immigration Restriction Act (1901), also known as the White Australia Policy. This policy was designed to cultivate an Australian population of British racial and cultural origins (as imagined at the time), exclude Asian migrants and deal with the apparent problem of Pacific Islanders working the cane fields.11 The Italian government encouraged emigration during this period in order to alleviate poverty, but although Italians were equipped with a European language (needed to pass the dictation test required for migration into Australia) many illiterates were turned away.12
6 Pascoe, "Place and Community," pp. 86-87. 7 Ibid., p. 87. 8 Ibid., p. 88. 9 C. Alcorso, "Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788-1939," Ibid., p. 5; Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, pp. 34-38. 10 Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, p. 38. 11 Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 89. For a recent study of the history of the White Australia Policy, see G. Tavan, The Long, Slow Death of White Australia (Melbourne: Scribe, 2005). 12 Cecilia, We Didn't Arrive Yesterday, pp. 74-75; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 90.
37 The second wave of Italian migration to Australia, referred to by Pascoe as the ‘farmers’, worked as canecutters, labourers and farmers, and favoured rural settlements. Patterns of chain migration became more prevalent during this stage, resulting in more permanent settlements, larger communities and marginally more female migrants than the first stage. These women, however, were mainly wives and daughters joining husbands and fathers who had been settled in Australia for a number of years. Images of southern Europeans such as Italians and Greeks during this period were heavily stereotyped, racialised and subject to much negative press, ranging from their eating habits, to their hygiene, to accusations that they were taking jobs from Anglo-Celtic Australians. In response to a campaign by the Australian Workers’ Union against ‘excessive’ Italian migration into the sugar cane districts during the 1920s, for example, the Queensland government in 1925 commissioned a report on ‘alien immigration’ in Queensland known as the Ferry Report. In its analysis of the social and economic effects of Southern European migrants in the sugar cane regions, the report goes beyond the usual level of national differentiation between Italians, Greeks, Maltese and Spanish by dividing the Italians into the desirable Northerners and the undesirable Southerners. Ferry writes: the population of Italy is divided into two distinct groups – the Northern and the Southern Italians. The latter are shorter in stature and more swarthy. … The general opinion is that the Northern Italian is a very desirable class of immigrant. He is thrifty and industrious, law abiding, and honest in his business transactions. … The Southern Italian is more inclined to form groups and less likely to be assimilated into the population of the state.13 Whilst Northern Italians were seen only as the lesser evil in the Australian context, Gloria La Cava reports that the Northern Italian in Latin America symbolised the ideal labourer: “hard working, culturally superior to the local labourer and, above all, white.”14 In the Latin American context, Southern Italians were still considered dark or ‘black’ and were therefore excluded. Vanda Moraes-Gorecki, examining the experiences of Italian sugar cane workers in north Queensland, argues that this racialisation functioned to culturally exclude Italian workers whilst exploiting their labour power, and found that it diminished
13 Quoted in G. Cresciani, Migrants or Mates: Italian Life in Australia (Sydney: Knockmore Enterprises, 1988), p. 79-80. 14 G. La Cava, Italians in Brazil: The Post-World War II Experience (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), p. 7.
38 with the mechanisation of agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s.15 More recently, Helen Andreoni has explored Italian Australians’ identification as ‘olive’ as a form of resistance against racism and assimilation.16 The interwar period saw the development of fascism in both Italy and Australia. Randazzo and Cigler argue that fascism was not introduced into Australia by Italian migrants, but by Australian army officers.17 The Italian community was divided on the matter, and there existed both pro- and anti-Fascist groups.18 Italy’s declaration of war against the Allies in 1940 heightened anti-Italian rhetoric in Australian policy and media and resulted in the restriction of the activities of Italian Australians, particularly in Queensland, and the internment of Italian Australians defined as ‘enemy aliens’ and security risks.19 Over 18, 000 Italian prisoners of war were also sent to Australia between 1941 and 1947 and used to replace the manpower on the land that had been siphoned into the war effort.20 Despite their restricted freedoms, Italian POWs were treated reasonably well by the Australian farmers for whom they worked, and many actually returned to Australia as migrants after the war.21 This third postwar wave – the ‘builders’ – was the largest and the most significant, Pascoe argues, as it cemented Italian Australian place, community and identity.22
15 V. Moraes-Gorecki, "'Black Italians' in the Sugar Fields of North Queensland: A Reflection on Labour Inclusion and Cultural Exclusion in Tropical Australia," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 5, no. 3 (1994): p. 316. 16 H. Andreoni, "Olive or White?: The Colour of Italians in Australia," Journal of Australian Studies 77 (1997): p. 81. For a comparative discussion about Italian migrants, their descendents and ‘colour’ in the Italian American context, see J. Guglielmo and S. Salerno, eds., Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America (New York: Routledge, 2003). See also D. A. J. Richards, Italian American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1999); R. Romano, "Coming out Olive in the Lesbian Community: Big Sister Is Watching You," in Social Pluralism and Literary History: Literature of the Italian Emigration, ed. Francesco Loriggio (Toronto: Guernica, 1996). 17 Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 116. 18 Ibid., p. 117. For an in-depth study of fascism and Italians in Australia, see Cresciani, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945. 19 Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 139. For further detail on the impact of internment in Queensland, see Dignan, "The Internment of Italians in Queensland." 20 Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp. 139-40. See also Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, p. 143-46. 21 See R. Ugolini, "From Pow to Emigrant: The Post-War Migrant Experience," in War, Internment and Mass Migration : The Italo-Australian Experience, 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992). 22 Pascoe, "Place and Community," p. 90.
39 The prewar years had seen Italians concentrated in mining and agriculture. The postwar migrants, notes Pascoe, “did not take up the land, but led a highly urbanised lifestyle,” mostly due to a campaign against an influx of migrant farmers led by the Country Party, who believed that such an influx would “destroy the whole economic structure of rural industry.”23 Economically speaking, the Italian Australian population experienced a postwar boom of their own as many hardworking migrants made their mark on various industries, such as construction, wine-making, and the running of cafés, restaurants and produce shops. Female migration was more common, although this was still often linked to the process of chain migration. Italian migration to Australia had dwindled by the mid-1970s, by which time there existed in Australia a significant Italian Australian population comprised of Italian- born migrants and their Australian-born children and grandchildren. The concept of multiculturalism was introduced into Australian public policy in the early 1970s in recognition of the culturally diverse makeup of the Australian population, replacing previous concepts of cultural assimilation and integration.24 The rhetoric of assimilation, active in public policy and discourse throughout most of the twentieth century, had required “‘New Australians’ … to speak English, behave like [Anglo] Australians, and to be absorbed into the population.”25
23 Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, p. 149. Randazzo and Cigler, however, report that according to the 1974 census 51.6 per cent of the Italian-born population resided in rural areas. See Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 149. There are several studies looking at specific and significant settlements of Italians in various parts of rural Australia. See Davine, "Vegnimo Da Conco Ma Simo Veneti : A Study of the Immigration and Settlement of the Veneti in Central and West Gippsland" (Thesis); Huber, From Pasta to Pavlova; J. Templeton, From the Mountains to the Bush: Italian Migrants Write Home from Australia, 1860-1962, ed. John Lack and Gioconda Di Lorenzo (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2003). 24 For more on the evolution of Australian multicultural policy and its relation to immigration, see G. Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Sydney: Pluto, 1998); Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society (Annandale: Pluto Press, 2003); J. Jupp, Immigration, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998); J. Lack and J. Templeton, Bold Experiment: A Documentary History of Australian Immigration since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); M. Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000). 25 Castles, "Italian Migration and Settlement since 1945," p. 52.
40 Assimilate or flourish: reading migrant autobiographies as ethnic bildungsromane Within the context of the traditional Bildungsroman, ‘assimilation’ (into the adult order) implies that the protagonist eventually conforms to social expectations through an acceptance and understanding of his/her place in society, following the period of education and its attendant feelings of social dislocation. In the context of the ethnic bildungsroman, however, the implications of such a process become highly problematic and necessitate the question: does assimilation signify the culmination of the migrant’s quest or its disintegration?
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, investigating the bildungsroman as implemented in autobiographies by women and other minority groups, including migrants, argue: “[t]he Bildungsroman can be used negatively as a norm of assimilation into the dominant culture that is unattainable and must be relinquished, or that produces alienation from the home community.”26 In their understanding, the migrant protagonists must either fail to assimilate or, in successfully assimilating, alienate themselves from their ethnic community and background. Assimilation is therefore, as Sollors states, “the foe of ethnicity.”27 In the ethnic bildungsroman and developmental trajectory of an ethnic identity, the migrant protagonist must therefore fail the quest of assimilation set out by the dominant host culture in order to succeed in their ethnic quest of cultural maintenance and to assist the ethnic identity formation of their children, if not his/her own ethnic identity.
It is in this paradox that the differences between the traditional Bildungsroman and the ethnic bildungsroman become most clear. The traditional Bildungsroman emphasises the male protagonist’s development into (or assimilation as) a responsible citizen within the dominant society, which is in fact already his own society. The ethnic bildungsroman, on the other hand, is about the protagonist’s negotiations at the margins of the dominant society, and charts the ethnic identity formation that is the result of these negotiations.
Osvaldo Bonutto: A Migrant’s Story (1963) The exploration of Bonutto’s autobiography as ethnic bildungsroman, and as belonging to the first stage in the development of Italian Australian identities, involves three main themes: assimilation, citizenship and ethnic heritage. Bonutto’s experiences of internment
26 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, pp. 189-90. 27 Sollors, "Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity," p. xiv.
41 provide the crisis point in this narrative about the formation of his New Australian identity and citizenship. Bonutto’s fervent belief in assimilation is used to testify to his own successful assimilation, and therefore qualify his claim to Australianness. His complex understandings of citizenship and ethnicity, however, allow him to claim Italian and Australian identities. Bonutto is therefore able to succeed in the quest of the ethnic bildungsroman by maintaining an Italian cultural identity and an Australian civic identity. While women are largely absent from Bonutto’s narrative, he assigns them important duties in the processes of assimilation related to their roles as wives and mothers, but undermines or ignores the possibility of women’s civic identities. Bonutto’s differentiation of citizenship from ethnicity is further explored in his consideration of the second generation, who he believes to be unproblematically Australian. This assumption has a significant effect on the notion of an Italian Australian trajectory of identity. Osvaldo Bonutto was born in 1903 in Spilimbergo, in the province of Udine, of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, which is located in north eastern Italy and is bordered by Austria and the former Yugoslavia.28 Unable to attend high school, he was educated by correspondence by a priest and a schoolteacher cousin, and learned English prior to migration. Following his two years’ compulsory military service, Bonutto faced the same bleak employment prospects as the many others in post-World War I Italy, but was fortunate enough to find a temporary job as a clerk in the local shire office, where he had been employed prior to his stint in the army. Given the socio-economic climate, Bonutto gave serious consideration to the prospect of migration to Canada, New Zealand or Australia.29 He finally set out for Australia on the SS Orvieto in Naples in 1924 after
28 This biographical information has been taken from A Migrant’s Story. 29 That Bonutto did not consider the United States of America as a possible destination is likely due to the immigration restrictions in place in the US at the time. Whilst the US saw the peak of its Italian immigration between 1900 and 1914, immigration to Australia, Canada and South America increased significantly between the two World Wars and reached its peak post-World War II. Donna R. Gabaccia reports that only 1 per cent of Italian migrants settled in Australia between 1916 and 1945, increasing to 5 per cent between 1946 and 1975. Italian migration to North America in these periods was 25 and 13 per cent respectively. See Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, p. 4. Regarding patterns in Italian migration to the US, see P. diFranco, The Italian American Experience (New York: Tor, 1988), p. 86; J. Mangione and B. Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), p. 340.; for an example of migration to South America, see La Cava, Italians in Brazil., which also devotes its lengthy first chapter to a discussion of patterns in Brazilian migration prior to World War II; for Canada, see N. D. Harney, Eh, Paesan! Being Italian in Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 21. In reference to Australia, see Alcorso, "Early
42 receiving a favourable response to his request for sponsorship from a friend of his brother who was living in Lithgow, NSW.30 Arriving in Sydney on Christmas Eve, 1924, Bonutto lived most of his life in the various regions of Queensland, working as a woodcutter, cane cutter, tobacco farmer, hotel keeper, newsagent, storekeeper (and interpreter), and salesperson. Bonutto became an Australian citizen in 1932 and married Egle Piccini in 1936. He and his wife had two children, a daughter and a son. He was also present on various committees and boards, including the Tobacco Board established by the Queensland Government in 1936. He was also the founding president of both Fogolar Furlan (a regional association) and the Italo-Australian Centre in Brisbane. Bonutto was interned twice during World War II, once at Gaythorne Internment Camp in Brisbane and next at Loveday in South Australia. He was released in 1943 and settled in Brisbane after his retirement in 1963. A Migrant’s Story was republished in 1994 by Bonutto with the assistance of his daughter, Elisa, but several portions of the text were removed in an attempt to “bring it in line with present day attitudes.”31 In this second edition the original thirteen chapters were reduced to seven chapters. These excised portions include the original dedication and preface, the second chapter, in which Bonutto gives a brief history of migration and frankly discusses his views on the topic, and his epilogue, wherein he lays out the behaviour necessary for one to be a ‘good’ New Australian. Both editions have been consulted for the purpose of this thesis but the critical focus will remain upon the original edition, with particular consideration of what has been removed from the later edition and possible reasons for this. Bonutto’s decision to edit or, arguably, censor his original text, as well as what he chose to remove, is indicative of the changes that occurred for Bonutto and Australia over the thirty years between editions.
Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788-1939," pp. 6-17; Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, p. 24, 51-52, 73-78; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp. 89-90. 30 The Italian government encouraged emigration after World War I to alleviate its increase in poor. Cresciani’s history of Italian migration to Australia is most useful for gaining an understanding of the contexts in both Italy and Australia that led to Italian mass migration. Cresciani also places this within the context of the Italian diaspora as a whole, as does Gabaccia in her exploration of Italian diaspora, which she argues have been multiple. See Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, pp. 1-24; Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, pp. 35-80. See also Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 90. 31 O. Bonutto and E. Bonutto, "Acknowledgments," in A Migrant's Story: The Struggle and Success of an Italian- Australian, 1920s-1960s (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1994), p. xi.
43 In his foreword to the 1994 edition of A Migrant’s Story, Don Dignan argues that Bonutto’s autobiographical reflections encapsulate the ethos of a whole generation of Italo-Queenslanders who philosophically, if often sadly, responded to the escalating racism of Australia’s inter-war years, and to the fierce assimilationism that prevailed in its ethnic policies and public attitudes long after the 1960s by Anglicising their own given names, by allowing, or even encouraging, their children to become monolingually Anglophone, and in most ways reaching out towards some uniform identity.32 Such a view glosses over some of the more problematic and nuanced aspects of Bonutto’s complicity with assimilation rhetoric that are shaped by his differentiation between citizenship and ethnicity. Throughout the narrative, Bonutto emphasises the importance of Australian citizenship and assimilation to Anglo Australian culture but maintains a differentiation between citizenship and ethnicity that, I argue, allows him to lay claim to his civic identity as Australian while also proudly believing his national identity to be Italian. Bonutto constructs citizenship as white, male and based upon public civic responsibility. His conception of ethnicity, on the other hand, is constructed as more cultural but is predicated upon the location of one’s own birth, rather than that of one’s forebears. As defined at the beginning of this chapter, assimilation requires the migrant to conform to the language and culture of the host society. Bonutto takes to the task of assimilation with great enthusiasm, emphasising throughout the narrative his willingness to adapt to his new social, cultural and physical environment, and promoting assimilation as a significant and mutually beneficial contribution to be made by migrants to Australia. While Antonio Casella, in a review of the 1994 edition of A Migrant’s Story, makes the tongue-in- cheek observation that Bonutto’s stint as a publican is in itself “surely a gesture of assimilation with the dominant Anglo-Aussie community,”33 I argue that the autobiographical act is Bonutto’s testimony to his assimilation. His use of words such as “dinkum” and “slackers,”34 as well as a passage where he thanks “kind-hearted Aussies” as “mates,”35 to name but a few examples, all serve as linguistic evidence of Bonutto’s successful assimilation to Australian culture and society.
32 D. Dignan, "Foreword," Ibid. (St Lucia), pp. vii-viii. 33 A. Casella, review of Osvaldo Bonutto's A Migrant's Story, Westerly 4, no. Summer (1994): p. 147. 34 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 139. 35 Ibid., p. 138.
44 Bonutto was actively involved in the Italian communities of Queensland, and was the founding president of two Italian Australian clubs, Fogolar Furlan and the Italo- Australian Centre in Brisbane. Caroline Alcorso, Cesare Giulio Popoli and Gaetano Rando argue that Italians “established secular associations [for] mutual support and assistance in Australia.”36 It is thus evident that he does not see ethnic organisations as acts of segregation, but as community networks necessary for the successful settlement of migrant populations. Indeed, Bonutto construes his involvement in the Italian Australian community as part of his civic duty as an Australian citizen of Italian origin, positing himself as a suitable role model of assimilated Australianness and as a suitable spokesperson or intermediary for the Italian community within Australia. Italian clubs and associations are also one of the means through which Italians in Australia maintain their cultural traditions.37 Through his involvement with Italian Australian communities, Bonutto actually helps to maintain traditional Italian ways whilst advocating and staking claim to assimilation to Australian ways. What Bonutto opposes is not cultural maintenance or ethnic community per se, but ethnic exclusivity and segregation from dominant mainstream society, which he interprets as a refusal to assimilate or adapt to the host society. In such criticisms, Bonutto fails to acknowledge the host society’s responsibility to help facilitate the desired processes of assimilation. As Castles observes, “[i]nstitutional barriers often kept migrants in low- paid jobs, while welfare services were sometimes inaccessible to migrants and did not meet their special needs. Not only closeness to the factory, but also experiences of racism in Anglo-Australian neighbourhoods, caused migrants to cluster together.”38 This failure to recognise common experiences of racism and xenophobia is, I argue, part of Bonutto’s desire to prove both his assimilation and his loyalty to Australian society. Bonutto’s experiences of internment, referred to in his 1963 epilogue as his “Calvary,”39 are central to his construction of his Australian identity. He devotes a lengthy chapter of his autobiography to his internment and its effects in the years that ensued, which remains relatively untouched in the second edition. He also refers to his internment substantially in his original preface and epilogue. Rando observes that Bonutto does not
36 Alcorso, Popoli, and Rando, "Community Networks and Institutions," p. 112. 37 Ibid., p. 113. See also Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 201-07; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp. 170-71. 38 Castles, "Italian Migration and Settlement since 1945," p. 52. 39 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 138.
45 appear particularly bitter about his internment and questions whether this was not due to his pandering to “authorities;”40 that is, Bonutto’s lack of bitterness may be part of his desire to project himself as a successfully assimilated and loyal Australian citizen. Certainly, Bonutto’s objection does not appear to be to the internment policy itself when used to target actual, as opposed to perceived, security threats. Rather, he objects to its seemingly indiscriminate targeting of prominent members of specific migrant groups, the conditions of the camps, the way in which the internees were often treated, and the policy’s disregard of internees’ naturalised status (that is, that they had attained citizenship). However, I agree with Rando’s view that there is a distinct lack of bitterness in Bonutto’s narrative regarding his own experiences of internment. Instead, Bonutto constructs his experiences of internment as a test of his loyalty to Australia, which he ultimately passes with flying colours. Internment is an important experience in the history of Italians in Australia, particularly in the articulation of place and identity, and its effects on the role of the migrant as Australian citizen. Gianfranco Cresciani argues that Australian paranoia regarding the imagined threat of Italian fascism, which resulted in the internment of Italian Australians, and the employment of Italian POWs in Australian rural industry during World War II “compelled Australians … to take stock of Italians as a serious community … the beginning of a process whereby attitudes changed at the periphery of established core Australian values.”41 The number of Italians interned during World War II totalled 4727, which was 10 per cent of the total Italian population in Australia at the time and more than half the total number of enemy aliens from various origins interned.42
40 Rando, "From Great Works to Alcheringa," p. 55. 41 Cresciani, "The Bogey of the Italian Fifth Column," p. 30. 42 Alcorso and Alcorso, "Italians in Australia During World War II," p. 19. Randazzo and Cigler also report 18 432 Italian prisoners of war sent to Australia between 1941 and 1947. Those POWs who were officers were sent to camps, where the conditions were reportedly better than those in the enemy alien camps, whilst the remaining POWs, mainly draftees and conscripts with little political investment in the war, were sent to farms to replace the manpower that had been siphoned into the war effort. Many of these POWs established amicable relationships with their employers and the surrounding communities, and many migrated back to Australia after they were deported at the end of the war. Although there are no full-length biographies or autobiographies of former Italian POWs, Bill Bunbury and Morag Loh provide shorter examples through oral history and interviews. See Bunbury, Rabbits and Spaghetti, pp. 50-89; Cresciani, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945, pp. 181-83; The Italians in Australia, pp. 108-16; Loh, ed., With Courage in Their Cases, pp. 26-31; Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 143-46; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp.
46 Approximately 20 per cent of Italian migrants interned were Australian citizens either by naturalisation or birth.43 The war and internment had the effect of highlighting Italians as a significant social, political and economic group in Australia, as well as making Italians consider themselves within the broader context of Australian society, beyond their immediate communities. Bonutto was interned twice: once, early on the morning that Italy entered the war (10 June, 1940), and again, six months after his initial release. He was finally released in 1943, and it was later revealed that Bonutto was the victim of a conspiracy wherein he and other prominent and successful Italian migrants were targeted by “embittered Australian veterans from the First World War.”44 When a local police officer and several federal detectives came to his farm on the morning of his first arrest, Bonutto joked, “I have just heard the bad news over the wireless, and I hope you don’t hold me responsible for it.”45 This first arrest was based upon accusations of his having spoken and written in defence of Italy, of sending money to Italy during the fascist regime, and suspicion of conspiring with his bank manager, who was also under investigation because of his German background.46 While the last accusation again contributed to his second arrest, Bonutto dismissed the second accusation on proof that the money he had sent to Italy had been solely for the benefit of his aging mother. To the first account, he replied: I plead guilty to [behaving as a proud Italian], sir … I am just as proud of my ancestry as you are of yours. Can you give me a plausible reason why I should not be? However, if by this charge you infer that a good, proud Italian cannot possibly make a good, proud Australian, I maintain that only a good Italian can make a good Australian providing he is rightly treated and given the same rights and privileges as other Australians. A man who hasn’t got the guts to admit openly that he loves his mother-country will never be able to love his
139-40. See also Maurice Murphy’s autobiographical film about growing up with Italian POWs working on his mother’s farm, M. Murphy, 15 Amore, (Australia: Magna Pacific, 2004). 43 Martinuzzi O'Brien, "The Internment of Australian Born and Naturalised British Subjects of Italian Origin," p. 92. 44 D. Dignan, "Foreword," in A Migrant's Story: The Struggle and Success of an Italian-Australian, 1920s-1960s (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994), p. ix. See also N. J. Byrne, "The Wartime Treatment of Italians in South Queensland," in A Migrant's Story: The Struggle and Success of an Italian-Australian, 1920s-1960s (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994), p. 97. 45 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 92. 46 Ibid., pp. 96-98.
47 country of adoption. Compared with Australia, Italy has given me nothing, yet I love her all the same, in the same way as a poor son loves his poor mother. It is not the good, proud Italian you have to fear … but the bad one. A bad Italian will never make a good Australian, but a good Italian will.47 As argued previously, Bonutto’s understandings of citizenship and ethnicity allow him to construct Italian and Australian identities that are not mutually exclusive. In this passage, Bonutto defines himself as both Italian and Australian; his capacity for love of his nation as an Italian helps him to be a good Australian, but ethnic identification does not impact upon his sense of civic duty and loyalty. A Migrant’s Story concludes with advice to Italian migrants to Australia. In this passage, he encourages national pride, respect, loyalty and, above all, rapid assimilation into Australian society: ‘By trying to quickly merge into the general pattern of Australian Nationhood we will shorten the not too happy transitional period as “foreigners” to that of fully-fledged Australian Citizens, with consequent beneficial results to both ourselves and our new Country. ‘I am sure the overwhelming majority of Australian people will gladly help us in this very important task and they will like us all the more if we really make a serious effort to become “Dinkum” Australians in the shortest possible time. ‘I know that thousands and thousands of Italians have or are doing this but there are some who are too slow in getting “Australianized”. ‘My appeal goes to these unconcerned “slackers” who are doing a disservice to the migrants’ cause.’48 Most importantly, his differentiation between “Australian Citizens” and “Australian people” indicates his differentiation between citizenship and ethnicity; that is, Australian citizens are made through the transitional period wherein they are seen as foreigners, while Australian people are born. As Bonutto was born in Italy, he cannot shed his Italian ethnicity
47 Ibid., pp. 96-97. Bonutto’s example of ‘bad’ Italians in Australia appears later in an incident describing the presence of the Black Hand in Gympie. He qualifies an incident regarding the presence of the Black Hand in Gympie described in a preceding chapter as proof “that there is still a minority in Australia who are doing a disservice to the process of integration and assimilation”, (p, 138). 48 Ibid., p. 139. As noted previously, the epilogue was removed from the 1994 edition.
48 but he can become an Australian citizen and, through his citizenship, lay claim to an Australian identity based upon civic responsibility. Bonutto’s constructions of Australian citizenship and identity are gendered male. Whenever Bonutto speaks of ‘migrants’, he is speaking of men. Adele Murdolo observes that postwar sociological studies tended to use migrant men as a normalised reference point: “‘the migrant’ remains sexless, and necessarily male. In this formulation, ‘migrant women’ are rendered either dependent, deviant or absent. If women escaped absence, they are always women, not migrants.”49 Italian migrant women, however, have played important productive and reproductive roles as workers, wives and mothers. Vasta argues that they are the cultural custodians of the Italian community, responsible for language and cultural maintenance.50 Yet in many regards A Migrant’s Story is a narrative about men, their public lives and the loss of cultural traditions through assimilation.51 As various feminist scholars, such as Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis argue, women reproduce nations, ethnicities and communities biologically, culturally and symbolically, yet most theorisations of nations and nationalisms ignore gender relations as irrelevant, except in issues of national production or reproduction.52 Women in Bonutto’s narrative are defined primarily by their reproductive roles and are implicitly excluded from his discussions of citizenship. Bonutto stresses the importance of inter-ethnic marriage and reproduction in the processes of assimilation. Children also figure significantly in these assimilation processes and in Bonutto’s understanding of Australian identity formation, representing the future of Australia as a nation rather than the future of Italian Australian communities and identities.
49 A. Murdolo, "Contesting Feminist Spaces: Immigrant and Refugee Women Write History" (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1999), p. 98. 50 Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," p. 152. Gucciardo and Romanin also found that Italian migrant women viewed themselves as “carers and educators … teachers of moral values and traditions.” See Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife," p. 31. 51 Murdolo argues that “the public sphere, inhabited by men and children, was the space where the desirable process of assimilation would take place. The private sphere, where culture was transmitted to hinder the process of assimilation, was the space of migrant women.” Murdolo, "Contesting Feminist Spaces" (Thesis), p. 102. 52 N. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: SAGE Publications, 1997), pp. 2-3. See also F. Anthias and N. Yuval-Davis, "Contextualizing Feminism - Gender, Ethnic and Class Divisions," Feminist Review 15, no. November (1983): p. 70; S. Ranchod-Nilsson and M. A. Tétreault, "Gender and Nationalism: Moving Beyond Fragmented Conversations," in Women, States and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation?, ed. Sita Ranchod-Nilsson and Mary Ann Tétreault (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1-7.
49 Donna R. Gabaccia states: “When women left Italy … it reflected a decision to settle more permanently abroad; women’s migration facilitated reproduction in a new homeland, and signalled the beginnings of permanent incorporation in new nations.”53 Bonutto couches independent female migration in terms of its benefits to the national project of assimilation and building a racially homogenous nation through intermarriage between ethnic groups.54 He suggests that if women were to migrate independently of their families or fellow community members, they might be more likely to marry Anglo Australian or Australian-born men, which might in turn encourage male migrants to marry Australian women.55 Vasta cites Italian migrants’ experiences of racism as amongst the reasons for the low rate of intermarriage between Italians and Anglo Australians.56 Bonutto, on the other hand, attributes lower rates of intermarriage to reluctance and shyness, and concludes that the “percentage of unsuccessful marriages contracted by parties belonging to two different ethnical groups would be no greater than those where the two parties belong to the same nationality.”57 His failure to consider the possible impediments to intermarriage of racism, xenophobia, language and cultural differences is indicative of his fervent belief that it is a migrant’s duty to assimilate linguistically and culturally. Bonutto further disregards the difficulties faced by many migrant women who had insufficient opportunities to learn English as they were, for example, uneducated, isolated at home or working in factories with other women who spoke their own language.58 Thus confined by language and social environment, courtship and marriage were more easily negotiated within their own ethnic community.59 Bonutto also suggests that greater concentration on encouraging independent female migration would also solve the “distressing problem” of proxy marriage.60 Throughout both the pre- and post-war waves of Italian migration to Australia, there existed a significant gender imbalance amongst Italian migrants that greatly affected Italian
53 Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, p. 8. 54 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 11. 55 Ibid. 56 Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," p. 143. 57 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 11. 58 Vasta has found that Italian migrant women experience many forms of institutional racism, including the inadequate supply of services such as English-language classes, which in turn disadvantages them in dealing with bureaucratic processes and inter-cultural social situations. See Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," p. 153. 59 Ibid., p. 144. 60 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 11.
50 Australian marriage patterns.61 Single migrant men faced the same cultural and linguistic barriers to intermarriage as women, and were also perceived as sexual and moral threats to society, particularly to the respectability of Australian women.62 “Their loneliness and their lack of family ties and family love have led them to commit acts which they would not normally dream of doing,” observes Bonutto.63 In addition to this, many men also preferred to marry a woman from their own village or region. Not incidentally, proxy marriage and intra-ethnic marriage in general played important roles in the maintenance of Italian culture and ethnic identity in Australia. Susanna Iuliano argues that proxy brides fulfilled several important functions: they helped fulfil the goals of postwar immigration policy, as marriage settled migrant men, protected Australian women and produced Australian-born children, and these marriages helped to foster Italian ethnic identity and community in Australia, particularly through the selection of partners from nearby regions in Italy.64 Bonutto views proxy marriage as a problem primarily because of the various difficulties possibly faced in marrying a virtual stranger. He also argues that proxy marriages discourage intermarriage. Both proxy marriage and intra-ethnic marriage, therefore, were potential impediments to the processes of assimilation. Interestingly, Bonutto’s own wife, Egle Piccini, was from his own province of Udine and had only recently migrated from Italy with her mother, two brothers and two sisters when she and Bonutto married in 1936.65 Bonutto describes his marriage with little fanfare or romance, but does proudly mention his wife in later anecdotes that illustrate her assimilability, such as her quick grasp of the English language and her fair appearance;66 Egle’s fair appearance challenged their hotel clientele’s expectations of a stereotypical short, dark and round Italian signora.67 As Bonutto does not marry an Australian or a migrant of a different ethnicity, he is careful to establish that his wife is as committed to Australia as
61 Bella Wardrop, By Proxy, p. 1, 6; Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," p. 144. See also Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife," p. 23. 62 Iuliano, "Donne E Buoi Dai Paesi Tuoi," pp. 326-27; Vasta, "Italian Migrant Women," p. 144. 63 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 10. 64 Iuliano, "Donne E Buoi Dai Paesi Tuoi," p. 320, 22-24. 65 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 83; O. Bonutto and E. Bonutto, A Migrant's Story: The Struggle and Success of an Italian-Australian, 1920s-1960s (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1994), p. 41. 66 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 84; Bonutto and Bonutto, A Migrant's Story: The Struggle and Success of an Italian- Australian, 1920s-1960s, p. 42. 67 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, pp. 87-88; Bonutto and Bonutto, A Migrant's Story: The Struggle and Success of an Italian-Australian, 1920s-1960s, pp. 46-47.
51 he is himself, but does not at any point refer to her as an Australian citizen or mention whether she had become naturalised. Significantly, Egle’s own experiences and sentiments hardly feature at all in Bonutto’s narrative. She and their daughter, Elisa, are mentioned several times in Bonutto’s account of his internment, but largely in reference to where they were staying at the time of significant events in his narrative. Egle was not entirely inactive, however, as she evidently dealt with their finances and their businesses in her husband’s absence.68 Bonutto does not report in detail on the effects of his internment on his family, largely because he and Egle had not, at the time of writing his autobiography in 1963, told their son and daughter of his experiences “so as not to poison their minds against their native country.”69 His sole indication of Egle’s reaction to his internment – and, by implication, her views on national identity and loyalty – occurs anecdotally. During Bonutto’s second internment, Egle was approached on the street in Inglewood by a police officer who informed her of the recent arrest of two Italian women in Texas, whose husbands were also internees, and warned that she would likely be next. Egle replied: Nothing surprises me anymore after what has happened to my husband. Moreover, I think wives should join their husbands in the internment camps. Life would be more tolerable together, and the problem of maintenance at least would be solved since wives of internees are not eligible for any Government assistance or other social benefits. It would, therefore, be more fitting and human to have the whole family interned. Besides, if a husband is considered a danger to this country, how can you expect his wife to be loyal?70 Egle’s speech – as reported via Bonutto – implies that wives are loyal to the nation via their loyalty to their husbands. Bonutto does not at any point describe Egle or any other female migrants as Australian, or as New Australians; while women play important roles in nation- building as wives and mothers, I argue, they are not included in Bonutto’s conception of Australian citizenship and identity. Interestingly, studies about Italian migrant women rarely discuss rates of naturalisation or other questions pertaining to citizenship, focusing
68 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, pp. 94-95. In the first instance, Egle defers to her husband when their chequing account is closed, and in the second she reports to him regarding non-payment from the licensee of their hotel in Texas, Queensland. Egle also frequently visited her family in Inglewood and Warwick accompanied only by her daughter, indicating a degree of independence but also of independence that is bound to family duty. 69 Ibid., p. 113. 70 Ibid., p. 110.
52 primarily on the year of migration, length of residence in Australia, education and occupation.71 Vasta, in her study of southern Italians settled in Brisbane, does question her participants on citizenship but does not include the rates of naturalisation according to gender.72 The more nuanced responses regarding citizenship included in her study were primarily from male participants. The single reference to the specific relationship of women to citizenship – a woman whose husband would not allow her to take out Australian citizenship – further evidences the tension between women, their husbands and families, citizenship and ethnicity. That Bonutto conceives of Australian identity and citizenship as primarily male realms is further evidenced in his discussion of his children. Collectively, his children are referred to as “Australian-born” but in his epilogue Bonutto refers specifically to his son as his successor as a “loyal, respected Australian citizen” in the community or, perhaps more accurately, in the public sphere.73 His daughter is not mentioned in this light. As seen above, Bonutto does not tell his children about his experiences of internment prior to 1963, by which time they had both reached adulthood, as he and Egle wanted them to “grow up into good, loyal, proud Australians.”74 Tonina Gucciardo argues that traditional Italian gender codes have been maintained into the second generation: it is important that men are able to cater for their families both socially and economically, while women are expected to adhere to the roles of the good wife and respectful daughter.75 The seemingly slight distinction between “Australian citizen” to refer to his son and “Australians” to refer to both his children perhaps indicates the difference in Bonutto’s conceptions of citizenship and ethnicity as related to traditional Italian gender codes. Citizenship is portrayed in Bonutto’s narrative as a public and therefore male realm, connoting civic and political participation, responsibility and loyalty. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is attained
71 See, for example, Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife," pp. 11-22. In response to questions regarding how they perceive themselves and how they describe themselves, the women in this study focussed primarily on personal attributes and family roles. Gucciardo and Romanin do not question the women about citizenship, nor do they comment on its absence from the women’s responses. 72 Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again...' p. 26, 123-24. 73 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 138. 74 Ibid., p. 113. 75 Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds," p. 21.
53 by virtue of birth and is articulated in more ‘natural’ (therefore feminised) terms of filial affection and respect for the country of one’s birth.76 Bonutto’s understanding of second generation identities in relation to his notions of citizenship and ethnicity is uncomplicated by any sense of divided loyalty or cultural duality. Migrants, he argues, “will always be seen as New Australians” but their children, by virtue of being born in Australia, are simply Australians.77 Research into the second generation, however, has illustrated that their experiences of living in Australia and of constructing their own national and ethnic identities were not as simple as Bonutto presumed.78 The second generation often describe a sense of being ‘caught between two cultures’ – that is, of feeling both Italian and Australian – which can be interpreted both positively and negatively.79 In the few paragraphs mentioning children, Bonutto expresses his firm belief that children born in Australia of migrant parents and those children who migrate to Australia at such tender ages that “their native country is nothing but a dream to them,” are important to the process of assimilation; children are the migrants’ investment in Australia’s national future and, Bonutto argues, growing up in Australia will instil in them Australian national values and loyalty.80 Bonutto is unable to conceive of the second generation as facing any difficulty in being members of Australian society. “It is encouraging,” he enthuses, “when one realises that these 600,000 children [born of migrant parents in the postwar period] will never have to face the problems of the migrant. They will already be in their native land.”81
76 To follow this logic, it might be said of Bonutto’s children that they are of ‘Australian ethnicity’, for example. 77 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 12. 78 A vast amount of research has been conducted into the second generation of Italians and other migrant groups. For example, see Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds."; Guerra and White, eds., Ethnic Minority Youth in Australia; Pallotta-Chiarolli, "From Coercion to Choice."; Vasta, "The Second Generation." For personal accounts from the second generation, see also Doppia Identità I Giovani; Growing up Italian in Australia; Loh, ed., With Courage in Their Cases, pp. 20-23, 39-41, 109-23. 79 Gucciardo argues that the second generation of Italian Australians are synthesising the more valuable elements of biculturalism, and increasingly report fewer feelings of marginalisation and conflict. Pallotta- Chiarolli has also noted an increase in second generation women’s identification as Italian Australian, and more positive self-evaluations of what it means to be both Italian and Australian. See Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds," p. 21; Pallotta-Chiarolli, "From Coercion to Choice," pp. 25-27. 80 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 10. 81 Ibid., p. 12.
54 Throughout his narrative, Bonutto emphasises his fervent belief in assimilation and his own success in that regard. Nonetheless, by distinguishing between citizenship and ethnicity Bonutto is able to articulate simultaneously a sense of Australian civic identity and Italian ethnic identity, demonstrated through his involvement in Italian Australian communities and Australian public life. Bonutto’s internment represents a crisis point for his identity as a New Australian and citizen, but it does not significantly affect his sense of Italian ethnic identity. He writes, “It nearly shattered my faith in and love of Australia.”82 Ultimately, however, Bonutto emerges from this crisis with an even stronger nationalist conviction, largely due to the various prominent individuals who came to his defence during his internment. By equating his internment with Jesus’ crisis of faith at Calvary, Bonutto depicts himself as a migrant martyr surviving a crisis of his faith in his adopted country. This crisis also highlights the further nuances in Bonutto’s distinction between citizenship and ethnicity, which is cemented in Bonutto’s discussion of the second generation. As an ethnic bildungsroman, Bonutto’s autobiography narrates his development from Italian migrant to Australian citizen, but it also describes the ways in which Bonutto maintains an Italian ethnic identity despite the ostensible signs of his assimilation. Yet Bonutto’s understanding of ethnicity is intrinsically linked to the land of one’s birth. By this logic, Italian ethnicity can be claimed only by migrants and not by their children, and therefore cultural maintenance across the generations is not possible because the second generation, by virtue of being born in Australia, are Australian and not Italian. Focussing on the gendered nature of Bonutto’s narrative, and particularly his failure to consider the ‘migrant story’ of women in any depth, reveals how this journey from Italian migrant to Australian citizen is primarily a male experience and responsibility. Gillian Swanson argues that the “cultural motifs of the private self which are denoted by ‘the individual’ – as opposed to the public persona of the citizen – are more firmly associated with femininity and lead them to become more easily aligned with the female subject.”83 Bonutto’s understanding of migrant experiences and civic responsibilities is defined by his, and other men’s, roles in the public sphere. The details of his private life are largely absent: Bonutto refers only to his family’s linguistic assimilation even in the privacy of their own home, and his wedding is described very briefly. Bonutto’s narrative
82 Ibid., p. 113. 83 G. Swanson, "Memory, Subjectivity and Intimacy: The Historical Formation of the Modern Self and the Writing of Female Autobiography," in Memory and Methodology, ed. Susannah Radstone (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p. 111.
55 is, therefore, about the development of his public persona, as opposed to his private self. Further ramifications in this regard will be drawn out in the second half of this chapter.
Emma Ciccotosto (with Michal Bosworth): Emma: A Translated Life (1990) While Bonutto’s narrative is a testimony to his successful assimilation, Emma: A Translated Life is instead a narrative of adaptation and cultural negotiation. Unlike Bonutto, who is able to succeed simultaneously in the task of assimilation and in the ethnic bildungsroman’s quest of ethnic identity formation and cultural maintenance, Ciccotosto succeeds only in her ethnic quest, appearing either ambivalent towards or unconscious of the task of assimilation set by dominant Australian society. Central to Ciccotosto’s narrative are her articulations of home and place as they relate to identity. Where Bonutto focused upon public identity formation in the form of naturalisation and assimilation, Ciccotosto emphasises concepts of home and processes of cultural adaptation. For Ciccotosto, the pivotal moment in her identity formation is her return visit to Italy, which allows her to articulate a more nuanced understanding of identity and place. Emma Ciccotosto, nee Orlando, was born on June 26, 1926 in Casalbordino in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, to Marianina and Giuseppe Orlando.84 She was raised mainly by her mother in Italy. Ciccotosto’s father sought a more prosperous life for his family by scouting for many years in America before finally settling in Australia. After her older sister married, Ciccotosto’s brother Domenico joined their father in Australia in 1937, followed by Marianina and Ciccotosto aboard the Remo in 1939. The Orlando family settled near Waroona in Western Australia. In 1943 Emma married Peter Ciccotosto, who had been born in 1920 at Vasto, Abruzzo, after she became pregnant to him at the age of seventeen. Emma and Peter had four children, Domenic (Enrico Domenico), Tina (Concettina), Ron (Renaldo) and Brian, in their first four years of marriage. The Ciccotosto family moved from Waroona to Fremantle in the early 1950s, where they remained together until Peter died of cancer in 1982. Ciccotosto worked for thirty-two years in a biscuit factory, retiring in 1986 at age sixty. Emma: A Translated Life is an oral history created in collaboration between Emma Ciccotosto and Michal Bosworth, a social historian. It has also been adapted into a
84 All biographical information has been taken from Emma: A Translated Life.
56 successful stage play, Emma Celebrazione (1996).85 A second edition of the book, Emma: A Recipe for Life, appeared in 1995 including Ciccotosto’s own recipes accompanied by both Bosworth’s analysis of the ingredients and methods and Ciccotosto’s own remembrances related to each dish.86 This edition also includes Ciccotosto’s reflection upon the process and success of her life narrative. Emma reflects, “I had wanted to write a book about my life for a number of years, but … I am an ordinary person.”87 Limited by language and discouraged by her husband, Ciccotosto was unable to realise her dream until she found a collaborator. Bosworth and Ciccotosto met in 1988 through their mutual associations with Amicizia, an Italian women’s club that is affiliated with the National Italian-Australian Women’s Association.88 Bosworth repeatedly mentions that it was Ciccotosto who approached her to write her life story, emphasising Bosworth’s role as the means by which Ciccotosto was able to fulfil her dream of writing her autobiography, and not the reason for writing. In her introduction, Bosworth describes Emma: A Translated Life as a story “not only about technological change, it is also a love story, a mother’s tale, a worker’s testament.”89 Bosworth outlines both the nature of the narrative and how the roles of gender and class have shaped Ciccotosto’s experiences. Ciccotosto herself introduces her narrative: “I have seen a lot of changes.”90 Bosworth sees in Ciccotosto’s story the opportunity to create a written record of women’s lives in the “old world of prewar Europe as well as the new world of modern Australia.”91 Italy and Australia are polarised
85 The play was first performed in 1991 and revived again in 1993. It has been performed in Fremantle, Perth, Canberra Darwin, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Sydney and Melbourne. Emma: A Recipe for Life also includes traditional Italian songs included in the play, sung originally by Le Gioie Dele Donne, and photographs from several of the productions. See also M. Bosworth, "Emma, Emma, and Me: Exploring Some Paradoxes of Oral History," Southern Review 29, no. 3 (1996): pp. 314-15; E. Ciccotosto, "You Can Do It," in Emma: A Recipe for Life (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995), pp. 154-55; E. Ciccotosto and M. Bosworth, Emma: A Recipe for Life (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995), pp. 154-66; G. Pitts, Emma (Paddington, NSW: Currency Press in Association with Playbox Theatre, 1996). 86 See Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Recipe for Life. 87 Ciccotosto, "You Can Do It," p. 151. 88 Bosworth, "Emma, Emma, and Me," p. 311. For a history of the Italian-Australian Women’s Association, see Savill, Protagoniste Non Spettatrici = Cinderellas No More. 89 M. Bosworth, "Introduction," in Emma: A Translated Life (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1990), p. 12. 90 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 17. 91 Bosworth, "Introduction," p. 11.
57 into the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ worlds, and in terms of primitiveness and modernity. Bosworth writes, “Born into a world where babies were swaddled, where pre-Christian gods lurked in the mountains and the skies, where travel meant going to the nearest town, a few kilometres away, she has seen a great many changes.”92 Ciccotosto’s narrative is thus primarily framed as a narrative of changes, and it is this framework which best lends itself to analysis of Ciccotosto’s story as an ethnic bildungsroman. For Ciccotosto, her migration from Italy to Australia meant also a change from the largely female-centred household to which she had become accustomed in her father’s frequent and her older brother’s recent absence. Female-centred households were common in areas characterised by a pastoral economy, in which the male members of the household would remain away for weeks or months while taking care of their livestock, or on seasonal migration.93 With the onset of Italian mass emigration, men would frequently leave their wives and children behind in Italy for many years while they scouted ahead at their prospective destinations, as Giuseppe Orlando did. In such situations, mothers often maintained the father’s authority in his absence, creating female-centred households within a predominantly male-dominated society, and often resulting in tensions within the family.94 Ciccotosto reflects upon the change: “It took me months to be able to [call him Papa] and even then I was not easy about it.”95 Ciccotosto notes, however, that her father did his best to make her feel comfortable and that she was eventually able to relax and enjoy his company. Despite Ciccotosto’s initial trepidation of, and distance from her father, it is her brother Domenico who exerts a greater controlling force on her life. Domenico’s greatest objection with regards to Ciccotosto’s life and conduct was her association with his friend Peter Ciccotosto, whom she later married. Marianina and Giuseppe show indifference to their daughter’s social activities and it is ultimately Domenico who restricts her association with Peter. A comparison of the courtships of Ciccotosto and her older sister Antonietta demonstrates the different social and gender systems at work in Italy and Australia. Antonietta’s virtue became compromised from the mere act of a neighbour’s son running away with her head scarf, an act viewed as a declaration of intent. Ciccotosto and Peter, on
92 Ibid., p. 12. 93 R. P. Cooper, "Italian Women and Mass Migration," in War, Internment and Mass Migration : The Italo- Australian Experience, 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992), pp. 197-98; Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife." 94 Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife." 95 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 39.
58 the other hand, met secretly each week to kiss and cuddle in the back shed of her parents’ property, soon marrying because she became pregnant. Ciccotosto describes her first and only sexual encounter prior to her marriage: one cold night as we lay wrapped together under a long army overcoat, without me realising what was going on, he briefly penetrated me. I did not feel a thing, but afterwards I noticed blood and I thought I was having a period…This is probably difficult for people to believe, but you must remember that we kissed and cuddled in the dark and he was by this time quite experienced sexually, while for my part I was … completely ignorant.96 Although Ciccotosto had more freedom to be involved in courtship in Australia than did her sister in Italy, this freedom was not tempered by sexual knowledge and awareness. This left Ciccotosto quite vulnerable. The theft of a handkerchief was enough to compromise Antonietta, but Ciccotosto was burdened with the greater problem of being pregnant out of wedlock, largely socially unacceptable in both Italian and Australian communities at the time. Ciccotosto consulted the local doctor to confirm her pregnancy, unprepared for and “terribly embarrassed” by the internal examination performed, as well as the doctor’s scornful attitude.97 As established in the discussion of Bonutto’s autobiography, the experiences of women are either ignored frequently in accounts of internment during World War II, and the impact of this upon Italian Australian individuals and communities, or neatly summarised in a few paragraphs. A predominant reason for this appears to be a belief that women did not experience internment as they were not interned themselves, except for a handful in Western Australia. Such logic might also argue that as women did not go to the front line as soldiers, they did not experience war. Being left behind, having to work out how to run farms and factories are experiences as important as those of going to the front line and being interned at Rottnest, Harvey or Loveday. In his recent study of narratives of
96 Ibid., p. 57. Studies into Italian migrant women generally do not cover issues of sexuality or delve into their marital sexual experiences, probably as these are considered private matters or taboo subjects. Questions about sexuality, specifically regarding attitudes towards chastity and family honour, are more commonly explored in aspects of research related to the second generation, such as Pallotta-Chiarolli, "From Coercion to Choice."; Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again...' p. 50. A. Marino provides the only other account of a migrant woman’s first sexual experience in the story of her mother’s life, found in Kahan-Guidi and Weiss, eds., Give Me Strength, Italian Australian Women Speak, p. 14. 97 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 58.
59 internment, Rando includes a brief examination of the experiences of the women and children who were left behind.98 Ciccotosto’s narrative not only details her and her mother’s own experiences of having male family members interned, but also having them imprisoned and absent from home due to army service. In a separate study of internment in Fremantle, Bosworth notes both the struggles endured by the women left behind and the dearth of research on these women’s experiences, and questions the effect of internment on relationships within the Italian community, particularly as related to gender.99 Of four oral histories edited by Richard Bosworth, three are by the daughters of men and, in one case, a woman who were interned, and the fourth is by a former internee. None of these go into great detail about ‘life without the menfolk’, although the effect on one narrator of her father’s internment and her mother’s belief that it was largely due to their lack of naturalisation certificates encouraged her to seek citizenship before marrying her husband, who was not naturalised.100 Maria Paolini, the wife of an internee, found that the “women and children left to fend for themselves … were not helped by the hostility of the general population which had been stirred up by war reports in the press.”101 Ciccotosto believes that her own community grew closer in the wake of internment: “The shock of having so many men interned had brought neighbours closer together, and friendships were formed and became stronger because of all the worry we
98 Rando, "Italo-Australians During the Second World War: Some Perceptions of Internment," pp. 35-38. 99 Bosworth, "Fremantle Interned: The Italian Experience," p. 86. 100 R. Bosworth, "Oral Histories of Internment," Ibid., pp. 110-11. This is particularly interesting given Bonutto’s construction of Australian citizenship as a primarily male responsibility, as discussed above, and also because the narrator, Clementina Pruiti, was only five years of age when her father was released and the war ended. 101 M. Paoloni, "Maria Paoloni," in Give Me Strength, Italian Australian Women Speak = Forza E Coraggio : A Bilingual Collection, ed. Anna Maria Kahan-Guidi and Elizabeth Weiss (Broadway, NSW: Women's Redress Press, 1989), p. 69. Paoloni provides perhaps the most thorough account of the wife of an internee available. After her husband Gino’s arrest, Maria tried to maintain their grocery shop as well as care for their young son, but found that business dwindled as news spread of Gino’s internment and their shop was subject to attacks by vandals. After staying with several of her in-laws, Maria eventually found herself a position helping a woman run her poultry farm. Here in the bushy outskirts of Sydney, Maria found more support and sympathy than she had in the city. Gino volunteered for farm work in the camps, earning a shilling per day, and sent his wife as much money as he could. Wives were allowed to write twice a week to their husbands using special forms that were subject to censorship. An opportunity arose for Gino’s release under the supervision of his employer, but fell through when the other employees voted against working with an Italian. Gino was finally released the Christmas Eve following Italy’s surrender.
60 shared.”102 Gabaccia draws attention to the Italian peasant traditions of neighbours working communally at times of harvest and hardship in Ciccotosto’s narrative, which are recalled in the community’s reaction to the internment of several of its members.103 In Ciccotosto’s own words, the internment of the male members of the Orlando family left Ciccotosto and her mother in “a fine dilemma” as they were left with the responsibility of running the farm.104 The shock of her husband’s internment and the war itself reawakened Marianina’s old fears from the First World War, as well as a lingering illness. As Marianina was too unwell to take over the farm in her husband’s absence, the bulk of the responsibility was left to Ciccotosto. She eventually grew accustomed to the nature of the work, but was still doing the work of two people until a family friend from Kalgoorlie offered to work with them. Nonetheless Ciccotosto, who was only fifteen at the time, was soon exhausted by the work and her exhaustion turned to exasperation at the rulings of the Australian government: I kept thinking how unfair it was that my father, who should have been supporting his family and producing milk to feed the soldiers, had been snatched away by the government just because he was born in Italy. I knew it was crazy to leave the running of the farm to me. I was so inefficient and so tired, and the tireder I got, the crosser I became about the whole situation.105 For Ciccotosto, the internment of Italian migrants during World War II was predicated upon issues of naturalisation, demonstrating her own understanding of civic belonging. She believes her father and brother were interned because they had not obtained Australian citizenship, implying that she too saw citizenship as a male responsibility, and believes that members of her husband’s family had not been interned because they were naturalised Australian citizens. As noted previously, twenty per cent of Italians interned during World War II were either Australia-born or naturalised British subjects.106 The reasons behind the internment of the Orlando family men are unknown. What is interesting is that Peter was called for duty in the Australian army, absconded and was imprisoned for a year before serving out his army duty as an interpreter for Italian prisoners of war working on farms in
102 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 47. 103 Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, p. 89. 104 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 45. 105 Ibid., p. 46. Emphasis added. 106 Martinuzzi O'Brien, "The Internment of Australian Born and Naturalised British Subjects of Italian Origin," p. 92.
61 the Western Australian district of Northam. Ciccotosto reports that Peter “couldn’t see any point in staying in a boring camp training to fight for the Australians in a war he knew nothing about.”107 Although Peter did not wish to fight for Australia in the war, he expressed a great appreciation for the Australian way of life. When the Ciccotosto family moved to Fremantle in the 1950s, however, Peter became more involved with the Italian community because of the racism he experienced.108 Ciccotosto attributes this to the backlash against the new and larger wave of Italian migrants.109 Unlike Bonutto, Ciccotosto does not place the blame back upon the migrants for their perceived failure to assimilate. Rather, she views postwar migration in a positive light, particularly for its effects of urban renewal and cultural diversity: Fremantle began to grow. It seemed that every week there was a ship landing passengers there and many of them stayed. Sometimes we would go and watch a ship tie up at the wharf, especially if we knew someone on board. The town gradually lost its dilapidated look as new people moved into the houses and began to repair and paint them. People from all over the world came at that time to live in Fremantle.110 As Pascoe argues, each wave of Italian migration brought with it a cultural renewal that cemented understandings of community and place, and the third wave was the most important in establishing physical and symbolic sites of Italian Australian community and identity.111 Ciccotosto and Peter’s renewed interest in the Italian community was therefore undoubtedly bolstered by the increase of Italian shops, cafés, restaurants, churches, clubs and other institutions that began to be formed, creating Fremantle’s Little Italy as a site of community and cultural maintenance.112 Members of Ciccotosto’s own family were also
107 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 48. Peter’s brother Cesario also absconded because he “didn’t want to be sent up north to fight the Japanese.” See Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 69. 108 For a brief examination of the important role played by Italian clubs and sporting clubs in Fremantle, see R. Bosworth and M. Bosworth, Fremantle's Italy (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1993), pp. 172-75. For a more general discussion, see also Alcorso, Popoli, and Rando, "Community Networks and Institutions," pp. 112-13; Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 201-07; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp. 170-71. 109 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 125. 110 Ibid. Bosworth and Bosworth also attribute Fremantle’s urban renewal to postwar mass migration. See Bosworth and Bosworth, Fremantle's Italy, pp. 176-77. 111 Pascoe, "Place and Community," p. 86. 112 Ibid., p. 90.
62 part of the third and final wave of Italian migration to Australia, and Ciccotosto found herself playing an important role in helping them to settle.113 When Ciccotosto, her husband and her brother return to Italy as part of a European cruise holiday in 1975, the trip is a highly emotional experience for all of them and signifies a pivotal moment in Ciccotosto’s identity formation. By experiencing Italy and Europe as tourists, the trip reconfigures their sense of home and place, particularly for Ciccotosto. Loretta Baldassar, in her study of return visits between Australia and Italy, argues: “Going back (home) is a secular pilgrimage of enormous importance for migrants, particularly the first generation, for whom the return is to the place of their birth.”114 Of her return to Casalbordino, Ciccotosto writes: My brother said to me, ‘Now we will see where we were born’. It was the first time for him too, after thirty-nine years, to see his birthplace. We were both excited. We went to Casalbordino where we grew up as children. I was stunned to see the house again. It was just the same as it had been all those years ago. I felt funny in my stomach. I asked my husband if he felt the same a few days ago when he had seen where he was born and where he went to school. He said to me he couldn’t explain to me how he felt. The thing that I couldn’t stop looking at was the stone paving in front of the house. It was there when I was a child and it hadn’t changed. It was still the same.115 Home, Swanson argues, “is essentially mobile, unfixed, harnessed to the narrative movement of memory-formation, yet stilled in the memorial gesture of attaching meaning to objects, to material space, of investing the meaning of self in the relations of bodies and spaces.”116 In this pivotal moment, the meaning of ‘home’ is detached from Ciccotosto’s childhood house. In the initial stages of her research into migrant women’s autobiographies, Maria Parrino found that their narratives “tended to confuse the moments of their Old World and New World lives which inevitably had to be different. However, [by focusing] on this female ‘confusion’ (or was it ‘fusion’?) [it became apparent that these women’s narratives] stressed continuity rather than difference.”117 The moment in front of Ciccotosto’s childhood home signifies a moment of recognition of change that
113 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, pp. 115-16. 114 Baldassar, Visits Home, p. 3. 115 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, pp. 166-67. 116 Swanson, "Memory, Subjectivity and Intimacy," p. 123. 117 H. Barolini, "Italian Immigrant Women in the United States through Their Autobiographical Writings," in The Columbus People (1996), p. 428.
63 disrupts the continuity of her Italian self. She dislocates her self from the house, signified by her reference to “the house” as opposed to “my house.” Similarly, upon her first arrival back in Italy, Ciccotosto claims Italy possessively as “my land,”118 but the four months abroad ultimately kindle homesickness for Australia that again signify a distance from Italy as being hers: “for me it had been a long four months away from home. I was so glad to be back again. I had been homesick while I was away.”119 Baldassar also argues that theorisations of migration too often perceive migrants as being “frozen in a kind of time warp, remaining enmeshed in the culture of their place of origin from the set time of their departure.”120 What Ciccotosto experiences is actually the reverse of this, the realisation that she has changed and adapted within a new culture and environment while the site of her childhood years has remained unchanged. While Peter expresses a desire to return to Italy again someday, for Ciccotosto the experience cements her feeling of home and belonging as an Italian woman in Australia, just as Bonutto’s construction of citizenship anchored his own sense of belonging in Australia. Family and friends are also essential to Ciccotosto’s sense of belonging within Australia. Ciccotosto’s children identify as predominantly Australian, largely due to their experiences of racism during childhood. Ciccotosto admits that she and Peter often diverged from the childrearing practices common amongst other Italian migrants as they “were too influenced by living and working with Australians, and by our children’s wish to be Australian.”121 The way in which the Ciccotostos chose to raise their children caused some friction with other Italian families in the neighbourhood.122 Ciccotosto reasons, “[The children] thought of themselves as Australian and I would have had difficulty in
118 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 162. 119 Ibid., p. 167. 120 Baldassar, Visits Home, p. 9. 121 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 115. In her study of Italian Australian youth in Perth, Baldassar briefly examines the Italian domestic space and family practices, such as childrearing. One of her participants comments that the key difference between Italian and Australian childrearing practices is discipline. See L. Baldassar, "Italo-Australian Youth in Perth (Space Speaks and Clothes Communicate)," in War, Internment and Mass Migration : The Italo-Australian Experience, 1940-1990, ed. Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1992), p. 211. See also S. L. Thompson, Australia through Italian Eyes: A Study of Settlers Returning from Australia to Italy (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 191-92. 122 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 115. On neighbourhood relationships between Italians, and between Italians and Australians, see Thompson, Australia through Italian Eyes, pp. 148-52.
64 keeping them in the old strict ways some families had.”123 Most importantly, Ciccotosto, who was a young mother, remembered her own and Peter’s experiences of growing up in Australia. She felt that this gave her “a better chance of understanding the kids.”124 Despite her children’s identification with Australia, Ciccotosto describes her family unit as an “Italian family,” using the example of marriage practices as a way of articulating the different cultural traditions and expectations of her own family compared to those of her sons’ Anglo Australian brides.125 The marriage of Ciccotosto’s daughter Tina, the only one of her children to marry an Italian, becomes an interesting site for cultural negotiation. “Tina always said she would not marry an Italian boy. She was an Australian; she would marry an Australian.”126 However, Tina eventually marries Cesario, a young Italian migrant. When Tina and Caesario first started dating, Ciccotosto was not happy: “I didn’t like it that he couldn’t speak English and the family still had to establish themselves.”127 While Ciccotosto’s concerns for her daughter are mainly in terms of potential cultural and economic instability, there is also a sense that Ciccotosto is confused at her daughter’s decision to marry an Italian, when she believes herself to be Australian: “She was the only one of the four kids who married an Italian. The three boys all thought of themselves as Australian and they all married Australian girls.”128 When negotiating these boundaries of identity, Ciccotosto articulates an appreciation for and an adaptation to ‘Australian culture’ but expresses an overall allegiance to her native Italian culture. Her interactions with her children demonstrate a difference between her sense of her own Italianness and their Australianness. Ciccotosto, however, still incorporates her children into her concept of an ‘Italian’ family unit that includes the maintenance of ethnic identity and belonging between the first and second generations that is lacking from Bonutto’s understanding of ethnicity. Autobiography, in Ciccotosto’s narrative, is less a testimony of success or assimilation and is more an act of cultural
123 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 125. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid., p. 132. Ciccotosto also discusses Tina’s glory box as part of the Italian family’s traditional approach to weddings, p. 135. For further discussion of the tradition of dowries in Italian Australian communities, see M. Tence and E. Triarico, "La Dote: Preparing for a Family: The Importance of the Dowry in the Australian Italian Family," Italian Historical Journal 7, no. 1 (1999). 126 Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life, p. 133. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid., p. 135.
65 maintenance. Ciccotosto aims, through telling her story, to provide the future generations of her family with a sense of place that she has sought to establish through her negotiations as an Italian woman in Australia.
Conclusion This chapter explored Bonutto’s A Migrant’s Story and Ciccotosto’s Emma: A Translated Life as examples of the first stage in the Italian Australian model of narrative and identity development. This first stage comprises autobiographies, biographies, oral histories and other narratives based on the oral tradition written by or about migrants belonging to the second and third waves of Italian migration to Australia. Through the brief history of Italian migration provided, it was shown that the interwar and postwar waves of migration firmly established a sense of Italian Australian community and place. If these migrant autobiographies are read with an assumption that narratives are adjunct or adjacent knowledges and cultural resources, then Bonutto and Ciccotosto’s narratives illuminate the processes of Italian settlement in Australia during the 1920s to the 1970s and migrants’ search for belonging and identity. In reading these Italian Australian migrant autobiographies as ethnic bildungsromane, the protagonists are presented with a choice of quest: assimilation to the dominant culture or maintenance of their own ethnic culture and traditions. Initially these two quests seemed mutually exclusive, but what these narratives have revealed are complex understandings of citizenship, ethnicity and place that allow the migrant protagonists to forge a sense of belonging in Australia whilst maintaining a sense of their Italian heritage. Bonutto’s maintenance of his Italian ethnic identity in the face of his own fervent belief in assimilation is made possible through his understanding of ethnicity as a virtually unshakeable identity inherited at birth and citizenship as a public demonstration of loyalty to his adopted country. Ciccotosto shares a similar understanding of ethnicity as a birthright, but extends her understanding to the second generation by claiming her Australian children as belonging within her Italian family. Both narratives contain a central experience that is pivotal to their Italian Australian identity formation and our understanding of these narratives as first stage ethnic bildungsroman. Ciccotosto’s return visit to Italy and Bonutto’s internment are both instances in which the protagonists must question identity and belonging. By seeing her childhood home unchanged after her thirty-six year absence, Ciccotosto recognises what is unchanged in herself – that is, her Italianness – and, in detaching her self from her childhood home, she
66 recognises what has changed is her sense of place – that is, she recognises that her Italian identity is best articulated through her Australian place. Bonutto’s faith in assimilation as a migrant’s civic duty remains unshaken after his experience of internment as a result of conspiracy, racism and xenophobia. This experience is used to support his claim to an Australian identity, yet his construction of nationalism as an innate capacity forces him to publicly articulate the centrality of his Italianness to his ability to be Australian. These migrant autobiographies belong to the first stage in the Italian Australian model of narrative and identity development. They feature identities that demonstrate a sense of belonging within Australia, as constructed through either citizenship or place, but still maintain a strong cultural affiliation with Italianness. The second significant stage of this model comprises a large body of narrative fiction marked by generational conflict and a re-evaluation of the migrant past by the successive generations to be discussed in Chapters 4 to 6. The narratives explored in Chapter 3 provide a bridge between the first and second stages, between the generic boundaries of autobiography and fiction, and begin to introduce hybridised and multicultural interactions within the protagonists’ senses of Italianness and Australianness. It is where autobiography and fiction cleave that representations of Italian Australian identities, as such, begin.
67 68 Chapter 3
The Migrant’s Inferno: Multiculturalism, Melting Pots and Mosaics in Italian Australian Autobiographical Fiction
I discovered the huge parks, cream-laden milk, indifference, the diverse nationalities of my fellow lodgers, the same defeated melancholy. I found out there were different hells: one for single girls, one for single guys, one for married women, one for children. Together they added up to a single prefabricated hell – the migrant’s inferno. Rosa Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country1
[I]f I come to Australia I’ll be seeing every country in one yet not seeing them at all. I could see Italy in Australia, couldn’t I, but later realise I haven’t really seen it. I will come to Australia when I can no longer live like this, when I am old and need one place in which I can have many places. Ufak, in Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry2
Neither definitively autobiographies nor fiction, the narratives examined in this chapter represent the generational and generic overlap between the first and the second stages of Italian Australian identity and narrative development. Importantly, they also introduce multiculturalism as a concept that both directly and indirectly affects the identity formation of these protagonists, which also resonates throughout the successive generation fiction of the second stage. Set in the 1970s, Rosa Cappiello’s autobiographical novel, Oh Lucky Country (1984), depicts a female Italian migrant’s arrival in Australia towards the end of the third wave of Italian migration, at the advent of multiculturalism. It reflects cynicism of the new national ideology that jars with the protagonist’s immediate personal experience of marginalisation in her host country. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli’s Tapestry (1999) and Peter Dalseno’s Sugar, Tears and Eyeties (1994), on the other hand, depict the optimistic embrace of multiculturalism as social mosaic prevalent during the late 1980s and early 1990s. One person’s place made up of many places, so to speak, is another’s inferno.
1 R. R. Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, trans. Gaetano Rando (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984), p. 4. 2 M. Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry (Sydney: Random House, 1999), p. 22.
69 In this chapter, multiculturalism is seen as a bridging concept that allows Italian Australian identities to begin to emerge, but not unproblematically. It is therefore also seen as a concept that maintains the hierarchical relationship between the dominant society and ethnic groups established in the first stage, and which, this thesis argues, is not significantly challenged until the third stage. This chapter argues that, in reading these narratives as ethnic bildungsromane, it is within and against certain conceptions of multiculturalism that the protagonists’ identities begin to emerge and the interactions between their Italianness and Australianness are played out. Furthermore, multiculturalism as a defining concept within the ethnic bildungsroman and the model of Italian Australian identity and narrative development, I argue, privileges successive generation articulations of identity and development. This chapter applies these arguments to texts which begin to draw elements of fiction into narratives based upon life experiences, and which amalgamate the experiences of many actual persons into single fictional protagonists; and to narratives that approach autobiographical material in such a way that separates the final text from the traditional notion of the autobiography. These narratives straddle the border between autobiography, which is the primary concern of the first stage of the Italian Australian model of identity and narrative development (as explored in Chapter 2) and fiction, which comprises the second and largest stage of this model, to be explored in Chapters 4 to 6. Autobiographical fiction is thus utilised, like multiculturalism, as a bridging concept between migrant autobiographies and successive generation fiction, further emphasising the complex relationship between author and protagonist, and the interplay between ethnicity and authenticity. Gunew’s arguments regarding multicultural writing and literary criticism, as described in Chapter 1, highlight the problems faced by the protagonists in their narrative quests for ethnic identity formation; that is, both the writers and their protagonists struggle to articulate a sense of self and ethnicity in the face of the potentially homogenising force of multiculturalism.3 This chapter provides a definition of autobiographical fiction and a brief theoretical overview of the relationship between autobiography and fiction before exploring these concepts within these three narratives as ethnic bildungsromane.
3 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 23. See also Gunew, "Multicultural Multiplicities: Canada, USA and Australia," p. 37.
70 “The foregoing pages are factual!”:4 creative approaches to autobiography Philippe Lejeune, in his seminal essay “The Autobiographical Pact” (1975), defines autobiography as “[r]etrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his [sic] own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality.”5 The author, the narrator and the protagonist of an autobiography, he further clarifies, must be identical.6 The autobiographies of Bonutto and Ciccotosto examined in Chapter 2 fulfil Lejeune’s requisites for autobiography. The narratives examined here in Chapter 3, on the other hand, deliberately problematise the relationship between these three roles and are thus defined as autobiographical fiction, or autobiographical novels. Lejeune defines the autobiographical novel as: fictional texts in which the reader has reason to suspect, from the resemblances that he [sic] thinks he sees, that there is identity of author and protagonist, whereas the author has chosen to deny this identity, or at least not to affirm it. So defined, the autobiographical novel includes personal narratives (identity of narrator and protagonist) as well as “impersonal” narratives (protagonists designated in the third person); it is defined at the level of its contents.7 Autobiographical fiction is sometimes, perhaps increasingly commonly, also referred to by its French term ‘autofiction’, although Smith and Watson maintain that autofictions use “textual markers that signal a deliberate, often ironic, interplay between the two modes [of autobiography and fiction].”8 Such markers are present in Cappiello and Pallotta- Chiarolli’s narratives, which could thus also be defined as autofictions. In an examination of the relationship between autobiography and fiction, Gunnthórunn Gudmundsdóttir argues that autobiography necessarily implements elements of fictionality, such as structure, poetic or literary descriptions, and the inclusion, exclusion
4 P. Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties (Brisbane: Boolarong Publications, 1994), p. v. 5 P. Lejeune, On Autobiography, ed. Paul John Eakin, trans. Katherine Leary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 4. 6 Lejeune is critical of “autobiographical collaborations”, such as ghostwriting, ethnography and oral history collaborations, such as Emma: A Translated Life, largely due to his privileging of the act of writing itself and his view that collaborative relationship between “the common people” (meaning migrants, workers, etc.), the researcher-writer and the reader is inherently exploitative. See Ibid., p. 196. 7 Ibid., p. 13. Original emphasis. 8 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, p. 186.
71 and ordering of events for certain effects.9 Furthermore, autobiographers’ attempts to retrieve a sense of the past often involve methods that privilege fictionality. Gudmundsdóttir explains: When used effectively, successful negotiation between the autobiographical and the fictional strands of life-writing can open up the past, by acknowledging the impossibility of giving a definitive version of a life. Thus autobiographers in the last thirty years or so have tended to produce texts that exist on the borderline between autobiography and fiction as they attempt to find new ways to represent the past.10 Similarly, in their examination of Anna Maria Dell’Oso’s writing as Italian Australian autofiction, Scarparo and Wilson argue that the mode of autofiction allows Dell’Oso to “probe the ways in which adults attempt to bring fantasy back into their lives, from dreaming to writing the past.”11 Such notions are noted and developed in relation to Cappiello’s, Dalseno’s and Pallotta-Chiarolli’s narratives below.
Rosa Cappiello: Oh Lucky Country (1984) Oh Lucky Country is favoured by Gunew in analyses of Australian multicultural literature, or in explorations of reading through cultural difference.12 Written during the tentative first decade of multicultural policy in Australia, this autobiographical novel reveals a view of Australian multiculturalism as exploitative of migrants and their ethnic cultures. The protagonist and narrator, Rosa, struggles with her intersecting identities as a migrant and as a writer within this new multicultural paradigm; her migrant status often thwarts her literary ambitions yet, as a migrant who writes, she presents a desirable cultural resource. Rosa articulates a sense of dislocation with both the Italian migrant community and the Australian host society, which significantly complicates her negotiation of Italianness and Australianness. Rosa’s failed quest in terms of the ethnic bildungsroman, however, is presented as an ironic and bitter victory for early multiculturalism.
9 G. Gudmundsdóttir, Borderlines: Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Life Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003). 10 Ibid., p. 273. 11 Scarparo and Wilson, "Imagining Homeland in Anna Maria Dell'oso's Autofictions," p. 172. 12 See S. Gunew, "PMT (Post Modernist Tensions): Reading for (Multi)Cultural Difference," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), p. 42; Gunew, Framing Marginality, pp. 23, 93-110.
72 Born in 1942 in Naples,13 Rosa Cappiello migrated to Australia in 1971 and began to write her second novel, Paese fortunato (Oh Lucky Country) in 1978.14 Cappiello’s first novel, I Semi Negri (The Black Seeds) was published in Italy in 1977 but was written prior to her migration to Sydney and is set in Naples. Oh Lucky Country was first published in Italy in 1981, winning critical acclaim and the 1981 Calabria Prize.15 It was translated into English by Gaetano Rando, who worked closely with Cappiello, and was published in Australia in 1984.16 Since Oh Lucky Country, Cappiello has also published poems and short stories, was writer-in-residence to the University of Wollongong in 1982, has been the recipient of two Australia Council Grants in 1982 and 1985, and won the NSW Premier’s award for ethnic writing in 1985.17 Copies of Paese fortunato first began to circulate amongst Italian-speaking people in Australia prior to the release of the English translation in 1984, but despite high expectations generated from the novel’s positive reception in Italy, some members of Sydney’s Italian community read it with horrified disappointment, appalled by its language, overt sexuality and bleak view of migrant experiences.18 Rando describes two differing reactions to Cappiello’s narrative: One reader, the middle-aged wife of a white-collar professional, went so far as to state that she was depressed for three days after reading the novel, although another middle-aged reader, a migrant with many years experience on the factory floor, remarked that reality was, if anything, worse than the conditions depicted in the novel.19 Cappiello’s portrayal of Australia, Australians and Italian communities is not flattering, but rather ironic, subversive and grotesque. Gunew observes that Cappiello “inflates migrant oppression to such absurdist proportions that it becomes a force for renewal and imaginative energy.”20 Rando, in his introduction to the narrative, and in his further writings on Cappiello, classifies Oh Lucky Country as a novel, yet constantly refers to its
13 "Rosa Cappiello," in The Good Reading Guide, ed. Helen Daniel (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1989), p. 37. 14 G. Rando, "Introduction," in Oh Lucky Country (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984), p. v. 15 Ibid. 16 G. Rando, "On Translating Australian Writers: The Italian Case," Southerly 55, no. 2 (1995): pp. 63-64. 17 "Rosa Cappiello," p. 37. 18 Rando, "Introduction," pp. v-vi. 19 Ibid., p. vi. 20 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 93.
73 “autobiographical flavour”.21 He sees its fictional status as allowing Cappiello to say “more about the migrant condition than either [a social document or a simple autobiography] could have done,”22 and commends her for managing “to go beyond her immediate personal experience to universal aspects of the human condition.”23 Gunew is even more adamant about the narrative’s status as a novel, and is highly critical of those who are too eager to read it as autobiography.24 Gunew argues that “those who read it as the confessional voice of naïve suffering are telling us more about their own preconceptions of ‘migrant writing’ than about Cappiello’s novel.”25 Through the highly critical and ironic nature of the narrative as autobiographical fiction, Cappiello actually presents a challenge to perceptions of the ‘migrant writer’ and ‘migrant memoirs’. Reading Oh Lucky Country as autobiographical fiction acknowledges the subversive and ironic interplay between autobiography and fiction present in Cappiello’s work. Despite their shared name, Cappiello does not intend to draw a total correlation between author and narrator26 but, as established by Lejeune, autobiographical fiction is defined by perceived resemblances between author, protagonist and, in the case of Oh Lucky Country, narrator. In a piece entitled “Why I write what I write”, Cappiello acknowledges the autobiographical nature of her writing: What I write originates from autobiographical sources and will continue to do so until my descent within myself is finished and I’ve dissolved most of my flotsam and jetsam and emerged cleaned out and full of sympathy and solidarity with life.27 Cappiello embeds these autobiographical sources in parody and ironic narrative techniques that have earned her some critical acclaim – Andrea Stretton, for example, describes Cappiello’s “instinctual prose” as “flow[ing] from the pages like wild and malignant
21 Rando, "From Great Works to Alcheringa," p. 63. 22 Rando, "Introduction," p. xi. 23 Rando, "The Italo-Australian Case," p. 56. 24 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 95. 25 Ibid., p. 97. 26 Rando, "Introduction," p. vii. Susan Hawthorne, in her untitled review of Oh Lucky Country, also warns against confusing the author and the narrator. See S. Hawthorne, in The Good Reading Guide, ed. Helen Daniel (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1989), p. 36. 27 R. Cappiello, "Why I Write What I Write," Australian Society (1987): p. 25.
74 honey.”28 As a genre, autobiographical fiction is potentially subversive and disruptive. Scarparo and Wilson argue: The effect of [autobiographical fiction and autofiction], generally, is to unhouse or estrange oppositions such as inside/outside, public/private, self/other and past/present in the representation of identity, and thus to signify the inorganic links between writing and subjectivity in relation to the experience of displacement.29 Similarly, Gudmundsdóttir argues that autobiography and its subgenres, such as autobiographical fiction, are fertile ground for experimental writing. Autobiography, he argues, “in its many guises – can capture and address many contemporary concerns, for example, the status of the subject, the relations and representations of ethnicity and gender, and perhaps most importantly questions the individual’s relationship with the past.”30 Bromley argues that diasporic cultural narratives “raise the issues of what the world looks like from the margins.”31 Rosa sees the world not only from the margins of society, as a woman, a migrant and a worker, but also from the margins of reality or, rather, from where reality and imagination intersect. Regarding Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975) and China Men (1980), which are similar in their approach to negotiating autobiography and fiction from a marginal position, Bromley observes: By analogy, the writing of autobiography may not, after all, simply be the expression of a life but a disfiguring (and refiguring), a consuming and alienating process in which the reading and writing constructs a varifocal effect: a displacement/defacement through metaphor, against absolute and
28 A. Stretton, in The Good Reading Guide, ed. Helen Daniel (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1989), p. 37. Susan Hawthorne, Sharyn Pearce and Cassandra Pybus also contribute favourable reviews of Oh Lucky Country in Cappiello’s entry in The Good Reading Guide. Rando notes that Cappiello is “consistently included in all the authoritative works on Australian literature,” together with Raphaele Carboni, who wrote Eureka Stockade, while Gunew describes some reviews of Oh Lucky Country as patronising. See Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 95; Hawthorne, pp. 36-37; S. Pearce, in The Good Reading Guide, ed. Helen Daniel (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1989), p. 37; C. Pybus, in The Good Reading Guide, ed. Helen Daniel (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1989), p. 37; Rando, "On Translating Australian Writers: The Italian Case," p. 64. See also Stretton’s earlier review, A. Stretton, "Anger, Agitation and Alienation in the Land of the Long White Burp," review of Oh Lucky Country, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 January 1985, p. 36. 29 Scarparo and Wilson, "Imagining Homeland in Anna Maria Dell'oso's Autofictions," p. 172. 30 Gudmundsdóttir, Borderlines, p. 1. 31 Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, p. 4.
75 essentialist belongings, and for a complex, multi-layered, and dynamic pattern of syncretism – out of the past, out of death, out of the adversarial.32 For Rosa, autobiography is precisely such a process of disfiguring and refiguring, specifically through narrative techniques of fictionality, and the past becomes unfamiliar through these processes: I often read over these passages, animated and unanimated notes on unfamiliar past experiences. … No need to invent things in order to have a good laugh. Just a touch of imagination and you could liven up your destiny and your boredom.33 She later discovers, however, that the unfamiliarity of her experiences is not due to her having made them up but, rather, due to her particular way of seeing the world: I can’t see myself writing a straight factual report. Lella’s right, with my malaise I can only present a misted-up picture of reality and get the punctuation wrong, but if the sun shines through the window and if the madonnas purse their lips, that’s what I write, even if it’s not correct.34 Writing (and, to an extent, migration) is a consuming and ultimately unavoidable vocation for Cappiello. “I emigrated to Australia partly through choice and partly through necessity,” Cappiello states, later echoing: “I applied to immigrate and was accepted immediately, but it took me three years to make up my mind to leave. I think my writing came about in the same way. I didn’t choose to be a writer.”35 In Oh Lucky Country, it is the development of Rosa’s identity as a writer against the barriers of class, gender and ethnicity that is the focus of her quest. Oh Lucky Country could thus also be classified as a Kuntsleroman, a genre derived from the traditional Bildungsroman that specifically deals with the development of the artist. 36 Rosa is frustrated by the time wasted not writing when at work in a clothing factory:
32 Ibid., p. 30. Original emphasis. 33 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, pp. 48-49. 34 Ibid., p. 157. 35 Cappiello, "Why I Write What I Write," p. 25. 36 Kontje, The German Bildungsroman, pp. 38-39. Also of interest may be Ian Wojcik-Andrews’ study of Margaret Drabble and her works. Wojcik-Andrews not only reads Drabble’s works as Bildungsromane and Kuntsleromane concerned primarily with the development of women and female artists who struggle against barriers of gender and class, but uses them to paint a picture of Drabble’s own development as a writer. See I. Wojcik-Andrews, Margaret Drabble's Female Bildungsromane: Theory, Genre, and Gender (New York: Peter Lang, 1995).
76 All through the day while working the heavy sewing machine I think about the book I’d like to write, if I knew how to write, if I kept company with educated people, if I’d completed all my normal schooling just like those damned so- called poets…But I’m a machinist, a factory worker, I work on the machine, I sew. I hate the work and unfortunately I’ve associated the work with the people around me, with mind-bending results. I do not cherish false hopes. I keep battling on. I don’t owe anyone anything except maybe some spittle which I’d willingly dispense. I have to sort out these tangled details which fight each other in my innermost secret being, an operation which takes up the first five minutes once I’ve started up the industrial machine, after which all flows smoothly. Pressed by the hum of seventy machines, the murmuring of seventy voices, the smell of seventy bodies, the plot of the book I’d like to write, if I knew how to write begins gradually to take on an indistinct shape. I formulate an idea, a phrase – I don’t know if I’m explaining it properly – initially squeaking puffing, sweating grey matter, and then all in a gush, waves, landslides, mountains of water overflow the dam erected round my mind. In the days and months spent at the D. & A. factory I could have produced voluminous novels – romances, thrillers, science fiction, autobiographies, pornography. If only I could have paid a secretary to sit by my at the machine, or even if I’d just had a recorder to record my thoughts, I would now be acclaimed as not only the best but the most prolific self-educated woman writer. 37 Cappiello recreates the atmosphere of a factory workroom where more than clothing could be manufactured and images of a bursting dam bring to mind the Snowy River Hydroelectric Scheme.38 The blue-collar labour of migrants is juxtaposed against Rosa’s
37 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 89-90. For an investigation into the working conditions faced by migrant women in the 1970s, see Centre for Urban Research and Action, But I Wouldn't Want My Wife to Work Here ... : A Study of Migrant Women in Melbourne Industry (Fitzroy: Centre for Urban Research and Action, 1976). 38 The Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme refers to the development of a hydroelectric system in the Snowy Moutnains, the construction of which required a vast amount of manpower supplied largely by recruiting migrants. As the work migrants were employed to do was often highly dangerous – Anglo Australians were often assigned the least dangerous jobs – it was well-paid and allowed many migrants to save in order to sponsor their families or to establish their own homes or businesses. For a more in-depth discussion of Italians’ involvement in this scheme, see Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, p. 134; Panucci, Kelly, and Castles, "Italians Help Build Australia," pp. 58-61.
77 ostensibly white-collar literary ambitions; she cannot be a writer because she is uneducated and a factory worker. Even when Rosa is given a chance at writing for a local Italian newspaper, she finds that the editor displays more interest in her work as a machinist than in her writing.39 Images of migrants as ‘factory fodder’ are littered throughout the narrative, creating an explicit connection between their identities as migrants and their identities as workers. Postwar mass migration to Australia was marked by a segmentation of the labour market according to ethnicity and gender, and migrants were referred to as ‘factory fodder’.40 As Gunew wryly observes, “wogs were supposed to turn cogs in postwar Australia.”41 Rosa reflects that “with the act of migration we had ordered ourselves a fine funeral for our identities, to be reincarnated in sewers, as factory workers, in machinery, in knots, as tender morsels for despotic men.” 42 Phillip Edmonds reads an extract from Oh Lucky Country, published as a short story, as a narrative “about migrant factory workers who are both the victims of an industrial system and also at times the handmaidens of its representations.” 43 Edmonds argues that the use of class as a narrative structure adds to the “complexity and urgency” of Cappiello’s writing.44 Gunew, however, reminds us of how discussions of class can adversely affect the treatment of Oh Lucky Country as a literary narrative: “Migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds tend to be relegated to ‘honorary’ working-class subject-positions, and in this respect they are excluded from certain kinds of public, authoritative discourses. Hence they are labelled textually incompetent.” 45 Rosa is not treated seriously as a writer by either the Italian community or by Australian society, foreshadowing Cappiello’s own reception upon the publication of Oh Lucky Country.46 In the episode with the Italian newspaper, the editor eventually assigns
39 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 155. 40 Panucci, Kelly, and Castles, "Italians Help Build Australia," p. 56. See also Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 123-30. 41 S. Gunew, "Against Multiculturalism: Rhetorical Images," in Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism, ed. Gordan L. Clark, Dean Forbes, and Roderick Francis (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993), p. 41. 42 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 5. 43 P. Edmonds, "Unfashionable in Literary Terms: Class in Australian Short Fiction of the 1980s," overland 153 (1998): p. 16. 44 Ibid. 45 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 98. 46 Cappiello, "Why I Write What I Write," p. 25; Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 105; Rando, "Introduction," p. vi.
78 Rosa the task of writing on social and cultural events within the Italian community, but ultimately finds that she cannot write the “straight factual report” expected by the editor.47 Later, when Rosa accompanies her friend Sofia to lunch with a scriptwriter and a producer who are making a documentary on southern Italian migrants in Sydney, the scriptwriter shows little interest in Rosa, focusing instead on Sofia who is lying profusely about her “little pruning-knife-wielding Sicilian” father, until it is mentioned that Rosa is a writer. The scriptwriter responds with great surprise and enthusiasm: “She doesn’t write in dialect by any chance? Why waste her talents? Has she ever tried writing in Arabic? What a sensational piece of news! A Neapolitan woman who writes in Arabic!”48 Rosa’s literary vocation is seen for its novelty rather than cultural value, let alone in terms of Rosa’s individual talent. Furthermore, the scriptwriter and the producer clearly approach their documentary project with preconceived notions of Italianness that they wish to perpetuate through Sofia’s fabricated but scintillating family melodrama. In White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (1998), Ghassan Hage reveals the element of exploitation inherent in the theme of cultural enrichment within Australian multiculturalism – wherein ethnic diversity is exploited “to make it yield a kind of ethnic surplus value” 49 – which is reflected in Rosa’s mental response to the scriptwriter: Together with the migrant masses I am contributing to the process of your civilization, to widening your horizon that doesn’t extend any further than the point of your great ugly nose. I tear the weeds out of your ears, I give you a certain style. I teach you to eat, to dress, to behave and above all not to belch in restaurants, trains, buses, cinemas, schools. You probably don’t know, but I’ll tell you in confidence, for your information, that your country, which is now mine, is based on a gigantic belch. Its flag flutters in the wind created by the toxic gases produced by your stomachs which are choked up like sewers. The myth about being happy and lucky is based on your drunken bouts. Go on, then, drink. You offend us. You don’t like wine? You prefer beer? Waiter, a huge bottle of beer for the lady. 50 Gunew points out that “neither the speaker nor the addressee of this kind of dialogue is individualised; there is simply ‘voice’. In Cappiello the ‘I’ often dissolves into this
47 See Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 157. 48 Ibid., p. 192. 49 Hage, White Nation, p. 129. 50 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, pp. 192-93.
79 representative voice,” and her ‘you’ is generalised. 51 Dangerous as it may be to be too reductive, read simply, such passages give voice to migrants’ angry ‘silence’ against Anglo Australians. Cappiello’s Australia is absurd, grotesque and quite often completely uncultured. Rosa’s rumination on the nature of Australians’ souls, for example, plays out through her observations on public toilets: “little square asymmetric red brick houses as arid and depersonalised as their souls.”52 Undesirable or non-existent as she finds Australian culture to be, Rosa does not find a sense of belonging in the Italian communities either. Rosa, like Cappiello, arrives in Australia at the end of the third wave of Italian migration to Australia. If we recall Pascoe’s stages for the development of Italian Australian community and identity summarised in Chapter 2, this stage is referred to as the ‘builders’. Benefiting from the cumulative efforts of the previous two stages, the sense of Italian Australian community and identity in this stage is more complex, secure and influential.53 Bonutto and Ciccotosto were both active members in their Italian communities, finding familiarity and support within their Italian clubs and associations. Rather than sites of community and support, Rosa sees ethnic communities as ghettoes and as threatening to her individuality: The atrophied breath of the ethnic communities was wafted to me on the wind. As a new member I adamantly refused to have anything to do with it. I spat on it since, rather than being a cohesive basis for race or tradition, it served as a pretext for the creation of separate, mutually inimical little universes. I would not, must not, sacrifice my individuality.54 Gunew and Vasta both critique the assumption that ethnic communities are homogenous and cohesive.55 Cappiello portrays them not as homogenous and unfractured, but as a homogenising force that seeks to conform Rosa to the standards of a virtuous, hard-
51 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 99. 52 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 1. 53 Pascoe, "Place and Community," p. 93. 54 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 4. 55 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p. 98; Rando, "From Great Works to Alcheringa," p. 63; "Introduction," p. viii. See also S. Gunew, "Arts for a Multicultural Australia: Redefining the Culture," in Culture, Difference and the Arts, ed. Sneja Gunew and Fazal Rizvi (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994), p. 5; Gunew, "Multicultural Multiplicities: Canada, USA and Australia," p. 38; Vasta, "Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity: The Relationship between Racism and Resistance," p. 211.
80 working, married migrant mother.56 When Rosa first arrives, for example, her workmates plot to marry her off, provided they can ascertain that her virginity is still intact.57 At the same time, Cappiello is aware that ethnic communities have themselves been subjected to a form of homogenisation, and again she critiques the new ideology of multiculturalism: Migrants live in a huge village square, or rather an immense rubbish heap, no matter what nationality they are, trapped into mouthing false repelling words which they then set free to wander from one lewd mouth to the other. A big happy family. Just like those universal preachers dream about. All joined together as though by an umbilical cord in a brotherhood of wheeling and dealing, trampling and dishonour.58 Individuality is the sacrifice demanded of Rosa by her ethnic community in exchange for her belonging, for it is seen as the sacrifice that they have had to make in order to seek belonging in Australia. Rando observes that Oh Lucky Country is ultimately a novel about individuality.59 Rosa, in the final moments of the narrative, breaks free from her friends and retreats from the ethnic community and society itself, finally finding the solitude she sought in the blue sky in the novel’s opening lines. In the closing lines to Oh Lucky Country, however, Cappiello denounces the individualism of her narrative: Only that you elaborate complicated contrasting thoughts believing that you have stumbled into a tunnel of grief which will never come to an end. But it will end, I know it will, and all this will not have happened, because what has happened and continues to happen belongs to too many people and to recognize oneself in all this is impossible.60 Through her use of the generalised ‘I’ and ‘you’, Cappiello effectively dissolves Rosa’s individual identity and transforms it into a metanarrative of migration and multiculturalism in Australia. Having fought for her individuality throughout the narrative, and having sought to be seen as different, if not better, than the other migrants around her, Rosa finally recognises that her socio-economic, her cultural and her artistic plights are shared by
56 For an in-depth examination of women’s roles in the Italian community, with a specific focus on unpacking the reasons behind this ‘type’ and the pressure to conform to certain values and standards experienced by Italian Australian women, see Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife," pp.5-7, 23-40. 57 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 15. 58 Ibid., p. 37. 59 Rando, "From Great Works to Alcheringa," p. 64. 60 Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, p. 236.
81 many others. Rosa’s quest for a cohesive individual and artistic identity and her struggle against the homogenising forces of both multiculturalism and ethnic community ultimately fails. Grotesque, ironic and humorous, reading Cappiello’s Oh Lucky Country as ethnic bildungsroman ultimately reveals a bleak narrative of failed ethnic and artistic identity formation, and portrays migration and multiculturalism as assimilation and exploitation. The criticisms of multiculturalism embedded in the narrative highlight assumptions that migrant and ethnic identities are communal and homogenous, and ultimately reveal multicultural ideology itself as homogenising; in Cappiello’s narrative, multiculturalism seeks to homogenise ethnic identities and communities, who in turn seek to force individuals, such as Rosa, to conform to an assumed set of values. Italianness and Australianness never precisely intersect in Cappiello’s narrative, but are mediated through more general concepts of migrancy and multicultural ideology. With the exception of the scriptwriter’s assumptions about (southern) Italianness, Rosa is never discriminated against because she is Italian, but because she is another migrant. Rosa’s individual quest fails: she is not Italian, Australian, Italian Australian or a writer. She is a migrant worker whose identity is subsumed by class, gender and a homogenous concept of ethnicity.
Peter Dalseno: Sugar, Tears and Eyeties (1994) Hage argues that the movement from multiculturalism as cultural government to multiculturalism as national identity is one of the most important ideological shifts between the governments of the 1970s and the 1980s.61 Indeed, this is a significant shift between Cappiello and Dalseno’s narratives when reading them within the context of multiculturalism and the ethnic bildungsroman. While Cappiello’s narrative was written during and about the first years of multiculturalism in Australia, Dalseno wrote Sugar, Tears and Eyeties after his retirement in the late 1980s. Dalseno uses multiculturalism as a retrospective lens for viewing his own experiences, and the experiences of his Italian community in north Queensland during the 1920s and 1930s. Multiculturalism is presented as the cultural ideal towards which Australia was inevitably pointed, and is evaluated in a more positive light by Dalseno than Cappiello. Most importantly, I argue that Dalseno embraces multiculturalism as a form of national identity; there is a sense in
61 Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism, p. 60.
82 Dalseno’s narrative that there is Italian, Australian and multicultural Australian. Sugar, Tears and Eyeties revises many of the themes explored in the analysis of Bonutto’s A Migrant’s Story in Chapter 2, namely assimilation, citizenship and ethnic identity, but Dalseno is more critical of assimilationism than Bonutto, largely due to his multiculturalist perspective. The protagonist, Peter Delano, is presented as a sort of multicultural hero within this ethnic bildungsroman; it is his quest to overcome the assimilationist attitudes he has adopted at school, to formulate an identity as an Italian Australian and, through acknowledging his own ethnicity, to contribute to Australia’s growing cultural diversity. Rando describes Sugar, Tears and Eyeties as “a second generation perspective about growing up Italian in the North Queensland cane fields in the 1930s.”62 Dalseno, who was born in Italy in 1921 and migrated to Australia at age two, belongs to the social category that includes overseas-born who migrated to Australia in infancy or early childhood as belonging to the second generation.63 It is easiest yet also rather problematic to conflate the character of Peter Delano with Peter Dalseno the author. The biographical information provided on the book’s back cover is both a brief author’s biography and narrative summary, encouraging the reader to read the narrative as autobiography by revealing the similarities between Dalseno’s life and Peter’s narrative. Peter, like Dalseno, migrates at age two, grows up on the cane fields of north Queensland, is educated in Catholic schools and eventually becomes an accountant. Peter’s wife, however, is named Patrizia, whereas Dalseno’s partner is named Gladys in the book’s dedication. Rando, however, presents no doubt about the narrative’s status as a family biography and as an autobiography.64 Dalseno assures his readers quite emphatically in his preface that “the foregoing pages are factual,”65 and subsequently further explains his choice to fictionalise his own life and the lives of the members of the community in which he grew up in the Herbert River region of north Queensland: In the initial stages, I was drawn to an urge…to portray in a complimentary manner, the exodus of the emigrants from their native shores and to project the exploits of these people, their successes and their notable achievements. I
62 Rando, "Italo-Australiani and After: Recent Expressions of Italian Australian Ethnicity and the Migration Experience," p. 71. 63 Vasta, "The Second Generation," pp. 155-56. 64 Rando, "Italo-Australiani and After: Recent Expressions of Italian Australian Ethnicity and the Migration Experience," p. 71. 65 Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, p. v.
83 am no historian and I am humble enough to concede the task to more capable hands. However, the more excuses I made the more I was faced with the opinion that ‘Truth is stranger than Fiction’, with the consequence I was drawn to an urge – of another category … – to record the personal experiences of a small segment of a particular migration in the early 1920’s [sic]. … I have taken licence … to substitute names, locality and in some cases omit a specific appendage to an event, for the sake of camouflage.66 The use of fictionality in autobiography and biography allows writers to disguise real events and real people for the purpose of protecting those involved without having to sacrifice the significance of the events or the characters. As with Oh Lucky Country and its portrayal of the Italian community in Sydney, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties often portrays the Italian community of the Herbert River region of north Queensland in what Dalseno admits to being a less than flattering light. Camilla Bettoni argues that the Herbert River region, situated in the Hinchinbrook Shire, during the two World Wars “was in fact a spontaneously dynamic multicultural society; a mosaic of Australians, Sicilians, Calabrians, Piedmontese, Lombards and Venetians.” 67 On the one hand, Dalseno’s narrative successfully portrays Italians in Australia as comprising diverse social and cultural groups, thereby dispelling the assumption of Italian and other ethnic communities as homogenous. On the other, this cultural diversity echoes scales of assimilability into the Australian mainstream established in the Ferry Report of 1925, which, as discussed in Chapter 2, professed the greater desirability of northern Italian over southern Italian immigrants.68 Migrants originating from the southern regions of Italy are portrayed in the narrative as inherently morally bankrupt, and their home regions are subject to harsh criticism. Men from the northern regions, with the exception of those from the city of Mantova, are portrayed in a more flattering light. That southern Italians are seen as inferior and detrimental to the Italian community of north Queensland is displayed in the lack of remorse at the realisation that those lost from their community in the Herbert River flood of 1927 were all Sicilians: Again there was evidence of the inclinations of Italians to congregate according to their province, Piedmontese seeking Piedmontese, Lombardians
66 Ibid., pp. v-vii. 67 C. Bettoni, "The Italians of North Queensland in a Novel by a Journalist," in Espresso, Coretto or White? Some Aspects of the Italian Presence in Australia (Melbourne: Catholic Intercultural Resource Centre, 1986), p. 13. 68 Cresciani, Migrants or Mates: Italian Life in Australia, 79-80.
84 seeking Lombardians and the other provincial expatriates with allied expatriates. Noteworthy was the realization that all the souls who perished were “Bass’Italia”. By some quirk of fate, they were all Sicilians.69 This is a contrast to Bonutto’s more diplomatic response to prevailing Australian opinions of southern Italians in the 1920s and 1930s: in my contacts and association with Australians I have often heard it expressed that they like northern Italians but have no time for southern Italians. As an Italian it would be unethical for me to pass comment on this attitude. In the course of my wanderings throughout North Queensland I made many Sicilian friends and I always found them wonderful people if one tried to understand them and overlook their small peculiarities. I found them generous, warm- hearted and very loyal to their friends and relatives.70 Where Dalseno’s depiction of regional differences amongst the Italian community of north Queensland tends to exacerbate negative perceptions of southern Italians, Bonutto’s depiction generally aims to combat them. A comparison between Bonutto’s autobiography and Dalseno’s autobiographical novel is inevitable given their descriptions of the Queensland cane fields, their similar experiences of internment and their narratives’ thematic preoccupation with assimilation and citizenship. Dalseno’s exploration of assimilation, however, comes from the interesting perspective of the prewar second generation. As a six year-old, Pierino Delano reluctantly begins school at the Halifax Convent boarding school, and is beaten and shaken into taking on the Anglicised form of his name, Peter. He soon adjusts to life at school but, one evening in bed, “consumed by melancholy,” young Peter dwells upon the shifts his cultural identity is undergoing: ‘You are Peter!’ he thought. ‘I am no longer Pierino.’ He had not given any conscious thought to his dual personality – still less to believe he was Italian simply because a certificate officially declared that he was born in Europe…or that he was an Australian simply because he now lived in a land where he was being educated in the British tradition, albeit with a sprig of Irish flavouring. The last Italian words he had spoken were to his mother, and he felt that the more he dwelt on the subject, the more confusing it became. Experiences and events of yesteryear – Italian in thought and in
69 Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, p. 72. 70 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 64.
85 words – he found himself transcribing them into the English language. He saw himself recalling ‘Italian’ experiences and interpreting them in English.71 Vasta focuses her study of the second generation primarily on the postwar years because of the lack of systematic research available about prewar, second generation Italian Australians, however many of the linguistic and pedagogical issues she explores are evident in Dalseno’s narrative.72 Dalseno illustrates the difficult processes of identity formation experienced by the second generation who, until they reached schooling age, grew up geographically in Australia but culturally and linguistically Italian.73 Bonutto, on the other hand, believes that young (or indeed infant) migrants “more easily surmount the problems of assimilation.” 74 Citing the example of his two young nephews who migrated at the ages of eight and ten and were educated, like Dalseno and Peter, in boarding schools, Bonutto states: “In every other way [but their hazy childhood memories of Italy] they are purely and simply Australians.”75 Dalseno describes Peter’s identity in more complex and fractured terms: “He was Italian by birth, Australian by domicility, and Irish in spirit.” 76 This young Peter, aged approximately thirteen and still at his Irish Catholic boarding school at the time of these reflections, articulates no conception of citizenship until his failed attempt to enlist in the Australian army necessitates it. Once again, the internment of Italians during World War II is used to explore issues of citizenship and identity. At the outbreak of war, Peter decides to enlist with the Australian army but soon discovers that his citizenship is “unresolved.”77 Peter’s right to Australian citizenship through his mother’s marriage to a naturalised Italian migrant when Peter was approximately four years-old ‘expired’ at age sixteen: “I’m now nineteen years old – still a minor! Accordingly, I am too old to enjoy the benefit of my mother’s citizenship; too young, to be eligible to apply for the rights. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one years, I live in a state of limbo.”78 Through his separation from his Italian family and his education in Irish Catholic schools, Peter has come to think of himself as an Australian but
71 Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, pp. 69-70. 72 Vasta, "The Second Generation," p. 156. 73 Ibid., pp. 156-57. 74 Bonutto, A Migrant's Story, p. 10. 75 Ibid. 76 Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, p. 136. 77 Ibid., p. 190. 78 Ibid., p. 186.
86 discovers he is Italian by default. To highlight Peter’s apparent Australianness, Dalseno compares him to the young soldiers guarding the internment camps: The soldier, a corporal, cast a sidelong glance at Peter. … Could that man, an enemy alien, be accused of being so diverse in cultural and social characteristics that co-existence would be as incongruous as society and propaganda predicated? He spoke the same language. He attended similar schools. He played the same sports. He upheld the same moral and religious principles. And he was as young as he was himself, with the same desires, the same hopes and the same zest for life.79 Like Bonutto, Dalseno is critical of the lack of differentiation between naturalised and unnaturalised migrants in the internment process: They had considered that point of sensitivity, but had discarded the mental sensation. It was no longer a matter of identification of an Italian as an Alien; he was now indelibly tattooed – an Enemy-Alien. It was traumatic. It carried a stigma. The Naturalization Certificate that attested to his allegiance to the Crown and the influenced his pride in citizenship, now remained suspect – valueless in a moral and civil sense.80 Here, Dalseno speaks generally of interned migrants, as Peter is in the limbo of being neither naturalised nor unnaturalised. Peter’s disillusionment in the Anglo Australian system in which he has been educated is complete not with his own internment, but that of Joe Cantamessa, who provides Peter with a father-figure throughout his childhood. Like Bonutto, Cantamessa is a naturalised citizen who successfully negotiates Italian and Australian communities: “Of Piedmontese lineage, he and his wife devoted their allegiance to the ‘New Land’, and directed their energy towards a programme of absorbing the contemporary and indigenous custom while retaining their love of tradition and faith in the land of their birth.”81 Cantamessa is also heavily involved in the social, political and economic affairs of his region, for which he is publicly recognised in a visit from the Prime Minister. When Peter encounters Cantamessa in the internment camp, he is described as conveying “an air of a truly disillusioned, traumatic and offended citizen.”82
79 Ibid., pp. 218-19. 80 Ibid., p. 199-200. 81 Ibid., p. 104. It is unclear in this passage whether “indigenous” refers to Aboriginal Australians or British settlers, but there is insufficient evidence to support a claim that it is the former. 82 Ibid., p. 265.
87 Internment provides a useful climax to the narrative and to Peter’s development. As discussed above, Peter’s Irish Catholic education and his geographical reality schooled him into an assimilated Australian identification – Italianness is a fading memory and a coincidence of birth that Peter actively suppresses in order to gain belonging and place in the schoolyard. Peter’s experiences in the internment camp are central to the development of his ethnic identity because he is temporarily excluded from official definitions of who can be Australian and is forced, through his classification as an Italian enemy alien, to rethink his ethnic identification. Early in his internment, Peter befriends Frederico, a communist chef who is subtly instrumental in awakening Peter’s acceptance of his Italianness. When Peter asks Frederico whether it is disloyal to side with the sentiments of their detainers, Frederico replies: I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at. Contempt for what? You have learnt nothing! To think like that, young man, you are not an Italian. Loyalty is for the family! Remember that! You are loyal to no one but to your family. When you are sick, who is by your bedside? Huh! And when you die, who is by your graveside? Huh!…La bella gioventu [sic], youth is so beautiful. A time for so much enthusiasm. You have been to school, yes? Studied to read and write? But your greatest lesson is yet to begin. Study man! From him, you will learn the very core of life – pain, anguish, desire, love, hate. If you are lucky you might learn a little of happiness! 83 Peter’s doubt as to where his loyalty lies attests to the thoroughness of his assimilation, but Frederico pares loyalty down to a basic human rather than civic relationship, much in the same way that Egle Bonutto defined her national loyalty through her husband. Upon reaching legal maturity, Peter obtains citizenship. After Peter is eventually released from the camp to work in the Civil Alien Corps, he is soon promoted to a clerical position in the Civil Construction Corps and recommended by the local police for citizenship.84 His newfound sympathy and allegiance with Italian Australians is signified by his regret at being alienated from those with whom he had worked in the Civil Alien Corps: “[The recommendation for citizenship] represented a lift of emotions for Peter. Of age, he had access to citizenship. It did produce an undesirable side-effect in that in receiving the benefits of ‘one of them’ – as one Italian put it – he alienated himself
83 Ibid., p. 214. 84 Ibid., p. 276.
88 from his former co-workers.”85 In his new workplace, however, Peter “came to understand the meaning of tolerance. He was addressed as ‘Mate’.” 86 Prominent in liberal multicultural theory, the notion of tolerance is criticised for maintaining a hierarchical relationship between dominant cultures, primarily Anglo Celtic, and migrant and ethnic groups: “toleration … only makes sense if one believes there is one single way of life that is superior to all others.”87 Vasta further argues that the ideology of tolerance allows also for the tolerance of racism.88 Peter never articulates an Italian or Italian Australian identity. Instead, he learns to tolerate his Italianness as a difference within his own Australianness. Further evidence of Peter’s newfound ideology of tolerance is demonstrated in his reflections as he finally returns home to Patrizia with his Australian citizenship: So much water had flowed under the bridge since his absence. The exposure to hostility and humiliation by the Australian he forgave as acts provoked by the urgencies of war; the contempt by the Germans armed him with a warning of their aggressiveness; the exasperation and frustration with the Italians he regarded as traits of a people living according to an animal instinct, the will to survive at whatever cost.89 In his preface Dalseno states: “I profit by the experience [of “the multicultural scene”] for it expands for me the panorama of perspective. The process of change further enriches my observations and my personal conscious pleasure.” 90 Dalseno’s conception of multiculturalism, however, is largely integrationist and tokenistic. Family members’ nationalities, such as Peter’s Asian daughter-in-law and Patrizia’s French cousins, are highlighted to demonstrate his family’s ethnic diversity, and their apparent linguistic diversity is cited as part of Peter’s “contribution to the aspect of multiculturalism.”91 Whether the family’s cultural practices have been at all impacted by this apparent diversity is not discussed, but there is a sense that the Delano family has not, through their diversity, created any new and hybrid forms of cultural practices and identification.
85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 C. L. Ten, "Liberalism and Multiculturalism," in Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism, ed. Gordan L. Clark, Dean Forbes, and Roderick Francis (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993), p. 56. 88 Vasta, "Dialectics of Domination: Racism and Multiculturalism," p. 70. 89 Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, p. 277. 90 Ibid., p. vi. 91 Ibid., p. 278.
89 The narrative of Peter culminates in his recognition as an Australian, symbolised by his citizenship and apparent in his linguistic and cultural assimilation at a young age. However it is by interpreting Peter’s narrative retrospectively through multiculturalism and by placing Peter’s story within the broader context of Italian settlement in north Queensland that Dalseno maintains a semblance of Peter’s ethnic identity; that is, multiculturalism gives importance to an ethnic heritage that Peter had otherwise rejected, thereby allowing him to complete the quest of the ethnic bildungsroman. For Dalseno, however, the act of autobiography itself becomes an act of resistance and, in his own view, his contribution to multiculturalism. Although Dalseno identifies as Australian,92 his focus on the ethnic heritage of his family members, although problematic and tokenistic, is an attempt to expand definitions of Australianness and to claim multiculturalism as a form of national identity that allows for contained diversity.
Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli: Tapestry (1999) Aided by her academic background in issues of social diversity, Pallotta-Chiarolli succeeds in presenting a more sophisticated understanding of multicultural identities than Dalseno, albeit equally celebratory. Popular analogies for multiculturalism include mosaics and kaleidoscopes, and here Pallotta-Chiarolli utilises imageries of tapestries and weaving to represent the intersections and interactions of diverse identities and histories. Pallotta- Chiarolli uses the third-person narration and chronological shifts to thematically arrange the intersecting lives of her autobiographical protagonist, Maria, and her family members. Unlike Oh Lucky Country and Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, Pallotta-Chiarolli claims Tapestry as both autobiography and biography.93 Maria’s development as a multicultural Italian Australian is thus presented as inseparable from her family’s pasts in both Italy and Australia. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli was born in Adelaide in 1960 to Stefano and Dora Pallotta, who also had a son, Tony, in 1965.94 Stefano migrated to Australia in 1956, joining relatives already settled in Adelaide, and was followed by Dora two years later. Pallotta-Chiarolli received a Catholic primary and secondary education and completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide. She married Robert Chiarolli in 1983
92 Ibid., p. vi. 93 Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Weaving Textual Tapestries," p. 153. 94 All autobiographical information is taken from Tapestry. See Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, passim.
90 and their only child, Stephanie (Steph), was born in 1988. Pallotta-Chiarolli is currently a Senior Lecturer in social diversity and health at Deakin University, and focuses her work primarily on HIV/AIDS, sexuality, gender and ethnicity. She has published several non- fiction books, including Someone You Know (1991), Boys’ Stuff (2001) and Girls’ Stuff (1998). Tapestry was published in 1999, and was shortlisted for both the Children’s Book Council Award and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. In her essay, “Weaving Textual Tapestries: Weaving the ‘Italian Woman- Writer’ into the Social Fabric” (2004), Pallotta-Chiarolli elaborates upon the multiple and fluid identity with which she closes Tapestry, and explains how her version of multiculturalism also incorporates gender and sexual cultural diversities, as well as the traditional definition based upon notions of ethnic cultural diversity.95 Pallotta-Chiarolli’s narrative is both unique and invaluable because of her informed, self-reflexive approach to writing about her Italian Australian identity. Most recently she has begun to use notions of mestizaje and border-dwelling to explore her various roles and identities, evident also in her construction and exploration of her identity in Tapestry.96 By utilising the motif of weaving and tapestries, Pallotta-Chiarolli acknowledges the multiple sites of identity, and conceptualises identity itself as “fluid, transitory, fragmented, episodic.” 97 Chronological fragmentation and intersection are distinct narrative features of Tapestry. The various time periods – that of Maria’s grandparents and parents, and her own past and present, which itself describes anywhere between her marriage in 1983 to her return from Italy – are indicated by a change in font and italicisation. Pallotta-Chiarolli explains: experimentation with … different fonts, boldness or type size [draws] readers’ attention to complex and multiple perspectives. … Significant suturing and scissoring strategies in Tapestry include the fragment form or use of vignettes, anecdotes and layered stories which may or may not be linked chronologically or systematically. 98
95 Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Weaving Textual Tapestries," pp. 166-67. 96 Ibid., pp. 152-53. Mestizaje identities are ‘mixed’ or syncretic identities. Gloria Anzaldúa, the primary theorist of mestizaje identities, states: “The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode.” Drawing from Anzaldúa, Bromley argues that these identities are “sites of cultural resistance and refusal, empowering critical difference.” See G. Anzaldúa, Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987), p. 79; Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, p. 4. 97 Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Weaving Textual Tapestries," p. 153. 98 Ibid., p. 155.
91 Four women named Maria are featured prominently in the narrative: the main protagonist who is referred to as either Maria or Maria Giovanna Pallotta or Pallotta- Chiarolli, her maternal grandmother, her paternal grandmother and her aunt by marriage: “The name Maria is like a basic chord that links many of the stories together.”99 The shortened and lengthened versions of Pallotta-Chiarolli’s name are also a means for articulating her dual identity: As for me, my name has always really been two, for both grandmothers. However, as another symbol of being a child born into what seemed to be two worlds, my name also represents that duality – Maria for the Australian self “out there” and Maria Giovanna for the Italian self within my community. 100 Pallotta-Chiarolli also explores the importance of gender, place and work in shaping an individual’s identity but her ethnic identity is expressed primarily in terms of duality or hybridity between Italian and Australian cultures, recognising also that her Italian ethnic identity is specifically southern in origins.101 Pallotta-Chiarolli’s understanding of what is Australian is largely based on a broad idea of multiculturalism. When in Florence, a Chinese restaurant where the owners speak perfect Italian makes Maria realise that “[s]he missed the multicultural, multisexual diversity of a Brunswick Street, of Darlinghurst and Newtown.” 102 Visiting an ‘Australiana’ shop in Venice, however, Maria is disappointed to discover her idea and experience of Australia and Australianness is not what is marketed to foreigners and tourists: It seemed that marketing Australia for tourists to Australia and marketing Australia for Italians and tourists wandering around Venice meant the same things: a flat monocultural version of Australia of Anglocentric kitsch. What
99 Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, p. i. 100 Ibid., p. ii. 101 For discussions of Italian Australian identities and hybridity, see L. Baldassar, "Marias and Marriage: Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality among Italo-Australian Youth in Perth," Journal of Sociology 35, no. 1 (1999); L. Hynes, "Looking for Identity: Food, Generation and Hybridity in Looking for Alibrandi," Screen Education, no. 24 (2000); V. Marotta, "The Hybrid Subject and the Italian Australian Identity," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000). For more general discussions beyond Italian Australian identities, see also Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging; M. Lo, "Towards a Particular Hybridity: A Beginning," Westerly Summer (1999); N. Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization, and Hybridity (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000). 102 Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, p. 7.
92 was most disturbing were the same fake Aboriginal artefacts, fake Aboriginal prints on dishcloths and coffee mugs. 103 Italian perceptions of Australia further demonstrate common ignorance about those Italians who migrated to Australia.104 Contemporary Italians find it difficult to understand how Maria came to speak Italian so well, and are incredulous to discover that people migrated without knowing the language of their new country.105 Eventually Maria realises that she feels more comfortable or empathetic with those who are themselves migrants to Italy, displaced refugees or “transient multiplaced travellers.”106 She encounters two Macedonian refugees who see Italy as “just a transient place … a ‘waiting place for between nothing and everything’”, and Australia as “the lucky country … [where] you can go to school, raise a family, have good health, and not worry about bombs dropping on you.” 107 Ufak, a self-labelled “transient” originally from the border of lower Mongolia who lives and works in Italy during the summer months and travels the world in winter, also desires to make a home in Australia but for different reasons than those of the refugees: if I come to Australia I’ll be seeing every country in one yet not seeing them at all. I could see Italy in Australia, couldn’t I, but later realise I haven’t really seen it. I will come to Australia when I can no longer live like this, when I am old and need one place in which I can have many places. 108 While the Macedonian refugees see Australia as a place of safety and opportunity, Ufak sees it as the place where a weary traveller can retire as a world citizen. Ufak’s idea of seeing “Italy in Australia” without really seeing it is an important aspect of Maria’s experiences travelling in Italy. Italy, its culture and its people are both familiar and foreign to her, and their version of Italian identity also appears limiting: “Apart from the imposed mono-multiculturalism of McDonald’s, and without the throngs of tourists, Italy’s people had a sameness they vehemently seemed to want to protect from outsiders.” 109 The version of Italian culture and community with which she had grown up
103 Ibid. 104 Baldassar found that many Italian Australians, both migrants and members of the successive generations, visiting Italy expressed dismay at Italians’ general lack of knowledge about and interest in Australia, and the Italian Australian migrations. Baldassar, Visits Home, p. 332. 105 Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, pp. 20-21. 106 Ibid., p. 21. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid., p. 22. 109 Ibid., p. 7.
93 in Australia is not the version Maria encounters in modern Italy, but she understands the underlying duality she finds there due to her own experiences of duality. Pallotta-Chiarolli describes this Italian duality as “the cultural, artistic, polite, public Italy: the Italy of Venice and Florence. Underneath this Italy or perhaps within and supporting this Italy was the other Italy. … It was the duality of onore e vergogna [honour and shame], where any disclosure that tainted the surface illusion was stifled.” 110 Through Maria’s encounters with refugees and transient travellers in Italy, Pallotta-Chiarolli creates a picture of Italy comprising multiple layers or faces, which is also further layered by the Italy of her family memory and the sense of Italianness they have created in Australia. These multiple Italies are so densely woven that Maria is unable to identify any one thread as the original, the internal or the external. Changes in Italy and Australia are further illustrated through Pallotta- Chiarolli’s exploration of Italian men’s experiences as gendered and anchored within specific socio-historical contexts. When in Italy, Maria’s uncle recalls how her father Stefano was thought to be effeminate because he did not work the fields with the other men, as he was a sickly youth: ‘Il Feminino [sissy boy], that’s what we called him,’ Zio Angelo admits as he talks about Stefano as a boy. Lunch has just ended. Fabbio and Paolo are clearing the table and will soon be helping to wash up. Fabbio is preparing the coffee. They had also helped prepare the meal and Maria has noticed how they care for Anna Lisa so affectionately, even reprimanding their father if they think he’s not watching over his daughter carefully enough. Their grandfather takes this all in and says, ‘Funny how things change. Look at the way these boys are. It all seems so natural now, but your father was ahead of his time, and got hell for it … Now I can’t even understand why we teased him.’ 111 Zio Angelo’s recollections demonstrate the shifts in Italian attitudes towards gender and masculinity, as participation in the domestic sphere by males is seen as ‘natural’.112 This is juxtaposed against Maria’s memories of teenage Italian boys in Australia whose “interests
110 Ibid., p. 6. 111 Ibid., pp. 181-82. 112 Many of Baldassar’s participants in her study of Italian Australians who visit Italy, not to mention Baldassar herself, actually report a greater sense of restriction in Italian gender codes and norms, but note that male-female relationships amongst younger Italians are shifting towards equality. See Baldassar, Visits Home, pp. 30-32, 310-12.
94 [were] confined to cars and soccer, and with long-term aims of marrying a good Italian girl, virginal and obedient, who will be the housebound mother-wife type.”113 These boys’ attitudes are related to the maintenance in Australia of Italian traditions and values, dated from their parents’ migration, which are no longer prevalent in Italy, much like the practice of making tomato sauce.114 Recounting her family history also allows Pallotta-Chiarolli to explore changes in attitudes to gender and sexuality over the generations and across countries, and to challenge many assumptions about ‘Italian’ attitudes towards these issues. The thematic layering of experiences allows for a direct comparison of Maria’s experiences with those of her parents and grandparents, and occasionally evokes a sense that the women are sharing the experiences of awakening sexuality, menstruation and childbirth across the barriers of space and time: And the thirty-something women, with their sixty-something mothers and their own daughters on the borders of childhood and adolescence, feel again that intergenerational connection, despite the differences and because of their powerful similarities, the connection of being women in women’s bodies. 115 Maria’s pregnancy and childbirth, for example, becomes a site for the sharing of personal experiences, in which Steph also becomes involved when she reads her mother’s pregnancy diary at age seven. 116 Maria’s daughter Steph gives voice to a young third generation who have grown up entirely within an era of multicultural ideology in Australia.117 Indeed Italian
113 Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, p. 195. Pallotta-Chiarolli’s early research into Italian Australian attitudes toward gender roles focuses primarily upon women’s experiences of the pressure to be a good Italian girl and become a good Italian wife, but does not fully explore men’s roles and experiences in perpetuating this stereotype. For such an exploration, see Baldassar, "Marias and Marriage," pp. 11-13. See also Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'."; "From Coercion to Choice." 114 For a discussion of tomato sauce making as an act of cultural maintenance performed by migrants and their families, see Hynes, "Looking for Identity," pp. 31-32, 34-36; R. James, "The Reliable Beauty of Aroma: Staples of Food and Cultural Production among Italian-Australians," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15, no. 1 (2004): pp. 25-28. 115 Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, p. 219. As argued in Chapter 2, explorations of migrant women’s experiences rarely delve into issues of sex and sexuality. 116 Ibid., pp. 41-44. 117 Census data is concentrated on quantifying the first and second generations as the reliability of the data decreases with the third and subsequent generations; these later generations more frequently cite their ancestry as ‘Australian’ than migrant-origin figures would suggest. Ian H. Burnley argues that “while many
95 Australian narratives – such as Tapestry, Looking for Alibrandi, Saving Francesca, The Dons, Wogaluccis and Love Takes You Home – often depict the maintenance of Italian Australian cultural and ethnic identities into the third generation. Like her mother, Steph has also grown up with a sense of having multiple homes and multiple carers, but she also expresses a sense of having multiple ethnicities: Steph: “My nonni [grandparents] are Italian, but one lot is from Friuli which isn’t really Italy. Nonna said so. And she said they speak their own language, not a dialect. My other nonni are Napolitani and speak a dialect. You and Papà are sort of Italian and sort of Australian….I don’t know which one to have.” Maria: “You can be both Italian and Australian, bella, and a mixture of North and South.” Steph: “No, Mamma, I mean which iceblock!” Maria (after some time): “So what are you, Steph? Italian, Australian, or both, or neither?” Steph (licking her ice cream): “I don’t know (lick, lick) but (lick) it doesn’t matter.” Maria: “Why doesn’t it matter?” Steph (with “infinite patience”): “You can be anything you wanna be, can’t you? We’re all different.” 118 Pallotta-Chiarolli’s conception of identity and culture as a tapestry is not fluid enough to articulate Steph’s identity, but instead seeks to contain it within certain categories. Pallotta- Chiarolli admits that her conception of identities, ethnicities and cultural diversity must necessarily become outdated.119
third-, fourth- or fifth-generation persons would be aware of their origins, many felt that their origins were Australian. This suggests that the [first and second] generation dimensions … are reasonable indicators of immigrant origin, from the sociological perspective of identity and behaviour. Identities that might segment Australian society would appear to be minimal in the third and subsequent generations. It is arguable, however, that if much identity is lost by the third generation, then other important attributes of value are also lost.” I. H. Burnley, The Impact of Immigration on Australia: A Demographic Approach (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 45. 118 Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, pp. 3-4. This lengthy passage has been reduced to the dialogue only. 119 Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Weaving Textual Tapestries," p. 167. See also Cafagna et al., "Panel Discussion on Exploring Identity and Community through the Arts and Culture", p. 800.
96
Conclusion In this chapter, multiculturalism and autobiographical fiction were explored as bridging concepts between the first and second stages of the Italian Australian model of narrative and identity development. These narratives have reflected how Australian concepts of multiculturalism have shifted significantly since its inception in the early 1970s and, more importantly, how multiculturalism has impacted upon the identity formation of first, second and third generation Italian Australians. Within the conceptual framework of the Italian Australian ethnic bildungsroman, multiculturalism has presented a challenge to ethnic identity formation. Cappiello’s protagonist Rosa ultimately fails to articulate an Italian, Australian or Italian Australian identity. Early multicultural policy and ideology of the 1970s fails to recognise her primary identity as a writer. Nonetheless, multicultural Australia seeks to exploit her Italian ethnicity and her literary ambitions as commodities. In this situation, Rosa can only succeed in her quest to be a writer and the quest of the ethnic bildungsroman if she accepts the problematic category of (Italian Australian) ‘migrant writer’. Dalseno’s narrative, however, embraces the commodification of ethnic identity. Although Peter ultimately accepts his Italian heritage, and in so doing completes the quest of the ethnic bildungsroman, his Italian identity is absorbed into his understanding of Australianness, which is he revises as multicultural. This form of multiculturalism, however, is as tokenistic as that which Cappiello encounters and derides. Multiculturalism is also central to Pallotta-Chiarolli’s understanding of Australianness, but her conceptualisation of multiculturalism shifts away from the tokenism and commodification of ethnic identity found in Cappiello and Dalseno’s narratives. Pallotta-Chiarolli understands multiculturalism as multifaceted diversity and not as covert assimilation. By identifying as Italian Australian, she believes that she contributes to multicultural Australia. Her journey to Italy allows her to recognise and appreciate Australia as multicultural and the extent to which her mode of identification contributes to this. The narratives explored in this chapter have introduced concepts of identity, ethnicity and multiculturalism that are taken up again in the second stage of the Italian Australian model of narrative and identity development. Most importantly, the shift into the second stage also signals a shift into fictional narratives. In these fictional narratives, stories of migration are revisited, retold and re-imagined. Remembering and understanding the migrant past plays an important role in the development and maturation of the
97 protagonists’ ethnic identities. Rather than focusing on the representation of actual experiences, these fictional narratives begin to imagine new ways of becoming and being Italian Australian.
98 Chapter 4
Alibrandi and Friends: Italian Australian Young Adult Fiction as Ethnic bildungsromane
I’ll run one day. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself. Not as an Australian and not as an Italian and not as an in-between. I’ll run to be emancipated. If my society will let me. Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi1
[Nonno] keeps dragging me back to his past. And then he reminds me of my past, of Dad. I don’t need to know any more of it! I’ve got the future to worry about, not the friggin’ past! Archimede Fusillo, The Dons2
The second stage in the trajectory of Italian Australian narrative and identity – comprising the fictional narratives of the second and third generations – is a site of negotiation. It is thematically preoccupied with interactions between the community and the individual, Italianness and Australianness, the past and the present – all as read through a distinctly generational framework. Stories from the past, of migration, are told by the first generation to the second and third, and authors belonging to these successive generations imagine stories of migration that illuminate the relationship between the present and the past. The Australian-born individual struggles against the Italian-born community. In this second stage, the protagonist’s quest is to negotiate a personal and cultural balance in their lives. Adult and young adult fiction necessarily deals with such themes in differing and distinct ways, according to the assumed age of the writer’s anticipated readership. Consequently, I have divided this second stage into young adult and adult categories, and closely examine the works over the following three chapters. This chapter examines young adult fiction, which contains the most overt explorations of ethnic identity formation and development within this conception of the Italian Australian ethnic bildungsroman. It argues that the coming of age of the young adult protagonist, that is their entrance into the adult
1 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 40. 2 A. Fusillo, The Dons (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 2001), p. 145. Original emphasis.
99 world, is represented as analogous to gaining an understanding, and raising their awareness and acceptance of their ethnic identity. Generational, peer and cultural conflict are predominant themes in Italian Australian narratives written for young adults, which the protagonists must negotiate in order to develop adult Italian Australian identities. Finally, this chapter examines recent shifts in representations of ethnic identities and protagonists in young adult fiction which have seen Italian Australian identities presented in an uncomplicated and uncontested manner. They foreshadow a movement into a third stage of the Italian Australian literary trajectory. Four narratives – Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi (1992), Archimede Fusillo’s two novels Sparring with Shadows (1997) and The Dons (2001), and Josie Montano’s Wogaluccis (2002) – are the focus of this chapter. Fusillo’s An Earful of Static (2003) and Bruises (2004) and Marchetta’s Saving Francesca (2003) will also be discussed briefly as they indicate a movement in young adult fiction into third stage representations of Italian Australian identities. Before moving into an analysis of these Italian Australian young adult narratives, it is first important to briefly explore the treatment of ethnicity and the role of bildungsromane and coming of age narratives in Australian young adult literature.
Ethnicity in Australian young adult literature: a lively graveyard In her vision for Italian American women’s writing, Helen Barolini looks forward to a time when women are “economically able to support their writing without having to write for hire, or as ghosts, and without having their work shunted off to the graveyard category of romance or young adult books.”3 Although Barolini is criticising the tendency to disregard critically or devalue the work of ethnic minority writers as ‘unliterary’, this description of young adult fiction as a “graveyard category” itself devalues an area in which some of the undoubtedly more popular and commercially successful works by Italian Australian authors are found. Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi, as both a book and a film, has achieved an almost iconic status in Australian culture and is commonly studied as a high school text. Fusillo is more prolific than Marchetta. His books are also studied in Australian schools, and Fusillo contributes to critical discussions of cultural diversity and masculinity in children’s and young adult literature.4 Marchetta, Fusillo and Montano are
3 H. Barolini, "Italian American Women Writers," in The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, ed. Pellegrino D'Acierno (New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1999), p. 247. Emphasis added. 4 See A. Fusillo, "High Brow, Low Brow: Boys and Books," Viewpoint 8, no. 2 (Winter) (2000); "Cultural Diversity and the Writer," Viewpoint 10, no. 4 (Summer) (2002); "Italian Literature, Language and Identity and
100 not failed or inferior writers, and their narratives are not devalued because of their ethnic content. These writers choose to write for adolescent audiences and, in the case of both Marchetta and Fusillo, they also express a belief in the importance of representing the culturally diverse reality experienced by the majority of Australian young adults and children.5 In terms of serious literary criticism, however, Barolini’s comment holds some legitimacy. Aside from specialist volumes of criticism, children’s and young adult fiction is easily overlooked in by critical analysts. Australia, notes Heather Scutter, is fortunate to be home to several scholars in the history and criticism of children’s and young adult books, but these are a few enthusiasts amongst the many uninterested.6 Journals such as Viewpoint: On Books For Young Adults and Papers contribute to critical discussions and key debates surrounding children’s and young adult literature, such as form, content and teaching practices. The latter journal in particular brings literature for children and young adults into a broader academic context. Bronwyn Russell observes that prior to the 1980s anything not intended for adults was classified as children’s literature, and was expected to provide suitable moral examples for young readers.7 From the 1980s, children’s literature began to focus specifically on real problems children face and overcome, such as cultural conflict, alienation, family problems, and drugs and alcohol.8 Interestingly, Russell sees this focus on real issues as a continuation of early settler and adventure novels of the nineteenth century, which were concerned with how protagonists coped with life in Australia.9 Maria José Fernández focuses upon the multicultural aspect of this shift, observing that themes and narrative strategies in Australian children’s literature responded to the changing ethnic composition of Australian society. Fernández argues that this entailed a “different range of
the Use of Italian by Young Italo-Australians: (Panel 1) Reflections Regarding the Wish and/or Obligation to Use One's Linguistic Patrimony and Italian Cultural Background When Writing" (paper presented at the Italian and the Art of the Word, Italian Institute of Culture, Melbourne, 17 October 2002). 5 See Fusillo, "Cultural Diversity and the Writer."; M. Marchetta, "The Cultural Divide: Schoolyard Opens Window on Tolerance and Dignity," The Australian, 8 May 2002. 6 H. Scutter, Displaced Fictions: Contemporary Australian Books for Teenagers and Young Adults (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1999), p. 1. 7 B. Russell, "Identity Formation in Australian Young Adult Books" (Master of Library and Information Studies Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1996), p. 22. 8 Ibid.(Thesis), p. 40. 9 Ibid.(Thesis), pp. 34, 40.
101 contents and a concomitant need to articulate values of a kind no longer grounded in a putative Anglo monoculture.”10 Jeri Kroll, writing about children’s picture books, points out the negative aspect of ethnic representation in children’s literature, that the “ethnicity of non-Anglo protagonists [is usually presented] as a condition that sets them apart, making them direct their energies into adapting to a strange land.”11 Kroll applauds works that represent ethnic characters and cultural diversity “beyond the immigrant experience … so that the ethnicity of non-Anglo characters is no longer the focus.”12 The treatment of ethnicity in Australian children’s and young adult literature ranges from John Marsden’s multicultural ensemble in the Tomorrow, When the War Began series (comprising seven books published between 1993 and 2000),13 to Suzanne Gervay’s Italian Australian protagonist in Butterflies (2001) who struggles not with her ethnicity but with living with severe burn scars; and to Marchetta’s overt exploration of ethnic identity in Looking for Alibrandi. In his history of Australian children’s literature from 1941 to 1970, Maurice Saxby notes changes that occurred in content and context due to mass immigration throughout the 1950s and 1960s.14 As noted above, Russell also acknowledges the appearance and importance of non-Anglo Australian characters and storylines foregrounding cultural conflict and diversity during the 1980s and 1990s. Scutter, however, largely avoids in-depth exploration of these issues beyond brief mentions of multiculturalism and her analysis targets predominantly Anglo Australian writers.15
10 M. J. Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction: Allan Baillie's Secrets of Walden Rising and Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi," Papers 11, no. 3 (2001): p. 39. 11 J. Kroll, "The New Fringe Dwellers: The Problem of Ethnicity in Recent Australian Children's Picture Books," Ibid.9, no. 2 (1999): p. 31. 12 Ibid. 13 Marsden’s Tomorrow series is particularly interesting to read in terms of migration and ethnicity. The series details the changing relationships of a small group of teenagers and their guerrilla efforts in the wake of a military invasion of Australia. Although the invading country is not identified, its soldiers are indicated as being not white – they are called the ‘brown people’ – and the very premise of the book plays upon Australian fears of an ‘Asian invasion’. See Scutter, Displaced Fictions, pp. 171-84. 14 M. Saxby, Images of Australia: A History of Australian Children's Literature 1941-1970 (Sydney: Scholastic Australia, 2002), pp. 99-102. 15 Scutter’s discussion of Australian national identity in young adult fiction is limited to just one chapter. In this she only briefly discusses representations of Australia’s culturally diverse society but does provide more in-depth analysis of novels featuring Aboriginal characters and storylines directly addressing the relationship between Indigenous and other Australians. Despite this, none of the writers discussed in this chapter are non-Anglo Australian. See Scutter, Displaced Fictions, pp. 149-94.
102 According to Georgina Tsolidis, “[d]etermining an individual identity which feels comfortable is a major preoccupation during adolescence … [and is] marked by contradiction and confrontation involving sexuality, authority and decisions about life choices.”16 Almost all young adult narratives, to some extent, deal with the maturation of an adolescent protagonist and their identity formation, which is part of the shift in the content of young adult fiction observed by Russell. This focus on identity formation does not, however, mean that all young adult books should necessarily be classified as bildungsromane or that critics necessarily view them within that framework. Russell, for example, examines identity formation in Australian young adult books in its psychological and social contexts but does not employ the concept of the bildungsroman for reading the development of the adolescent protagonists. Scutter also does not discuss the bildungsroman at any great length but her brief allusions to it demonstrate an understanding of the bildungsroman as a form privileging the development of an adolescent into an adult and the person’s identity formation; Scutter defines the term simply as “the story of the growth of a young person into adult maturity”17 and “a rite of passage and a quest for identity.”18 Wendy Michaels also utilises the simplest understanding of the bildungsromane as coming of age stories.19 As discussed in Chapter 1, this understanding of bildungsromane as coming of age narratives is the most common. Such a limited understanding has led to an increased association of the genre with young adult fiction and, unfortunately, a consequent disregard and devaluing of the genre despite the growing status of young adult literature itself.
Melina Marchetta: Looking for Alibrandi (1992) Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi, one of the most successful Australian young adult novels, is certainly the most popular Italian Australian narrative. Of all the narratives examined in this thesis, Looking for Alibrandi is the most dogged, overt and almost literal in its development of the ethnic identity of its protagonist, an approach shared only by Montano’s Wogaluccis. In this narrative, seventeen-year-old Josephine Alibrandi (Josie), a third generation Italian Australian, narrates her negotiation of her sense of Italianness and her desire to be accepted within the upper echelons of the Anglo Australian mainstream.
16 G. Tsolidis, Educating Voula (Melbourne: Ministerial Advisory Committee on Multicultural and Migrant Education, 1986), p. 57. 17 Scutter, Displaced Fictions, p. 200. 18 Ibid., p. 243. 19 Michaels, "The Realistic Turn," p. 51.
103 Although this desire is played out most literally through Josie’s romantic desires, her cultural negotiation is central also to her interactions with her peers and to generational conflict within her family. Most importantly, Josie must gain an understanding of her family’s migrant and personal past in order to articulate her own sense of place and identity. Born in 1965, Melina Marchetta is a third generation Italian Australian who grew up in Sydney. She left school at the age of fifteen, later attending a business school. She began writing Looking for Alibrandi at age twenty-one, while she was working in a bank, and after being rejected by six publishers in seven years, the novel was eventually published in 1992 to both popular and critical acclaim.20 In addition to the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for Older Readers in 1993, Looking for Alibrandi was also awarded the Multicultural Book of the Year Award (presented by the now defunct Office of Multicultural Affairs) and the Kids Own Australian Literature Award (KOALA). Since her first novel’s publication, Marchetta completed a degree in education and has taught at St Mary’s Cathedral College in inner city Sydney since 1996.21 She also wrote the AFI Award-winning screenplay for the film adaptation of Looking for Alibrandi (1999). Her second book, Saving Francesca, was published in 2003, and also won the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year for Older Readers award in 2004. Despite the novel’s success, Scutter dismisses Looking for Alibrandi as sentimental melodrama and admits: “I don’t really like the self-justifying, somewhat smug world of Alibrandi, whose object of sentiment is so clearly her righteous self.”22 Scutter excludes Looking for Alibrandi from her discussion of multiculturalism and cultural identity in Australian young adult fiction, unlike Fernández who sees it as representative of how Australian children’s literature has responded to changes in the cultural make-up of Australian society.23 Had Scutter elected to read Looking for Alibrandi in the terms in which it most clearly frames itself – negotiating Italian ethnic identity within an emergent multicultural society – she may have found that Josie’s strident confidence is symptomatic of her desire to be seen as an individual, struggling against the expectations of her family and community, and the stereotyping to which she is subjected by Anglo Australians –
20 C. Webb, "Looking Beyond Alibrandi," The Age, 28 March 2003, p. 3. 21 Ibid. 22 Scutter, Displaced Fictions, p. 135. 23 Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction," p. 39.
104 with all of which she is often complicit. Josie often resists being seen as different, yet at the same time uses her difference to defend her actions: ‘That’s it,’ I yelled. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? It’s not because of how I make you feel. It’s because of what I am. Or maybe what I’m not. … I like being emotional. Italians are always emotional. You Australians are so cold.’ ‘Be rational. You’re an Australian too.’ ‘I’m emotional remember, Jacob. Emotional people can sometimes be irrational and I’m not an Australian. I’m a wog. I’m only an Australian when you people want to label me one and when you don’t I disappear or I go back to limbo. That’s what this is all about. My blood is too foreign for you.’24 Marchetta, through Josie, refers to these struggles and Josie’s desire to be seen as an individual as the wish to be “emancipated.”25 This notion of emancipation is analogous to the concept of personal and ethnic development and maturation central to the concept of the Italian Australian ethnic bildungsroman discussed in this thesis. Fernández identifies in Looking for Alibrandi “the tradition of the bildungsroman whereby the personal is political, in the sense that the main characters’ embracing of plurality, their questioning of social structures, values and prejudices, and their experiencing of alienation and isolation all have transcendental significance in terms of the Australian multicultural experience.”26 Initially, however, Josie struggles against Italianness, Australianness and even with ‘in-betweenness’, and is desirous of escape: I vowed like I do every time we have a fight that when I turn eighteen I’ll leave and never have anything to do with my family again. Not with my grandmother or meddling great aunts or cousins or gossiping family friends. I want to run from all of them. … I’ll run one day. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself. Not as an Australian and not as an Italian and not as an in-between. I’ll run to be emancipated. If my society will let me.27 This sense of being in-between refers more to the struggle between being Italian and being Australian, rather than identification as an Italian Australian or of having negotiated a
24 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 250. 25 Ibid., p. 40. 26 Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction," p. 40. 27 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 40.
105 balance between the two cultures. The possessive noun – “my society” – is deliberately ambivalent. On the one hand, it could refer to the restrictions she feels are placed upon her by her Italian family and community. On the other, this could refer to the stereotyping to which she is subjected by the Anglo Australian mainstream due to that very same Italian background. Through this ambivalence, Marchetta identifies the perceived dilemma of the second generation Italian Australian – the negotiation of two cultures.28 Vasta’s arguments regarding the children of migrants resonate with Marchetta’s narrative and accurately describes Josie’s trajectory toward ethnic maturation: Many of the second generation grow up with the experience of ‘cultural ambivalence’ which, during the uncertainties of adolescence, can provide the basis for severe conflicts between parents and children. The second generation are also involved in the process of developing identities which have to deal with racism. As adults, they become ‘cultural brokers’ who, in a variety of ways, represent their communities and negotiate Australian institutions as well as socio-political and cultural practices.29 Josie’s view of Australian society is binary; there are Anglo Australians and there are non- Anglo Australians – who are, more accurately, Europeans (or wogs). Initially she feels that she does not belong entirely to either of these worlds, and it is her quest that she should learn to negotiate between Italianness and Australianness in order to become a ‘cultural broker’. Interestingly, however, the character of Josie belongs to the third generation, which is not often discussed in sociological or demographic terms largely due to a decline in the reliability of data relating to the third and later generations.30 Burnley, as quoted in Chapter 3, argues that there is a significant decline in ethnic identification and cultural practice with the third and subsequent generations, and an increasing tendency to identify as Australian, despite an awareness of ethnic heritage.31 Italian Australian narratives, as argued in reference to Pallotta-Chiarolli’s Tapestry discussed in Chapter 3, often depict cultural maintenance and negotiation into the third generation. This can be largely
28 Miri Song presents an interesting discussion of cultural negotiation by the second generation as “code switching”. See Song, Choosing Ethnic Identity, pp. 106-08. For a further discussion of cultural negotiation by the second generation, see Pallotta-Chiarolli and Skrbis, "Authority, Compliance and Rebellion in Second Generation Cultural Minorities," pp. 260-61. 29 Vasta, "The Second Generation," p. 155. 30 Burnley, The Impact of Immigration on Australia, p. 45. 31 Ibid.
106 attributed to strong relationships between members of the first and third generations. In Looking for Alibrandi, Josie’s relationship with her grandmother is a source of conflict and tension, but there is frequent contact between Josie and Nonna Katia, which her mother Christina stresses as important, and by the narrative’s close there is a promise of the forging of a strong relationship based upon mutual cultural and personal understanding. Other factors may also include the young age at which Christina became pregnant and the era during which Josie grows up.32 Due to the lack of literature on the third generation, and due to the narrative focus upon cultural conflict and negotiation more commonly associated with the second generation, studies of the second generation necessarily inform the reading of Marchetta’s narrative.33 As with Cappiello’s and Pallotta-Chiarolli’s narratives discussed in Chapter 3, Marchetta’s novel reveals the complex relationships between individuals and their Italian communities, and the provisional nature of belonging. Looking for Alibrandi is the story of three generations of women struggling against the patriarchy and hypocrisy of their community, as well as trying to find a sense of belonging within Australia: “I think I had it worst. My mother was born here so as far as the Italians were concerned we weren’t completely one of them. Yet because my grandparents were born in Italy we weren’t completely Australian.”34 Christina’s experiences as the daughter of migrants are not thoroughly explored in the narrative, although her teenage romance with Michael Andretti and her subsequent pregnancy result partly from rebelliousness against her strict father and community and partly, Josie realises, due to loneliness within her dysfunctional family.35 Despite being a single mother, Christina is eventually accepted back into the Italian
32 The timeline of the Alibrandi family is never made entirely clear, and has been confused somewhat by setting the film in the late 1990s. It becomes evident that Nonna Katia migrated to Australia before the war, as her husband and brother-in-law were interned, but that she did not become pregnant with Christina until the 1950s, who then became pregnant at age seventeen. Consequently, Josie could have been born anywhere between the late 1960s to the early 1970s, with the book being set anywhere within the 1980s, when Marchetta began writing. 33 See Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds."; C. Guerra and R. White, "The Making of Ethnic Minority Youth," in Ethnic Minority Youth in Australia: Challenges & Myths, ed. Carmel Guerra and Rob White (Hobart: Clearinghouse for Youth Studies (NCYS), 1995); Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'."; "From Coercion to Choice."; Pallotta-Chiarolli and Skrbis, "Authority, Compliance and Rebellion in Second Generation Cultural Minorities."; Vasta, "The Second Generation."; "Youth & Ethnicity: The Second Generation." 34 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 7. 35 Ibid., p. 218.
107 community, after the death of her father allows her to re-establish a relationship with her mother, and she is employed as a bilingual medical secretary for an Italian Australian doctor in Leichhardt, Sydney’s Little Italy. Josie, however, feels that her immediate family’s position within the Italian community is tentative and conditional: I find that when I’m in [her Italian Australian friend Sera’s] home I crawl more to her parents than to anyone in the world. I’m charming and kiss them on both cheeks, knowing deep down they’d think nothing of tearing my family or myself to shreds. I’m not sure why I put up with it. Maybe for acceptance, because I think that if you’re an outcast with your own kind you’ll never be accepted by anyone.36 Similarly, Josie attempts to fit in at primary school by adapting her identification according to others’ criteria: The Australian girls were the worst. They’d come up to me and say ‘What nationality are you, Josie?’ and because I spoke Italian at home and I ate spaghetti and I lived like an Italian I’d say ‘I’m Italian’ and they’d put on a reprimanding voice. ‘No you’re not. You were born in this country. You’re an Australian.’ So the next day the same girls would come up to me and ask ‘What nationality are you, Josie?’ and I’d think to myself that these smart asses weren’t going to get me twice so I’d say ‘I’m an Aussie’ and they’d say ‘No, you’re not. You’re a wog.’37 Eventually, in a moment integral to her personal development and maturation, Josie learns that she too can be selective about the community to which she belongs: ‘Thank God your father’s a barrister,’ [Sera] said. ‘It’s respectable. Could you imagine what the community would think if he was just a labourer or something?” I looked up seeing the bus approaching behind her. ‘My community wouldn’t give a shit what my father does for a living, Sera. Only your stupid community does.’38
36 Ibid., pp. 19-20. 37 Ibid., p. 234. Carmel Guerra and Rob White state that school is one of the key institutions where young people of ethnic minority backgrounds experience racism. See Guerra and White, "The Making of Ethnic Minority Youth," pp. 7-8. 38 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 221.
108 In high school, Josie’s exclusion from various social and cultural groups is revealed to be largely self-constructed. The socio-economic make-up of Josie’s exclusive Catholic girls’ school is “dominated by rich people … [m]ostly Anglo-Saxon Australians, who [Josie] can’t see having a problem in the world” and “rich Europeans.”39 Josie differentiates between “rich people” and “rich Europeans” according to ethnic background; whereas the former have been wealthy and part of the Anglo Australian ‘establishment’ for several generations, the latter are those migrants who have worked hard as grocers and labourers in order to move out of the inner city suburbs and provide their children with expensive educations in order to attain respectability and facilitate upward social mobility.40 Both, however, are ‘respectable’, with the rich Europeans conforming to the standards set by the rich Anglo Australians.41 As an illegitimate child from an Italian Australian background and on scholarship, Josie clearly does not belong to either of these groups and firmly constructs an identity as an outsider. The revelation by Sister Louise, the school principal, that Josie had been elected school captain but had not been given the position due to her irresponsible attitude forces Josie to re-evaluate how she believes she is perceived by others: Trendsetters. Examples. School captain. Leaders. The words kept on running through my head and I began to see that maybe Sister wasn’t lying. Everyone loved Anna and everyone wanted to be Lee’s friend and although Sera got on everyone’s nerves she still managed to make people do the most incredible things and nobody ever called her a wog because she didn’t give a damn. And me? I was voted school captain. Socially we weren’t as shitty as we thought we were. … I knew deep down that I was wrong and I think that my emancipation began at that moment.42
39 Ibid., p. 6. 40 Ibid. Gucciardo notes the first generation’s reputation for both hard work and the heavy value placed upon their children’s education, but found that the second generation’s vocational aspirations were heavily influenced by sex-stereotyping, their own personal standards and family expectations. See Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds," pp. 23-24. For more on the changing class, social and occupational positions of Italians in Australia, particularly intergenerational mobility, see Panucci, Kelly, and Castles, "Italians Help Build Australia," pp. 67-72; Vasta, "The Second Generation," pp. 160-62. 41 This respectability is based primarily on the attainment of wealth. 42 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, pp. 184-85.
109 Despite her capacity as Vice-Captain to her school and her identification as middle-class, Josie seems to identify class, as represented by attendance at the ‘wrong’ primary school and receipt of a long-term scholarship, as the main reason for her status as an outsider, as well as being a child born out of wedlock attending a Catholic school: I think things got worse when I started at St Martha’s because I began to understand what the absence of a father meant. Also there were no Europeans like me. No Europeans that didn’t have money to back them up. The ones like me didn’t belong in the eastern and northern suburbs.43 At her primary school, on the other hand, Josie and her classmates shared both ethnic and class backgrounds: They were on my level. I related to them. They knew what it meant not to be allowed to do something. They knew what it meant to have a grandmother dressed in black for forty years. I looked like them. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. We sounded alike as well. It felt good being with other confused beings. We were all caught up in the middle of two societies.44 According to Russell, Josie views her father’s appearance in her life and their burgeoning relationship only as a “delightful means of advancing vocational goals and moving upward in society.”45 While Michael Andretti is conveniently a barrister, the same profession to which Josie aspires, and he does rescue her from a potentially damaging situation with Carly Bishop and her father, and provides her with work experience, he also becomes an Italian Australian role model for Josie, especially because of his professional status. According to Vasta, “recognition that the adoption of middle-class Anglo norms was the price that had to be paid for educational and occupational success” is a common and complex reason for the rejection of Italian language, culture and identity by the second generation.46 Michael returns to his former Italian community in Sydney and attends gatherings within that community as his family’s representative. Michael shows Josie that it is possible to be successful by Anglo Australian standards, to achieve upward social mobility, and still be a member of the Italian Australian community, despite differences of class, education and personal interests. Furthermore, Michael urges Josie to be proud of
43 Ibid., p. 8. 44 Ibid., p. 7. 45 Russell, "Identity Formation in Australian Young Adult Books" (Thesis), p. 103. 46 Vasta, "The Second Generation," p. 167.
110 her background, even if it is negatively identified by others, such as through the use of racist terms like ‘wog’.47 Class ambitions are further explored through Josie’s relationships with both John Barton and Jacob Coote, along with their complex intersection with ethnic and cultural difference. Romance features as a central theme in popular cultural texts and lived culture and, as Sandra Taylor argues, is used by girls to explore problems concerned with their own lives.48 Through Josie’s relationships with John and Jacob, Marchetta explores the implications of class, ethnic and cultural difference within a context of teen romance to which her readers can relate. Initially, John personifies Josie’s class and personal ambitions: “Picture this. School captain of St Anthony’s. Son of a member of parliament. Greatest debater who ever lived. Good-looking. Popular. Tell me, what more could I want out of life?”49 Significantly, Josie asks what more she would want out of life, rather than out of a partner; through a relationship with John, Josie believes she can achieve her professional goals. This is also related to Josie’s understanding of ethnic and cultural difference, as John belongs to the category of “Anglo-Saxon Australian rich people” whom Josie cannot imagine having problems. While John’s eventual suicide is emotionally devastating for Josie, it is equally devastating in that it destroys Josie’s neatly constructed worldview: How dare he kill himself when he’s never had any worries! He’s not a wog. People don’t get offended when they see him and his friends. He had wealth and breeding. No one ever spoke about his family. Nobody needed to because everyone knew that his father was the man they wanted down in Canberra. Nobody ever told their kids they weren’t allowed to play over at his place. Yet he killed himself. How could somebody with so much going for him do that?50 Josie’s binary view of Australian society as Anglo versus European can also be understood as those who are privileged and free, and those who must always fight destiny and tradition. Her worldview is again disrupted by Jacob who, although Anglo Australian, is from a working-class, single-parent background and attends the local state school. The factors that Josie believes construct her as an outsider – her scholarship and her ethnicity –
47 See Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 88. 48 S. Taylor, "Transforming the Texts: Towards a Feminist Classroom Practice," in Texts of Desire: Essays on Fiction, Femininity and Schooling, ed. Linda K. Christian-Smith (London: The Falmer Press, 1993), p. 127. 49 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 41. 50 Ibid., pp. 234-35.
111 give Josie the position of privilege and power in her relationship with Jacob, and inspires him to re-think his own path and ambitions.51 Through these relationships with John and Jacob, Josie eventually learns that tradition need not be immediately equated with ethnicity or Italianness, and that self-expectations, fear and privilege can be equally as confining: [John asks] ‘I’ve slightly exaggerated the case, but how can you escape [my father’s] type of thinking and tradition?’ ‘Easy,’ I shrugged. ‘My great grandmother dressed the dead in Sicily, my grandmother worked on a farm in Queensland and my mother is a medical secretary in Leichhardt. I’m not going to follow their footsteps and I know more than you about escaping tradition. You just kind of pave your own path.’ ‘It’s different for you,’ [John] sighed. ‘You haven’t got any pressures in life. I’ve always had to be the best because it’s been expected of me.’52 Rather than showing Josie to be breaking new ground, the above description of her family’s occupations over the generations actually demonstrates that class mobility is, in fact, their family tradition.53 Furthermore, Josie interprets her grandmother’s decision to bear her lover’s child as an act of defiance against tradition and social mores: “[Nonna Katia] hadn’t lived life the way I’d thought. She hadn’t stuck to the rules and regulations. Hadn’t worried about what other people thought every second of her life. She had taken chances. Broken rules. If she hadn’t, Mama wouldn’t have been born and I wouldn’t have been born. That freaks me out.”54 Fernández argues that Katia’s and Christina’s progressiveness “is born out of the experience of living in a stable and democratic country with relatively progressive social values.”55 Pallotta-Chiarolli, however, highlights that change and flexibility are actually perceived as threatening in migrant communities, as the maintenance of traditions and values from the mother country affords a sense of stability in an unknown and potentially hostile environment.56 Both Nonna Katia and Christina
51 Ibid., p. 251. 52 Ibid., pp. 45-46. 53 Megalogenis argues that the children of postwar immigrants were “raised to break with the past,” and that class mobility is a distinct characteristic of the successive generations. See Megalogenis, Faultlines, pp. 10, 12- 13. 54 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 226. 55 Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction," p. 39. 56 Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'," p. 3.
112 elect to remain silent regarding their babies’ true paternity in order to maintain their position within the Italian community, and to avoid fragmentation and conflict: Could you imagine how life would be for me if I married Marcus? Could you imagine what life would be for my sister? People are cruel. They would make our lives hell. But mostly, Jozzie, tink of Christina. Back then, tink of the way my darling Christina would be treated. It’s not like these times, Jozzie. She would have had no one. No Australians, no Italians. People would spit at her and say she was nuting.57 Nonna Katia and Christina act not out of rebellion but loneliness and fear, both in their initial transgressions and in how they deal with them. Australian society and its Italian community are not, at either the time of Christina’s birth or Josie’s, as accepting and progressive as Fernández suggests. It is Josie’s acceptance of her family’s past – and her role in Nonna Katia’s and Christina’s acceptance of this past – that signals progress for the Alibrandi women and Josie’s own maturation: “I thought my birth circumstances were a cross I’d bear for the rest of my life, but what had happened between Nonna and Marcus Sandford made me realise that it had never been my cross. I had only made it mine.”58 By adopting Michael’s surname at this juncture, Josie forges a new public identity for her adult self that reflects her internal changes, as well as the changes in her family relationships: I’ve figured out that it doesn’t matter whether I’m Josephine Andretti who was never an Alibrandi, who should have been a Sandford and who may never be a Coote. It matters who I feel like I am – and I feel like Michael and Christina’s daughter and Katia’s granddaughter; Sera, Anna and Lee’s friend and Robert’s cousin.59 Interestingly, by changing her name to Andretti, Josie is able to simultaneously acknowledge the past (in publicising her paternity) while correcting it (in removing the surname that she ultimately feels was never hers). Looking for Alibrandi ends with Josie’s eighteenth birthday, the age of legal majority in Australian society. In the concluding chapter, Josie summarises the shifts that
57 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 225. A note on language: Marchetta, Fusillo, Montano and other second stage Italian Australian writers often reflect the accented English of migrant characters by reproducing their pronunciation in dialogue. For more on “italianised pronunciation” of English words in Italian Australian writing, see Chellini, "The Role of Language in Multicultural Australian Writing," pp. 91-92. 58 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 258. 59 Ibid., p. 261.
113 have occurred in her personal relationships and the effects these have had upon her personal and ethnic identity. Significantly, Marchetta does not use the category ‘Italian Australian’ as such to summarise Josie’s development, but rather tries to show that Josie’s understanding of the category ‘Australian’ has changed to include people from non-Anglo backgrounds, such as herself: Well, I’m not sure whether anyone in this country will ever understand multiculturalism and that saddens me because it’s as much a part of Australian life as football and meat-pies. But the important thing is that I know where my place in life is. It’s not where the Seras or the Carlys of the world have slotted me. If someone comes up and asks me what nationality I am, I’ll look at them and say that I’m an Australian with Italian blood flowing rapidly through my veins. I’ll say that with pride, because it’s pride that I feel.60 Marchetta’s imagery of Italian blood flowing in Josie’s veins is interesting and complex. Her Italianness becomes the life force of her Australianness, but it is also internalised. She thus contributes to the creation of a more inclusive understanding of Australianness within the context of multiculturalism. Most importantly in a reading of this narrative as an ethnic bildungsroman written for a young adult audience, Josie’s declaration of her Italian Australian identity coincides with, and is in fact central to, her entrance into adulthood. Josie clearly aligns her confusions and insecurities regarding her ethnic identity with high school relationships, and therefore adolescence; Sera and Carly both represent the two cultures between which Josie initially feels divided and trapped (Italian and Australian respectively), and which governed her adolescent sense of identity and desire for emancipation. In claiming a form of Italian Australian identity, Josie learns that she can choose to actively negotiate Australianness and Italianness rather than allowing them to divide her, and ultimately succeeds in the quest of the second stage Italian Australian ethnic bildungsroman.
Archimede Fusillo: Sparring with Shadows (1997) and The Dons (2001) Repeating the theme of emancipation or liberation as ethnic maturation found in Looking for Alibrandi, both Sparring with Shadows and The Dons depict Italian Australian boys seeking to be free of the restrictions they feel are placed upon them by their families, their cultural heritage and the past. In Sparring with Shadows, fifteen-year-old David Martinesi’s new
60 Ibid., pp. 258-59.
114 friendship with his classmate Nathan Welsh and Nathan’s friend Ralph causes him to chafe at his family responsibilities and relationships. At this time, David also begins to question his father’s unequal relationship with Signor Dellavecchia. As he begins to understand the personal, cultural and economic impact of this relationship upon his entire family, David helps his family to sever this relationship and begin to build their own future. In The Dons, fourteen-year-old Paul Taranto is both distressed and embarrassed by his grandfather’s rapid decline due to Alzheimer’s disease, and often shirks his family responsibilities to hang out with his friends. Inspired by a school project, Paul eventually realises the importance of capturing his grandfather’s memories in order to gain a greater understanding of his family’s past and, through this, his own identity. Fusillo’s narratives foreground conflict between the young male protagonists’ desires and their families’ expectations, couching this conflict in predominantly cultural terms. Peer groups also play a significant role in the protagonists’ conflicts and Fusillo, who has often been characterised as a boys’ writer, also addresses the intersection of ethnicity and gender in his portrayals of Italian Australian male and female characters. Archimede Fusillo was born in Melbourne in 1962 to Italian migrants.61 He gained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne, majoring in Psychology and Drama, and a Diploma of Education. He has worked as a teacher and a features writer, and has written for Italy Down Under,62 a magazine focussing on Italian culture in Australia, and Viewpoint, a journal for children’s and young adult literature.63 Fusillo has written four novels for young adults – Sparring with Shadows (1996), The Dons (2001), An Earful of Static (2003) and Bruises (2004) – and three illustrated books for younger readers. His second novel, The Dons, received the Family Therapists’ Award for Children’s Literature, Older Readers in 2002. Interactions and relationships between the first, second and third generations are central to Fusillo’s narratives. Grandparents and godparents in particular play an important role in the personal and ethnic maturation of his protagonists. Gardaphé argues that the grandparent figure in literature connects the protagonist to their ancestral past and acts as a source of ethnic stories, while the figure of the godparent is seen as a power
61 J. Leigh, "Encore for a Wog Writer Sparring with English," Italy Down Under 2 (2000). 62 See A. Fusillo, "Going Back...But Is It Going Home?," Ibid.12 (2004); "Play It the Locals' Way," Italy Down Under 13 (2004). 63 See Fusillo, "High Brow, Low Brow: Boys and Books."; "Cultural Diversity and the Writer."
115 negotiator.64 In The Dons, Nonno’s role as ethnic storyteller is threatened by Alzheimer’s disease. In his more lucid moments, Nonno realises what is happening to him and knows that transmitting his memories and stories to Paul is imperative. Paul’s relationship with his grandfather also represents his relationship with his family’s (Italian and Australian) past. In avoiding his responsibilities to his grandfather, Paul seeks to avoid his past: He keeps dragging me back to his past. And then he reminds me of my past, of Dad. I don’t need to know any more of it! I’ve got the future to worry about, not the friggin’ past! Then I think of Dad dying at work, with his mates around him doing nothing to stop it from happening.65 The Dons is also a story of a boy who is still struggling with the loss of his father five years earlier. Nonno’s preoccupation with the past forces an unwilling Paul to think about his own painful past. His subsequent destruction of Nonno’s aftershave bottle collection is also Paul’s symbolic attempt to destroy the past, and thus to destroy its painful associations. In the aftermath of his destructiveness, Paul realises how the past and memories work to maintain relationships: “[a]ll those bottles [attached] my nonno to some other time, and some other person.”66 Paul also connects the impending loss of his grandfather (to both illness and death) as the loss of the past. He recognises and accepts the role of ethnic storyteller which Nonno is trying to pass on to him: I want to keep Nonno with me – with us – for as long as I can now. But deep down I know that already I’m losing him. The Don is not what he used to be, even a few months ago. And all the stories. All the memories Nonno is sharing with me. He is passing them on, before they are lost, even to him.67 Significantly, Paul chooses not simply to accept Nonno’s stories but to share them with his classmates as part of an oral history assignment for his English class. The assignment’s task, research into “societies passing down their stories orally from one generation to the next,”68 coincides with Paul’s own personal experiences and recent revelations. Initially
64 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, pp. 120-21. 65 Fusillo, The Dons, p. 145. Original emphasis. 66 Ibid., p. 151. 67 Ibid., p. 157. 68 Ibid., pp. 168-69. Gardaphé argues that “[t]raditional stories served both to entertain and to inform the young, while reminding the old of the traditions that have endured over the years.” See F. L. Gardaphé, "The
116 Paul, having forgotten about the assignment, intended to steal his grandfather’s memorabilia and present an argument about “oral stories and objects and how you can remember stories better if you have an object to help trigger the main points of the story”69 – a lesson he learnt through his destruction of Nonno’s aftershave bottle collection. In the pivotal moment of his maturation he realises that his grandfather is the object, so to speak, that links the past to the present. In bringing Nonno to school, Paul publicly recognises the importance of his Italian past. In sharing Nonno’s stories with his classmates, Paul also recognises the importance of Nonno’s migrant past to his and his classmates’ Australian present. Godparents, in Italian culture, occupy the most important family role beyond ties of blood and are often selected for strategic financial and political reasons.70 In the literature of the Italian diaspora, however, the role of the godparent is to demonstrate to the protagonist how to negotiate between their Italian and Australian cultures, guiding them towards the development of Italian Australian identities.71 In Sparring with Shadows, David’s godfather, Signor Dellavecchia is both a power negotiator and a despot. Dellavecchia controls David’s father, Marco, through the obligation of a past debt – his sponsorship of Marco to Australia – and is rumoured to have gained his own success through the exploitation of fellow Italian migrants. As David’s godfather Dellavecchia should, according to Gardaphé, be David’s Italian Australian role model. Signor Dellavecchia – whose surname, significantly, translates to ‘of the old’ – is, however, a negative presence in this narrative. He desires the maintenance of the old ways amongst the Italian Australian community in order to secure his own position and power. Helping his father to break free from Dellavecchia’s manipulations is central to David’s maturation, and his negotiation of Italian and Australian cultures. In rejecting Dellavecchia, the Martinesi family reject the ‘old ways’ from Italy that have continued to shape their lives in Australia. They do not reject Italian culture and identity as a whole, but begin to choose which aspects they desire to maintain.
Evolution of Italian American Autobiography," in The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, ed. Pellegrino D'Acierno (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), p. 290. 69 Fusillo, The Dons, pp. 180-81. Janelle Wilson argues that “[i]n addition to evoking our memories, objects can sustain myths and ideologies, thus maintaining people’s collective memory of the past.” This is interesting to consider in conjunction with the role of storytelling as a means of also maintaining collective memory. See J. L. Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press, 2005), p. 51. 70 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, pp. 86-87. See also Baldassar, Visits Home, pp. 129, 98-200. 71 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, pp. 86-87.
117 David’s father is not able to sever his ties to Dellavecchia on his own, nor is he able to be an Italian Australian role model for his son until this connection is broken. Instead, it is David’s mother, Teresa, whose actions guide both her son and her husband to maturation. Teresa’s first step in the process of helping David towards adulthood is telling him the story of her younger brother, Zio Paul. Zio Paul is the favourite uncle of both David and Rose. They look up to him because he listens to them and encourages them to follow their dreams, even if those dreams run against the expectations of the family. Zio Paul is also the black sheep of the family, which Teresa attributes to the difficulties he had growing up Italian in Australia: “He grew up without a father, went to school in a country that made fun of his ignorance and culture, and got lost. My brother is a little boy lost. Lost from himself, from [his brother], from [his mother]. And after today, maybe from me too.”72 Teresa uses her brother’s story as a cautionary tale for her son. She wishes to show David the dangers of alienating oneself from one’s family and culture. On the other hand, her older brother, Zio Sandro, demonstrates the dangers of allowing oneself to be too bound up by family and duty: “From the moment our father died Sandro became the man of the house. It was his burden to make certain Paolo and I were set on ‘the right path’.”73 Teresa, the middle child in both age and temperament, encourages her son to negotiate his Italian and Australian cultures, his desires and his duties, without alienating either his family or himself. In doing so, it is actually Teresa who becomes David’s first Italian Australian role model. Teresa also becomes a role model for her husband by putting into motion the sequence of events that releases the Martinesi family from their obligations to Signor Dellavecchia. Teresa sends David to call his father home for lunch from the local Italian men’s club but makes it clear that Dellavecchia is not welcome: “[t]here has always been one too many. From the day your papa arrived here there has always been one too many. But today it will stop. Today all obligations will be satisfied.”74 Released from his obligation to Dellavecchia, Marco assumes responsibility for his own family and recognises David as a young adult: “Today my son, David, he came call me come lunch like I was him brother.”75
72 A. Fusillo, Sparring with Shadows (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1997), p. 108. 73 Ibid., p. 107. 74 Ibid., p. 204. 75 Ibid., p. 212.
118 David’s new friend, Nathan Welsh, also plays an important role in his maturation. Their school, St Joseph’s Catholic Boys College, is divided along athletic and ethnic lines: “the coolest, most popular kids were the ones who were best at sport. A go- nowhere, pudgy, intellectual Italian guy like [David] was at the bottom of the heap, along with the other ‘stay-at-homes’, those that didn’t play sport or anybody ethnic.”76 Nathan, who is both athletic and Anglo Australian, is a popular member of their school, although David associates him mainly with bullying that is often racist in tone.77 David is understandably surprised when Nathan decides to befriend him over the summer holidays. It is later revealed that Nathan had handpicked David to befriend his mentally disabled half-brother, Ralph, after Nathan and his mother move to Queensland. Nathan selected David because he and Ralph respected and coveted the family environment in which David lives: You had your own little private world behind that fence there. You and your old man I mean. It was sort of good, you know, to watch you and your old man doing stuff in there where no one else – except us of course – could see. I often wondered what it’d feel like to have a back yard and some vegies and a few chooks to stir up. And a dad who’d take the time to teach you how to do things like kill a chook or dig the soil for the tomatoes – shit like that. Normal stuff. Everyday kind of stuff.78 Tragically, Ralph dies in a warehouse fire. Nathan and David witness the event and are bonded by the shared experience. Their friendship carries on from the summer holidays into the school semester. Nathan facilitates David’s rise up the school social ladder, and even secures him a place on the school council. In all these events Nathan acts as David’s Anglo Australian ‘godfather’, so to speak. He negotiates the formal and informal power structures of the school on David’s behalf. David respects Nathan as a peer and as someone with whom he has shared a traumatic experience. Nathan’s recognition of David’s household duties as normal and enviable validates David’s home life in his own eyes: “To hear Nathan speak of that as ‘everyday kind of stuff’ made it all seem okay – acceptable even – for the first time in my life.”79 This apparently maintains a hierarchy between their two cultures: David, as an
76 Ibid., p. 3. 77 Ibid., pp. 3-4. 78 Ibid., pp. 217-18. 79 Ibid., p. 218.
119 ethnic minority, seeks the approval of Nathan, a representative of the dominant culture. Nathan, however, admires the ‘normality’ of David’s family because he believes himself and his family to be ‘abnormal’. Nathan’s troubled home life teaches David to appreciate his own family, including their ethnic heritage. In his friendships with Ralph and David, Nathan himself also changes as he learns to take a more responsible stance towards his own power amongst his peers, which he tried to pass on to David: “You see, Martinesi, it’s pretty much like your old man said. You either follow so that you can learn to lead, or you follow because you know no better.”80 Peer conflict plays less of a role in Paul’s ethnic dilemma in The Dons than it does in Sparring with Shadows, or in the other narratives examined in this chapter. The tensions amongst his ethnically diverse peer group are driven more by Paul’s inability to always hang out with them than by their apparent cultural difference. It is only through Paul’s final confrontation with his Anglo Australian love interest, Tracey Reynolds, that ethnicity and racism enter significantly into his peer relationships. Listening in to a conversation with their friend Magda, Paul hears Tracey say: “Paul’s grandfather got on the phone and started talking down the line at me in this gibberish English only another ethnic could understand…Sorry Mags, no offence…But it was bizarre, right.”81 Tracey’s racism and insensitivity demonstrates that she is not an appropriate partner for Paul. Her attack on Paul’s grandfather and his accent is an attack on Paul and his ethnic heritage. Furthermore, it is a sign of Paul’s maturation that he privileges his newfound respect for his grandfather, as a symbol of his ethnic heritage, over his adolescent desire for Tracey, as a symbol of Anglo Australian acceptance. Fusillo is often largely characterised as a writer for boys. Matt Sullivan observes that there is “an obvious boyish appeal in the antics of the protagonists in the novels.” 82 He observes that while Fusillo does not aim exclusively for a male readership, he does consciously aim to engage boys in reading.83 Fusillo has also directly addressed this issue,84 but claims that he aims to write stories that will engage young readers regardless of
80 Ibid., p. 216. 81 Fusillo, The Dons, p. 174. 82 M. Sullivan, "No Prima Donna: Archimede Fusillo," Viewpoint 10, no. 2 (Winter) (2002): p. 18. 83 Ibid. 84 Fusillo’s conclusions on boys’ attitudes to reading and their reading habits result from his experience as a teacher and his visits to schools, reading clubs and writing workshops, wherein he has found a higher attendance and participation by girls. Fusillo observes: “Deep down boys know the value of reading and writing, that it will be to their advantage. But boys are in a hurry. Reading slows them down, and writing
120 their gender.85 I argue, however, that the prevalence of young male protagonists and the peripheral roles assigned to female characters in his books does push his work more into the realm of contemporary boys’ own adventures suggested by Sullivan. For the most part, his female characters are slotted into the token roles of sister, mother, and love interest. While these females command the respect of the male protagonists, the focus of Fusillo’s narratives remains upon the cultivation of male-male relationships: Paul and Nonno, David and Marco, and David and Nathan. In Sparring with Shadows, however, Fusillo subtly explores specifically Italian Australian masculinities and femininities.86 The focus remains on David’s relationships with his father and Nathan, but his relationships with his mother and sister also shift in the course of his maturation. As argued above, it is David’s mother who is instrumental in the maturation of both her son and her husband, and who becomes their initial Italian Australian role model. It is Teresa who teaches David how to be a responsible young Italian Australian adult, and not his father, godfather or uncles. By eliminating Dellavecchia from their family circle, Teresa creates an environment where her family can begin to define themselves and their own identities. Prior to this climax, however, Teresa is portrayed in a stereotypical light: she is the Italian mother who, despite engaging in paid work, is primarily defined by her domestic role.87 Interestingly, Marco characterises her largely hidden formidable nature in masculine terms: “you’ve got more balls than most men.”88 David’s growing relationship with his sister Rose illustrates the different gendered expectations placed upon Italian Australian boys and girls.89 Rose is expected to
their stories brings them to a halt. Boys love to be involved: they love to live and relive through storytelling their own and others’ exploits, becoming the hero of the story. Unfortunately, apart from magazines about sport and general hobbies, boys do not have general reading material that validates their life experiences or their frustrations.” A. Fusillo, "High Brow, Low Brow: Boys and Books," Ibid.8 (2000): p. 5. 85 Ibid.: p. 7. 86 The exploration of Italian Australian masculinities and femininities by male writers is discussed with more detail in relation to Venero Armanno’s work in Chapter 6. 87 See Baldassar, "Marias and Marriage," p. 13; Vasta, "Gender, Class and Ethnic Relations."; "Italian Migrant Women." 88 Fusillo, Sparring with Shadows, p. 177. 89 Most studies of second generation Italian Australians and gender focus upon women and female gender roles but they do, if only briefly, discuss male gender roles and masculinities as well. Bladassar’s study of gender and sexuality amongst second generation Italian Australian youth in Perth is perhaps the most comprehensive in its study of Italian Australian masculinity and femininity. See Baldassar, "Marias and
121 be a ‘good Italian girl’90 who helps around the house, and the Christmas gifts from her relatives are intended for her glory box.91 Rose should not, however, be entirely painted as the impassive victim of a harsh Italian gender regime. She is critical of the different gender roles imposed upon her and David, but her superficial compliance with her family’s expectations awards her with their greater admiration and trust. Rose violates this trust by conducting a secret relationship with a boy. She is, however, able to begin and end this relationship without her parents’ knowledge, while David’s absences to hang out with Nathan are treated with greater suspicion because of his more apparent deficiencies in his role and duties. Rose is, David admits, stronger, smarter and more ambitious than he is: Like Mum, Rose was just like a shadow sometimes; there, yet not there, unless you took the trouble to look for her, or you stumbled upon her. We never actually talked much, not in any deep sense, yet I know Rose was pretty much like our mother – someone to be reckoned with. Nathan Welsh would have said that Rose had balls.92 Marco is unconcerned about his daughter’s future, or her ability to take care of herself (and her chastity).93 Furthermore, Marco and Teresa expect that both of their children will continue on to a tertiary education and white collar professions: “What for a journalist? ... My Rose she be the Prime Minister of Australia…”94 While David’s maturation is shaped by his growing respect for and friendship with his sister, only he is initiated into Italian Australian adulthood. This is, in part, because it is his narrative, but there is also a subtext that this is his destiny by virtue of being both
Marriage," pp. 8-13. See also Gucciardo, "The Best of Both Worlds."; Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife."; Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'."; "From Coercion to Choice."; M. Pallotta-Chiarolli et al., ""You Can't Be Gay, You're Italian."" in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000), p. 548. 90 For more on the parameters of this role, see Baldassar, "Marias and Marriage," pp. 11-15; Visits Home, pp.23, 29; Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'," pp. 1-2. 91 Fusillo, Sparring with Shadows, p. 37. According to Tence and Triarico, dowries, or le dote, had ceased to be an Italian Australian tradition by the 1980s. See Tence and Triarico, "La Dote: Preparing for a Family: The Importance of the Dowry in the Australian Italian Family." For more on Italian Australian weddings in general, see Baldassar, "Marias and Marriage," pp. 8-10. 92 Fusillo, Sparring with Shadows, pp. 37-38. 93 Ibid., p. 177. 94 Ibid., p. 43.
122 first-born and male. Interestingly, Fusillo portrays Italian Australian masculinity as a curious mixture of responsibility and irresponsibility: ‘It’s too easy for you, David,’ Rose began slowly. ‘When you’re old enough Dad’ll just expect you to stop going to Mass. You won’t even have to come along to these sorts of nights either, if you don’t want to. Dad’ll just shrug his shoulders and accept that his little boy has grown up and is doing what all Italian boys do when they get old enough.’95 Fernando’s Café, whose backroom is host to the Italian men’s club that Dellavecchia and Marco frequent, is further evidence of this: “The men in that place were liars, small-time crooks, professionally unemployed, or plain losers. I’d heard Dad tell Rose that once when she’d asked why he never took us there to buy a gelati.”96 Given this prohibition, David is shocked to discover his father there one day when he is goaded inside by Nathan. David eventually realises that Marco is ashamed to frequent the place, considering it part of his obligation to Dellavecchia: “[Marco had] been used by Dellavecchia, doing what Dellavecchia had come to expect of him, simply being there when Dellavecchia wanted him to be.”97 In his warning to his children, Marco characterises Fernando’s as a site of irresponsible masculinity. In severing his ties with Dellavecchia, Marco is also able to leave Fernando’s and assume the mantle of responsible masculinity. Although Teresa and Rose benefit from the change in Marco, it is primarily for the benefit of David that his maturation occurs, evidenced by Rose’s lack of understanding of what occurs at the climactic lunch.98 Like Marchetta, Fusillo does not use the term Italian Australian to describe his protagonists’ ethnic identification. Rather, this identification is indicated through the protagonists’ shifting relationships with representatives of both Italian and Australian cultures, such as their family members and social peers. Sparring with Shadows charts the successful maturation of its protagonist into an Italian Australian young adult. Both Marco and Nathan recognise David as a potential leader in both his Italian community and his Australian peer group. Through these shifting relationships and new responsibilities, David learns to successfully negotiate both cultures. The Dons is also a successful ethnic bildungsroman. The Dons is not a narrative about Paul’s entrance into the adult world in the
95 Ibid., p. 39. 96 Ibid., pp. 27-28. 97 Ibid., p. 207. 98 Ibid., p. 213.
123 same sense as Sparring with Shadows. Nonetheless, Paul’s changed attitude to and improved relationship with his grandfather is a sign of his personal and ethnic maturation, and is part of his preparation for adulthood. Neither Paul nor David escapes their Italian heritage. They do, however, learn to successfully negotiate both their Italian and Australian cultures so that they cease to view either as constraining.
Josie Montano: Wogaluccis (2002) With the exception of Camclub 2000: The Ghost of the Bell (1999, written with Mary Selenc), Josie Santomauro uses the pen name Josie Montano for publishing her children’s and young adult fiction, and will be referred to here by this pseudonym.99 Montano grew up in the La Trobe valley, Victoria, and currently lives with her family in Brisbane, Queensland.100 Under her real name of Santomauro, she also researches and publishes in the field of Asperger Syndrome, with which her son is diagnosed.101 Montano has also written books for younger readers: Chicken Pox…Yuck! (2002), Who’s Wheelie the Fastest? (2003), Pop Starlets (2003), the ‘Snot’ series (2003) – Snot Fair!, Snot Funny!, and Snot Cool! – and a picture book, Little Penguin (2005). For young adults, Montano has written Wogaluccis (2002) and Stuff They Don’t Teach You at School (2003). Wogaluccis is Montano’s only work to explicitly address themes of ethnicity and Italian Australianness. Although Vinnie, the hero of her ‘Snot’ series and Chicken Pox…Yuck!, is Italian Australian, ethnicity is not foregrounded or explored in these books as it is in Wogaluccis. Published ten years after Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi, Montano’s Wogaluccis is at a distinct disadvantage. As a novel dealing with a young Italian Australian girl’s struggle with her ethnicity it must inevitably be compared to Marchetta’s narrative. Although Marchetta’s novel is simply written and often employs colloquial language, Montano’s writing style, length of her novel and the simplicity of the language used all suggest that Wogaluccis is suitable for a readership slightly younger than her protagonist. Only its occasional mild coarse language and more mature themes distinguishes Wogaluccis from Montano’s writing for younger readers. On the one hand, this allows Montano’s narrative to prepare a slightly younger audience for more serious issues of racism,
99 J. Santomauro, Josie Montano: Children's/Teen Author [website] (2005 [cited 8 September 2005]); available from http://www.users.tpg.com.au/jsanto/author.htm. 100 Ibid.([cited). 101 J. Santomauro, Josie Santomauro: Asperger Syndrome [website] (2005 [cited 8 September 2005]); available from http://www.users.tpg.com.au/jsanto/asperger.htm.
124 mourning and family conflict by exploring such matters simply and with humour. On the other, Montano’s simple language prevents her from depicting these issues realistically, and thus impacts upon her portrayal of Italian Australian experiences. Recent critical work, particularly by Scutter and Michaels, has focussed on the use and meaning of realism in young adult fiction. Scutter argues that ‘realism’ is just as constructed as other modes of fiction and just as specifically located, despite the attempt to position it as a “universalised adolescent reality.”102 Most importantly, Michaels argues that this “universalised adolescent reality” is, in fact, impossible to depict as this reality is “nothing more than a representation of a particular perception of reality situated socially, culturally and historically.”103 Writers considered to produce realist works include John Marsden and Sonya Hartnett but, as Michaels points out, their characters commonly “have been traumatised or terrorised and some turn to suicide … as a solution to their situations.”104 Although the emotions of these realist fictions may be recognisably ‘real’, their worlds are often dystopian and post-apocalyptic, the relationships within them inherently dysfunctional. Michaels applauds the more recent trend of what she calls “hard- core realism” – that is, stories set in the “everyday worlds of contemporary families leading busy lives, with all their associated quotidian routines, pressures and traumas” – and cites Marchetta’s Saving Francesca as an example of this trend.105 While some of the plot turns in Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi and Fusillo’s novels may seem contrived or melodramatic – such as Josie’s violent encounter with Carly Bishop, the warehouse fire in Sparring with Shadows or Paul’s confrontation with Tracey in The Dons – these narratives aim to provide a realistic portrayal of what it means to grow up Italian in Australia and how this affects one’s relationships with others and oneself. Perhaps in an attempt to protect the community and area upon which she based the characters and town found in Wogaluccis or perhaps aiming for a ‘universal’ appeal, Montano never makes the setting of the rural town clear, nor does she name the city in which Zia Giulia lives. Furthermore, she alters the names of musicians and actors – Killing Heidi becomes “Killer Heath” and Vanessa Amorosi becomes “Veronica Amoretti” – although Brad Pitt remains the same.106 This effectively prevents the narrative from
102 Michaels, "The Realistic Turn," p. 50. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid.: p. 49. 105 Ibid.: pp. 50-51. 106 J. Montano, Wogaluccis (South Melbourne, Victoria: Lothian Books, 2002), p. 6.
125 depicting realistically a young woman’s experiences of growing up Italian in a recognisably Australian community and culture, and a specific socio-historical context. Unfortunately, Montano’s reluctance to provide a specific historical, cultural and social context for her characters weakens her attempt to represent the very real negotiation of Italian and Australian cultures, communities and identities. Despite its stylistic flaws, Wogaluccis touches upon all the key elements of Italian Australian young adult fiction, and is easily read within the conceptual framework of the Italian Australian ethnic bildungsroman. Wogaluccis is, like the other books in this chapter, narrated in first person by a successive generation Italian Australian protagonist, and centres upon her personal and ethnic maturation. Orphaned at a young age, sixteen year- old Angela Fiorucci lives with her grandparents in a small town in an unspecified part of rural Australia, and helps out in their restaurant, Fioruccis. With intermittent support from her Zia Giulia, whose relationship with her parents is tempestuous at best, Angela struggles to negotiate the cultural and generational gap that separates her and her grandparents. Her headstrong grandmother is a particular source of conflict as Nonna aims to raise a good Italian girl to enter into a marriage arranged and approved by the local Italian Australian community. Angela must deal with racism and peer conflict at school, and the effects of these upon her home life, her grandparents and their restaurant. As with the previous works investigated above, a desire for freedom from the expectations of family and the prejudices of peers is the young protagonist’s main driving force and discovering her family’s past is central to her maturation and acceptance of her ethnic identity. Wogaluccis continues the prevailing motif in Italian Australian young adult ethnic bildungsromane of Italian culture as something from which the protagonists desire escape. The idea that the figure of the grandparent is the representative and the enforcer of Italian culture and traditions is also repeated. Gardaphé argues that the grandmother, in Italian American literature, represents the protagonists’ link with the family and its history.107 Angela’s grandparents, specifically her grandmother, represent the Italian culture she wishes to escape, and which she sees as outdated and old-fashioned. The vast generational differences Angela perceives between her own generation and that of her grandparents are only exacerbated by their apparent cultural differences. As with Looking for Alibrandi and, to a lesser extent, The Dons, Montano’s narrative is about conflict between first and third generation characters. Unlike the protagonists of Marchetta and Fusillo’s novels, Angela does not have a second generation buffer in the form of parents, as they
107 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 120.
126 died in a car accident when she was very young. While Angela’s aunt, Zia Guilia, belongs to the same generation as Angela’s deceased parents – and thus should act to bridge the generational and cultural gap – her own long-standing conflict with her parents prevents her from being an entirely suitable role model for Angela. In order to assist Angela, Zia Giulia must resolve some of her own issues: “‘I had a chance to talk to Nonna at the hospital, Ange. She couldn’t put on a performance there – you know, in front of people she always acts normal,’ Zia said. ‘I talked to her about Elena, your mum, about when I was a teenager and about you.’”108 Zia Giulia also gives Angela the diaries Elena kept as a teenager in order to help her understand the relationship Nonna has had with her own daughters. Furthermore, the diaries enable Angela to gain an understanding of who her mother was and how she dealt with similar problems and relationships in the past. In facing her troubled relationship with her mother and in giving Angela the diaries, Zia Giulia demonstrates to Angela that mutual understanding is a more productive way to resolve generational conflict: After a while, Zia came back into my room with Nonna and they both sat on the bed. It felt funny having Nonna there, especially after what had happened the night before and after reading Mum’s diaries. Zia did most of the talking. Zia said that Nonna had agreed not to be so controlling and to try to listen to me. The best bit was that they decided to share looking after me. That meant I could go and stay with Zia more often and that I could call her if Nonna and I didn’t agree on something.109 In a sense, Zia Giulia undergoes her own process of development driven by her sense of responsibility to Angela and Nonna. She becomes a mediator between the first and third generations – and thus becomes a more positive second generation role model for her niece – while Angela becomes a shared responsibility and point of connection between her grandmother and her aunt. This resolution between the three generations of women is central to Angela’s negotiation of her Italian and Australian cultures, and thus the formation of her Italian Australian identity. In resolving these relationships, Angela gains the power to negotiate with her Nonna who also represents Angela’s Italian heritage: I had … Nonna at arm’s length and my ‘wog-icity’ in my veins.
108 Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 157. 109 Ibid., p. 164.
127 I could choose to flirt with the pizza boy, date both Will and Simon, enjoy my wog-icity and be nice to my grandmother without feeling boxed in by any of them.110 For the majority of the narrative, however, Angela’s relationship with both Italian and Australian cultures is ambivalent. There is a strong Italian Australian presence in the rural town in which Wogaluccis is set: in the course of the narrative, Angela attends a large local Italian wedding,111 and her grandparents host both a sizeable rosary prayer meeting112 and the annual salami-making day.113 Angela is often exasperated, critical and embarrassed by the Italian community, its various events and its traditions: “Why do these people still have to do this shit? Why can’t they just go down to the deli like the Australians and buy salami?”114 Yet she is also angered by appropriation of Italian language and culture by Australians: “I can’t stand these people who come in here and correct my Italian with their Italian-English! Latte means milk – but you wouldn’t go around saying ‘miiii-llll-k’, would you?”115
110 Ibid., p. 175. 111 Ibid., pp. 94-110. 112 Ibid., pp. 57-67. 113 Montano describes the salami-making ritual in some detail. Angelo Gigliotti and Brian McKenzie’s short film, Winter’s Harvest, also documents the Italian Australian tradition of home-made salami. Pascoe describes sausage making as “one of the most important secular rituals of Italo-Australian life.” See B. McKenzie, Winter's Harvest, (Australia: Australian Film Institute, 1979); Montano, Wogaluccis, pp. 79-82; Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 205-06. 114 Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 80. Original emphasis. This recalls Josie Alibrandi’s lamentation about Tomato Day in Looking for Alibrandi: “I can’t understand why we can’t go to Franklin’s and buy Leggo’s or Paul Newman’s special sauce.” Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 171. The importance of food as identification and cultural maintenance in Italian Australian culture is further explored in Chapter 5. 115 Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 77. Original emphasis. The use of the Italian language in Australia has been of great interest to researchers from a range of disciplines from socio-linguistics to literary studies. John Kinder pays particular attention to Australian Anglophone usage of Italian words that have entered into everyday Australian parlance, such as cappuccino and pizza. He has found that English grammar patterns as well as accents affect these words. See Kinder, "Italian in Australia 1940-1990," p. 283. For further research into Italian language use in Australia and its intersections with the English language, see Andreoni, "Italo- Australians: Notes on Language and Literature."; Baggio, The Shoe in My Cheese; Chellini, "The Role of Language in Multicultural Australian Writing."; Fusillo, "Italian Literature, Language and Identity and the Use of Italian by Young Italo-Australians: (Panel 1) Reflections Regarding the Wish and/or Obligation to Use One's Linguistic Patrimony and Italian Cultural Background When Writing"; Rando and Leoni, "The Italian Language in Australia: Sociolinguistic Aspects."; J. Warren, "'Wogspeak': Transformations of Australian
128 Her relationships with her peers at school also impact significantly upon Angela’s attitude toward her Italian culture and identity. A shared Italian background is an important factor in Angela’s friendship with Sarina, Lidia and Tessa, but Angela’s friends do not feel burdened by their ethnic heritage or their families’ expectations.116 When Angela is required to stay at home to help make salami, her friends, whose families are part of Angela’s Italian Australian community, are allowed to go to the cinema instead.117 Their ethnicity is, however, a source of conflict with their Anglo Australian peers. Rachael Blake and her friends target Angela’s group with racist bullying, but again it is Angela in particular who seems most affected by this: ‘Wog,’ yelled out Rachael after I’d gone past them. ‘Skippy,’ I yelled back. Didn’t make me feel any better though. That’s what I was – a wog! Wogs make salami on the weekends. Skips go to the beach and hang out with their friends! Hmmm, which would I like better? I knew what I wanted – I wanted to be part of the crowd, but I was a wog – a salami-munching, tomato-picking, hairy wog.118 Angela feels that her duties to her grandparents – helping to make salami, working at the restaurant – are what distinguish her from her friends and peers, and thus are what make her a ‘wog’. Interestingly, Montano, like Marchetta in Looking for Alibrandi, never uses the term Italian Australian to either describe the mode of identification at which Angela arrives, or the community in which she lives. People and cultures are referred to as either Italian or Australian, or ‘wog’ or ‘skip’. When Angela eventually learns to embrace her
English," in Story/Telling (2001). See also Iagnocco, "Italian Studies in the Secondary Schools of the New Millennium - Educating the New Italian-Australians." 116 The narrative does not make it clear, but Sarina, Tessa and Lidia appear to be third generation Italian Australians like Angela. It is likely that they experience their Italian culture and heritage differently because they were raised by their second generation Italian Australian parents, and are thus distanced from the opinions and traditions that Angela’s grandmother is trying to uphold. 117 Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 82. 118 Ibid., p. 84. The derogatory term for Australians ‘skippy’ or ‘skip’ derives from the popular children’s television show, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1966), which was about an Anglo Australian boy, his family and their pet kangaroo. The term was also popularlised by Nick Giannopolous’ stage shows, Wogs Out of Work and Wogarama, and his television series, Acropolis Now! (1989). Vasta identifies its common usage amongst Italian Australian boys interviewed at a Brisbane boys’ high school in the late 1970s, but argues that their insults of “convict” and “skippy” did not have the same derogatory value as “dago” or “wog.” See Vasta, "Youth & Ethnicity: The Second Generation," p. 59.
129 Italian heritage and culture, it is signified by her “Wogaluccis party.”119 Through this event, Angela claims and celebrates her identity as a ‘wog’, and appropriates the derogatory name Rachael Blake and her friends use for Fioruccis, Angela’s grandparents’ restaurant: “Why Wogaluccis? Well, it sort of fitted the theme for the night – accepting me for who I am, a wog!”120 In describing Angela’s ethnic identification, Montano coins the term “wog-icity”, which she uses in the same context as ‘ethnicity’.121 Angela compares her “Wogaluccis party” to her sixteenth birthday party, with which the narrative began. At her birthday party, only her Italian family and friends were invited. Her “Wogaluccis party”, on the other hand, hosts a “minestrone of people”122 comprised of Italians and Australians, signifying Angela’s willingness and ability to negotiate both social and cultural contexts: “what would a Wogaluccis party be without wogs? They set the scene, they created the atmosphere.”123 Whilst Angela refers to actual ambience at the party, this also suggests an understanding of her identity as developing upon the culture and identities of previous generations of her Italian family in Australia, represented by the older first generation aunts to which this comment refers. Ultimately Wogaluccis complies with the parameters of the ethnic bildungsroman in its depiction of Angela’s ethnic and personal maturation. Although Montano does not use the term, her protagonist does successfully negotiate an Italian Australian identity. This identity is shaped by her interactions with her Italian relatives and both her Italian and her Australian peers. The narrative also results in the familial catharsis between Zia Guilia and Nonna who, in agreeing to work together to raise Angela and aid her ability to negotiate her Italian and Australian cultures. Angela’s maturation into adulthood is not overt, indicated only by the shifts in her attitudes to and relationships with her family, peers and cultural heritage.
Conclusion Far from being a graveyard category, as designated by Barolini, Italian Australian young adult fiction is instead the area wherein Italian Australian authors have been the most prolific and the most commercially and critically successful. Such criticisms of young adult
119 Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 166. 120 Ibid. For Rachael’s first usage of the name “Wogaluccis”, see Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 43. 121 Montano, Wogaluccis, p. 175. 122 Ibid., p. 166. 123 Ibid., p. 168. Emphasis added.
130 and juvenile literature in general devalue the role of this literature in the lives of the young people who read it. These narratives demonstrate a thematic focus upon the intersection of generational and cultural conflict, which allows the authors to explore ways of growing up Italian in Australian society. That Italian culture is depicted as confining, bound by outdated traditions and something from which the protagonists’ invariably desire to escape or to break free is, however, highly problematic. Australian culture is also portrayed as equally undesirable, aside from its value as ‘normal’, until the protagonists are able to redefine what it means to be Australian through their arrival at Italian Australian identities. Marchetta’s Saving Francesca and, to a lesser degree, Fusillo’s An Earful of Static become significant at this point due to their representations of contemporary families with unproblematised ethnic identities, indicating a movement out of the second stage of the Italian Australian arc of literary development by these authors of young adult books. Montano’s Wogaluccis stands uncomfortably with the more recent publications by Marchetta and Fusillo for its lack of a sophisticated approach to ethnicity, difference and identity formation. Kroll, writing about ethnicity in children’s picture books and literature, uses the analogy of a “Greek or Vietnamese Melina Marchetta” to describe the way in which critics are awaiting more significant writers of non-Anglo Australian backgrounds whose writing features non-Anglo Australian characters.124 It has indeed become expected that authors of non-Anglo Australian backgrounds will write about characters of similarly non- Anglo Australian backgrounds experiencing difficulties because of the writers’ own ethnicity, particularly when writing their first books or books for children or young adults. These are seen as their ‘ethnic books’, often written for catharsis; once the authors have written their ethnic book, they might continue their careers with ‘Australian’ characters and ‘Australian’ storylines. Such thinking is revealed in Carolyn Webb’s interview with Marchetta for the Age when she writes, “Many fans will be surprised that in Saving Francesca, Marchetta has again made her heroine a young Italian-Australian student, living in Sydney.”125 What Webb implies is an expectation that Marchetta, having written about ethnicity in her first novel, should have moved beyond Italian Australianness in her second. Looking for Alibrandi shows an Australia that is still adapting to the ideas of multiculturalism which are being forcibly inserted into Australian society as a means of
124 J. Kroll, "The New Fringe Dwellers: The Problem of Ethnicity in Recent Australian Children's Picture Books," Papers 9, no. 2 (1999): p. 38. 125 Webb, "Looking Beyond Alibrandi," p. 3.
131 managing an increasingly culturally diverse nation. Josie Alibrandi still experiences racism and struggles with the impediments placed before her social life because of her cultural upbringing and heritage in terms of being both Italian and Australian. Despite featuring an Italian Australian character, Saving Francesca differs significantly from its predecessor in that ethnicity is not at all problematised. Saving Francesca is still essentially a coming of age story (and a form of bildungsroman) that does feature significant markers of Italian Australianness. Ethnicity, however, is not at the core of the protagonist’s developmental dilemma. If anything, Francesca’s Italian Australian identity is the only thing that remains unproblematised when her mother suffers from depression, and as Francesca begins to search for a sense of self and identity both at home and at a new school. It is Francesca’s school, St Sebastian’s, that is of greater interest. It is far more ethnically diverse than St Martha’s, the school Josie attends in Looking for Alibrandi, and it is the introduction of female students into a previously all-boys school that ignites tensions and prejudices amongst the students, not ethnicity or racism. Several weeks into her second term, Francesca is beckoned over by a group of boys who sit by the school wall: “These guys are European and I know it’s time to do the cultural bond thing. Sometimes they nod at me. A you-and-me-are-the-same nod. … I’m allowed to be part of them, based purely on the fact that my grandparents and theirs belong to a minority.”126 Whereas Josie had experienced racism and difficulty due to her Italian Australian background, Francesca’s ethnicity allows her to be unconditionally accepted by a small and not unpopular segment of the school population comprising Portuguese, Lebanese and other European nationalities. Students of other non-Anglo Australian backgrounds are also found in the remainder of the student body, but this group of students has chosen to use ethnicity as their collective identity. The inclusion of Travis the “wannabe wog”127 indicates the development of ethnicity as a desirable identity, and one that may be honorary.128 Ultimately, Saving Francesca depicts a contemporary generation that has
126 M. Marchetta, Saving Francesca (Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin, 2003), p. 47-49. 127 Ibid., p. 47. 128 For more on ‘wog’ identities and the ‘wog phenomenon’, see E. Anatolitis, "Wogs and New Media," Australian Mosaic, no. 6 (2004); P. Aquilia, "Wog Drama and 'White Multiculturalists': The Role of Non Anglo- Australian Film and Television Drama in Shaping a National Identity," Journal of Australian Studies 67 (2001); A. Bunney, "From Wogboy to Mallboy: The Good, the Bad and the Lovely," Senses of Cinema, no. 12 (2001); Megalogenis, Faultlines, pp. 7-12; M. Pellizzari, "A Woman, a Wog and a Westie," in Growing up Italian in Australia: Eleven Young Australian Women Talk About Their Childhood (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1993); Warren, "'Wogspeak': Transformations of Australian English."
132 benefited from those who have struggled with ethnic identity and racism in the past, such as Josie, and where multiculturalism is more of an unquestioned lived reality. Fusillo’s approach to cultural diversity is of particular critical interest. He has been careful to note that his writing, particularly his writing outside of his young adult novels, does not focus exclusively on Italian Australian characters and situations.129 Fusillo also does not wish to be pigeon-holed as a ‘multicultural writer’ “as though in some way [he stands] apart from or [is] outside of whatever it may mean to be Australian, and the mainstream of Australian writing.”130 He does, however, admit to seeing his own ethnic background and personal sense of cultural diversity as a source of strength for a writer: “The strength of cultural diversity for a writer is in recognising the privileged position this affords you, to be able to look at, listen in to the one world from multiple perspectives, if you are alert to the noises that echo at the interface.”131 Three of Fusillo’s four young adult novels clearly feature Italian Australian protagonists. The ethnicity of Troy de Angelis, protagonist of An Earful of Static, remains unclear as, apart from his surname, the novel uses none of the ethnic markers in Troy’s life used in Fusillo’s other novels, such as older relatives and cultural practices. It is likely that he, too, is third or fourth generation Italian Australian. An Earful of Static, however, still clearly demonstrates Fusillo’s interest in representing cultural diversity in his work, even if the narrative does not directly engage with issues of ethnic identity or cultural difference. Troy’s love interest, for example, is Tran Tao, indicating an Asian Australian background, and his music teacher, Ms Fugato, is from an Italian Australian background. Bruises, Fusillo’s most recent novel, also aims at portraying a culturally diverse high school. Falco Petrone, the Italian Australian protagonist, is joined in his school camp bunkhouse by various Italian Australian, Anglo Australian and Indian-Irish Australian classmates. The narrative is more concerned with bullying, peer pressure and young, developing masculinities than it is with issues of ethnicity. Both An Earful of Static and Bruises are still bildungsromane of sorts, simply not specifically Italian Australian bildungsromane, but are significant in their representation of a culturally diverse Australian society and storylines that are able to indicate the ethnic backgrounds of their characters without necessarily problematising them.
129 Leigh, "Encore for a Wog Writer Sparring with English." 130 Fusillo, "Cultural Diversity and the Writer," p. 9. 131 Ibid.
133 Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca are markers in the Italian Australian arc of literary development. These novels indicate how understandings of Italian Australian ethnicities and identities have shifted and developed over the eleven year period that separates the two publications. Most importantly, Looking for Alibrandi is a strong example of a second stage Italian Australian bildungsroman, but Saving Francesca belongs to another intermediary stage wherein the second stage begins to blend into the third. Fusillo’s body of work demonstrates similar shifts to those found in Marchetta’s narratives. However Montano’s Wogaluccis, compared with this movement in Marchetta and Fusillo’s works, works retroactively. Published in 2002, it depicts an Australian society unchanged from that depicted by Marchetta ten years prior. As noted previously in the discussion of realism in young adult fiction above, commentators on children’s and young adult literature have noted that this literature shifts in its approach to various themes and issues, such as ethnicity and multiculturalism, in order to reflect the lives of its readers accordingly.132 While Michaels emphasises the social, cultural and historical situatedness of these fictions, Fernández argues for the socially progressive possibility of Australian young adult literature, which “engages in a dynamic and innovative dialogue with the discourses that produce it and then functions in a socially progressive manner.”133 With specific reference to representations of ethnicity and multiculturalism, both Kroll and Austin look forward to a young adult literature wherein ethnicity and cultural diversity are not problematic but “just a fact of life.”134 Austin conceptualises this future literature as “virtually post-multicultural.”135 Fernández notes that “such a literature can only be a product of a society which has fully come to grips with its cultural plurality on all fronts and which is no longer threatened by the pervasive and ongoing inclusion of the Other into the mainstream.”136 As argued in Chapter 1, this concept of the “post-multicultural” roughly corresponds to the third stage
132 Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction," p. 39; Kroll, "The New Fringe Dwellers," p. 31; Michaels, "The Realistic Turn," p. 50; Russell, "Identity Formation in Australian Young Adult Books" (Thesis), p. 40. 133 Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction," p. 43. 134 M. Austin, "The Australian Multicultural Children's Literature Awards," in Australian Children's Literature : Finding a Voice: Proceedings of the Second Children's Literature Conference, 27 March 1993, ed. Michael Stone (University of Wollongong: New Literatures Research Centre, University of Wollongong, 1993), p. 204. See also Kroll, "The New Fringe Dwellers," p. 31. 135 Austin, "The Australian Multicultural Children's Literature Awards," p. 204. 136 Fernández, "Multiculturalism and Social Values in Australian Fiction," p. 43.
134 of the Italian Australian developmental model, which itself draws upon Hall’s concept of the third scenario and Bhabha’s third space. It must be noted that none of these terms promote a space in which cultural difference is eradicated. It is a space in which hierarchical concepts of the host, dominant and mainstream have shifted significantly – if they have not been removed completely – in order to allow different identities and cultural relationships to emerge. The next chapter does not explore these third stage Italian Australian narratives but continues the examination of the second stage, focussing upon fictional narratives written for an adult audience. In their various stylistic approaches and, more importantly, in their approaches to the formation of the protagonists’ ethnic identities these adult narratives do shift further into the second stage. While the developmental journey of the young adult protagonists prepared them for their entrance into adulthood, these narratives written for an adult audience demonstrate how the processes of ethnic identity formation are ongoing, and how they continue into adult life.
135 136 Chapter 5
Saints, Sauces and Scotty Dogs: Critically Re-imagining Italian Australian Migration for Ethnic Identification
Lucillia cooks ragout for lunch. It is delicious but part way through the meal I sneak into my room and undo the Vegemite lid and sniff. I remember Pino saying that he grew up knowing he would leave his homeland one day. His parents thought the only future they could give him was for him to leave. But that the house a person owns, how much bread is on the table, these are things that are outside who we are. I feel I have been outside of who I am for a long time. Julie Capaldo, Love Takes You Home1
If she had been there after the Resurrection, like Thomas she would have had no hesitation in testing and prodding the Saviour’s wounds. Why did the Church so vilify his action? If only she had been able to poke her fingers into the salty flesh of Australia before committing herself, before entrusting her life to stories. Elise Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing2
Narratives belonging to the second stage of Italian Australian identity and narrative formation are thematically preoccupied with the interactions between Italianness and Australianness, the individual and the community, the relationship between the past and the present, and the ways in which all these factors intersect in the processes of identity formation. In the second stage young adult novels examined in the previous chapter, finding a balance between these factors was integral to the adolescent protagonists’ entrance into the adult world as Italian Australian individuals. In narratives of the second stage written for adult audiences with which this chapter is concerned, the development of the protagonists is a prolonged process that often does not culminate until after they have reached adulthood. This prolonged maturation is reminiscent of the lengthier process of development featured in the traditional Bildungsroman. As was seen in Chapter 4, cultural maturation (as Italian Australianness) is often an intergenerational process in these second
1 J. Capaldo, Love Takes You Home (Melbourne: Mandarin, 1996), p. 236. 2 E. Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997), p. 194.
137 stage narratives, demonstrated also in this chapter. Here, and in Chapter 6, I argue that reconciliation between the Italian past and the Australian present is central to the Italian Australian identity formation of these adult protagonists. Through critically re-imagining migration stories – either told within or entirely constitutive of the narratives – these successive generation writers are able to heavily criticise traditional tropes of migration narratives, such as assimilation, success and nostalgia. Both Helen Barolini and Mary Jo Bona observe that the processes of migration not only directly affect the successive generations, but manifest themselves in their imaginary and are reflected in successive generation protagonists’ own personal journeys: The displacement from one culture to another has represented a real crisis of identity for the Italian woman, and she has left a heritage of conflict to her children. They, unwilling to give themselves completely to the old ways she transmitted, end up, in their assimilationist hurry, with shame and ambivalence in the behaviour and values.3 On their emotional journeys, however, both protagonists recall their ancestors’ earlier journey and thereby legitimate the enterprise of emigration. Crucially, the protagonists recognise that their identities have been shaped by the formidable and often perilous movements of their ancestors. The suffering that ensued later in America affected the ways in which the protagonists thought about themselves as Italian Americans and as individuals within the larger cultural milieu.4 Barolini argues that the process of creating an American (or Australian or Canadian) identity is even more problematic for the women of Italian descent than it is for the men. The “heritage of conflict” and its attendant shame and ambivalence can be witnessed, she argues, in the writings of Italian American women.5 In Bona’s reading of Italian American women’s writing, which foregrounds readings of these narratives as ethnic bildungsromane, acts of migration echo across generations, and gaining an understanding of these acts facilitates the development of the ethnic identities of the protagonists.
3 H. Barolini, "Introduction," in The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian-American Women, ed. Helen Barolini (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), p. 13. 4 Bona, Claiming a Tradition, p. 96. 5 Gardaphé also asserts that “shame and ambivalence often become the very building blocks of Italian American women’s writing.” Gardaphé, "The Evolution of Italian American Autobiography," p. 303.
138 In the second stage in the arc of Italian Australian literary development, acts of migration play a significant role in the successive generation imaginary and are central to the construction of the narratives and the catharsis of the protagonists’ identities. In this chapter, I argue that, in their fiction, Capaldo and Valmorbida critically re-imagine acts of migration for the purposes of highlighting the heritage of conflict and, in the case of Valmorbida, challenging our ability to know stories of migration beyond the imaginary. Food and faith respectively are the defining metaphors for identity formation in Julie Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home (1996) and Elise Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing (1997). Through food and eating, Capaldo criticises past assimilation rhetoric and demonstrates its lingering effects upon the successive generations, as the third generation protagonist attempts to negotiate a healthy Italian Australian identity and a healthy relationship with food. While Love Takes You Home is written from the perspective of its third generation protagonist-narrator and, like the young adult narratives, draws heavily on storytelling traditions in its incorporation of migration experiences, Matilde Waltzing is an example of a second stage narrative that is almost entirely a critically re-imagined migration narrative. Drawing upon Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographical metafiction, I argue that Valmorbida’s narrative uses certain (postmodernist) literary and narrative techniques to issue a challenge to narratives of ‘successful’ migration, migrant identity formation and place-making, such as those examined in Chapter 2. The prevailing religious motif allows Valmorbida to highlight women’s silences in histories of migration, through her juxtaposition of the protagonist’s life against the hagiography of a fictional saint, but is also used to explore citizenship and identity formation as a form of faith and conversion. In its conclusion, this chapter briefly examines the gendered separation of the second stage writers for the adult market, Capaldo, Valmorbida and Armanno.
Julie Capaldo: Love Takes You Home (1996) Love Takes You Home weaves Grace Sabato’s preparations and travels to Italy with her own remembrances of growing up in Australia and the stories of her parents, grandparents and family friends. It depicts Grace’s shifting relationships with her parents, Anthony and Judy, her grandmother, Graziella, their family friends Pino and Valda Portelli. These relationships also affect and reflect her relationships with Italian culture, Australian culture and food. Of the Italian Australian narratives written for an adult market examined here, Capaldo’s novel adheres most closely to the conventions of the ethnic bildungsroman as Grace struggles with identity and culture as a child and adolescent, distances herself from
139 her family and culture as an adult, and ultimately returns to her family and community to take on the important role of cultural keeper. Food and cooking are important means of transmitting and experiencing ethnicity within this narrative, and are both thematically and structurally integral to the novel and its depiction of Italian Australian identity development. As its title suggests, Love Takes You Home is preoccupied with intersecting ideas of home, place and identities. In addition to Grace’s search for a cultural identity and a sense of place within her extended family, Capaldo uses the migrant characters of Pino, Valda and Graziella to explore how experiences and memories of migration and family histories affect constructions of home and place. Julie Capaldo was born in Adelaide and currently resides in Melbourne. She holds a degree in journalism and her first novel, Love Takes You Home (1996), is a result of a course in Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT.6 The film rights for Love Takes You Home have been optioned, but there is no news on when or whether production will start.7 Capaldo’s second novel, Weather (2001), does not feature Italian Australian characters or storylines pertaining to Italian Australian culture and identity. As with Marchetta, the expectation that Capaldo should continue writing on Italian Australian themes is reflected in an interview with Chris Brice, who describes Leonardo Da Vinci, the narrator of Weather, as “the one Italian concession Capaldo has allowed.”8 The narrative of Love Takes You Home is arranged around thirteen recipes given to Grace by Pino in the suitcase with which he had migrated to Australia. The result is a chronologically fractured narrative that is arranged according to the thematic preoccupations of Grace as narrator. The narrative is split between the first person narration of Grace and the third person narration about the remaining characters, but it is unclear whether this is not still the voice of Grace herself. Each chapter is named according to the recipe – chapter one, for example, is “To remember home – Pigeon in a pan.” Chapters are then divided by subheadings that are framed as the courses of the meal: entrées, appetisers, main courses and desserts. Recipes appear in the chapters where it is necessary to the narrative, but do not necessarily correspond to the particular course being ‘served’ at the time.
6 Writers on the Road: Julie Capaldo (2002 [cited 17 March 2004]); available from http://www.statelibrary.vic.gov.au/writersontheroad/capaldo.html. 7 C. Brice, "Life in Left Field," The Advertiser, Saturday 24 May 2001, p. 19. 8 Ibid.
140 The cultural significance of food and the connection that we can thus make between food and ethnicity is, of course, not new. Theorists most influential in establishing this link are perhaps Lévi-Strauss who treated food practices as a cultural language and Mary Douglas who argued that food categories constitute a social boundary system.9 Pat Caplan also asserts, “food is never ‘just food’ and its significance can never be purely nutritional … [I]t is bound up with social relations, including those of power, of inclusion and exclusion.”10 Anne J. Kershen has observed that food, or lack thereof (as in the Irish potato famine), is often a cause for migration, as well as being a common trope in migrant success stories.11 She also argues that food can be used as a political tool of racism and xenophobia, and can both positively and negatively eradicate cultural and ethnic difference. Food is also often cited as the most common way in which people experience multiculturalism as, to draw upon both Douglas and Lévi-Strauss, it is the easiest social boundary to cross and cultural language with which to communicate. This view has been criticised as promoting a form of ‘soft’ multiculturalism, a neat packaging, sale and consumption without the development of in-depth knowledge and understanding of various cultures.12 In a study of food and food practices in an Italian Australian community, Roberta James defends food practices against the ‘soft culture’ critique: [F]ood and cuisine are taken seriously in the public domain as important cultural indicators because they are hard cultural and material facts, critical to basic human survival and understood across cultures as fundamental to
9 D. Lupton, Food, the Body and the Self (London: SAGE Publications, 1996), p. 9. 10 P. Caplan, "Approaches to the Study of Food, Health and Identity," in Food, Health and Identity, ed. Pat Caplan (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 3. 11 A. J. Kershen, "Introduction: Food in the Migrant Experience," in Food in the Migrant Experience, ed. Anne J. Kershen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 1-3. 12 For an example, see Hage, White Nation, pp. 117-40. Here, Hage critiques Sydney’s Carnivale, an annual festival for multiculturalism, as an example of ‘soft’ multiculturalism. In a continuation of the food theme, Hage also reads the popular children’s picture book, The Stew That Grew, as a White nation fantasy wherein the ‘multicultural stew’ is actually under the control of an Anglo-Celtic cook. Such a popular understanding of multiculturalism is perhaps best summed up in the title of Carol Bailey’s comparison of people’s attitudes to multiculturalism in 1985 and 1995. Roberta James also engages with these arguments in her introduction to a special edition focusing upon the significance of food in multicultural Australia. See C. Bailey, "Food's Great But...: Evolving Attitudes to Multicultural Australia 1985/1995," Without Prejudice 10 (1997); R. James, "Introduction - Halal Pizza: Food and Culture in a Busy World," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15, no. 1 (2004); James, "The Reliable Beauty of Aroma."
141 humanity. They are things which make bridges for cross-cultural intersubjectivity and commonality.13 What James highlights, as do the seminal works of Lévi-Strauss and Douglas, and the studies by Caplan and Kershen, is that the very ordinariness of food and our everyday experience of it accentuates its (cross-) cultural significance. Deborah Lupton’s argument regarding food and subjectivity maintains that it is through the various discourses on food found in popular culture, health texts and personal experiences, “in conjunction with non- or pre-discursive sensual and embodied experiences, that individuals come to understand themselves, their bodies and their relationship to food and eating.”14 Literary texts are to be counted amongst the above discourses, and narrative allows for an exploration of this connection between food and subjectivity. Sneja Gunew notes that her own arguments regarding the popularising of food varieties under ‘multiculturalism’ as the most benign means of accommodating cultural difference have since developed into an interest in the relationship between food and subjectivity, especially of subjugated selves, and of the use of food in ethnic literature: “In the ‘ethnic’ or diasporan text, food traditionally functions to mark the memory of another kind of corporeality, of the body moving through a different daily repertoire of the senses.”15 Hsu-Ming Teo has also observed: “In contemporary writing by non-British Australians, food encapsulates culture and emphasises the importance of personal memory and communal history.”16 Most recently, Jennifer Ann Ho has examined the role of food in Asian American ethnic bildungsromane, but notes that “the trope of food remains underdeveloped in the study of all ethnic American literature,”17 which may also be said in relation to ethnic Australian literatures. Edvige Giunta argues that for Italian American women writers, “food dramatically articulates both a perception of the domestic space as oppressive and an awareness of the ways in which women empower themselves within that traditionally
13 James, "The Reliable Beauty of Aroma," p. 29. 14 Lupton, Food, the Body and the Self, p. 13. 15 S. Gunew, "Introduction: Multicultural Translations of Food, Bodies, Languages," Journal of Intercultural Studies 21, no. 3 (2000): p. 230. For Gunew’s earlier arguments, see, S. Gunew, "Against Multiculturalism: Rhetorical Images," in Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism, ed. G.L. Clark, D. Forbes, and R. Francis (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993), pp. 41-42. 16 H.-M. Teo, "Future Fusions and a Taste for the Past: Literature, History and the Imagination of Australianness," Australian Historical Studies 118 (2002): p. 127. 17 J. A. Ho, Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 144.
142 oppressive space.”18 In Love Takes You Home, the notion of Italian women as mammas in the kitchen is challenged as it is Pino, and not Valda, who is in charge of cooking in both the public and private spheres. Maria and her mother, Lucia, are the only women who are portrayed cooking in the kitchen. For Valda, the kitchen is a social space in which she interacts with her children and neighbours. Although she cleans this space, Valda is not portrayed as cooking, but as eating and as feeding others. Rather than taking on a particularly gendered connotation as Giunta has found in Italian American women’s writing, food in Capaldo’s narrative is connected to ethnicity and identity. Ho argues that in Asian American coming of age narratives the: Asian American adolescents challenge and revise their cultural legacies and experiment with alternative ethnic affiliations through their relationship to food. … Food is a critical medium for compliance with and resistance to Americanisation, a means for enacting the ambiguities of an Asian-ethnic American identity that is already in a constant state of flux.19 Likewise, the characters’ various attitudes to food and eating in Love Takes You Home are used to indicate their relationships with themselves, their families and their ethnicity. Grace eats secret hoards of food in the same manner that she hoards her experiences of Italianness, and is overweight because her identity, like her body filled with food, is not given the chance to consume ethnicity healthily, nor to metabolise it properly, culminating in an eating disorder that represents her denial of food, ethnicity and family. Similarly, her grandmother Graziella’s digestive disorder is symbolic of her rejection of her Italian identity, and her father Anthony’s skinniness is representative of the way in which his ethnic identity has been malnourished. Furthermore, Pino Portelli’s collection of recipes provides more information than simply how to cook each dish, including memories, advice, and personal and cultural meanings, and become the means through which Grace asserts her Italian Australian identity when she is given the responsibility of cultural maintenance. Upon migrating to Australia, Graziella attempts to abandon all traces of her Italian identity. Before she leaves Italy she is already consumed by the bitterness of her experiences of being deemed an outsider, according to her village’s traditions and superstitions, and seeks to avoid once again being seen as Other because of her migrant
18 E. Giunta, Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 105. 19 Ho, Consumption and Identity, p. 3.
143 status. She refuses to cook or to eat Italian dishes and also refuses to speak Italian, or allow anyone else speak it in her house. “We live in Australia now,” she says, “we are Australians. Only the ignorant continue to pay homage to a backward land so far away. … This is the better country, it is the better language.”20 Graziella’s desire to assimilate is so great, she even pronounces Italian in the Australian way, as “Eyetallion.”21 Graziella suffers from a unspecified digestive disorder that dates from her arrival in Australia, from the consummation of her loveless marriage, and her renunciation of love altogether: One night, Graziella grabbed the knife from [her husband, Guido, who used to hold it to her throat as they had sex] and sliced down her ring finger saying, ‘This is the finger we link to the heart, the finger we wear rings on to show love.’ She hissed, ‘I sever the connection to the heart. My heart is mine and no one else’s …’ Often she woke to a taste so bitter it sent her rushing to the kitchen to drink pint after pint of milk. She recognised the taste that soured her mouth and fouled her breath … it was the residue of love.22 Graziella is an unwilling migrant, having been coerced into proxy marriage by her family who feared she would remain a spinster otherwise. By aligning herself with the host culture, Australia and Australian culture becomes an opportunity for Graziella to abandon the traditions and superstitions that excluded her – although, paradoxically, she does practice traditional Italian witchcraft in secret. Assimilation, Gunew points out, is “a term deriving from digestion and indicating ‘becoming the same as’.”23 Graziella’s digestive disorder represents her inability to become the same as Australians, her inability to assimilate to Australian culture. This may or may not be linked to her continuing practice of malevolent witchcraft, which maintains her foreignness and therefore her un- assimilability. In a study of Australian race and immigration debates, Louise Edwards, Stephano Occhipinti and Simon Ryan argue that indigestion is often used as a metaphor for the nation-as-a-body’s inability to healthily digest external matter in the form of immigration or foreign investment.24 In Capaldo’s novel, the reverse is evident: here it is the migrant body that is unable to digest the assimilation rhetoric that it consumes.
20 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 31. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., p. 231. 23 Gunew, Haunted Nations, p. 17. 24 L. Edwards, S. Occhipinti, and S. Ryan, "Food and Immigration: The Indigestion Trope Contests the Sophistication Narrative," Journal of Intercultural Studies 21, no. 3 (2000): p. 298.
144 Anthony, Graziella’s son, is a tall and skinny man ill-equipped to transmit a sense of ethnic identity to his daughter as he has ostensibly been starved, by his own mother, of his own sense of ethnic identity. When Anthony, as a child, attempts to express his love for both his mother and his ethnicity through telling his mother that he loves her in Italian as Pino has taught him, Graziella violently rejects him. In an attempt to win back his mother’s favour, Anthony severs his ties with the Portelli family – who have been his means of accessing his denied Italian ethnicity – until he is an adult seeking asylum from Graziella’s all-consuming bitterness which threatens to destroy his young family. Reconnecting with the Portelli family, Anthony also reconnects with his Italian ethnic identity, but his consumption of Italian culture is still monitored by his wife, Judy (whose ethnic heritage, as an orphan, is unknown, but presumably Anglo Australian), who dislikes the abundance of Italian food in the Portelli family, and the great relish and abandon with which it is eaten. The Sabato and Portelli families, however, remain lifelong friends, thus sustaining Anthony’s tentative reconnection with his Italianness. At the sumptuous feasts these families occasionally share, Anthony eats up the food and the atmosphere like a man starving: I watched Anthony that day. He looked more at ease when he was a part of the crowd around the Portellis’ table than anywhere else. He straightened his shoulders and smiled. That night we had a light broth for tea, with the leftovers. Pino sang along with the tenors on the record and when we left he hugged us all with tears in his eyes. Anthony called out ‘Ciao’ as we drove away and I thought this is what Christmas should be. In the car, Anthony whistled ‘Nessun Dorma’ and the crease between his eyebrows smoothed away.25 His daughter Grace’s relationship with food hinges entirely upon issues of identity and ethnicity. Her most positive experiences with food and eating occur within the loving circle of her family friends, the Portellis, who have healthily developed Italian Australian identities and a great love and appreciation of food, while her negative experiences with food occur with Graziella. Gorging on the pre-packaged Australian junk foods and greasy takeaways that Graziella feeds her distracts Grace from the emotional and psychological discomfort she feels in her grandmother’s presence with the physical discomfort of overeating, and eating unhealthy foods; their relationship is both literally and figuratively unhealthy. On one occasion, Graziella plies Grace with chocolate whilst
25 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 143.
145 questioning her about her love for Guido, Graziella’s estranged husband and Grace’s grandfather: Graziella sneered, ‘You say you love me but you visit Him.’ Then she started whispering, ‘He used to hurt me at night in the dark,’ and she gave me more chocolate as she whispered, ‘Psst psst psst,’ in my ear. I chewed harder, faster, biting larger chunks until my cheeks bulged and hurt they were so stretched. A knock at the door saved me from bursting and Graziella quickly put the chocolate jar away. When Anthony came in I was giddy with relief. Graziella gave me a packet of biscuits to take home.26 The first signs of Grace’s anorexia coincide with her realisation that Graziella cannot force her to eat. Grace learns that by refusing to eat Graziella’s food she is able to control their relationship. Grace begins to lose weight when she moves out of the family home, creates her own domestic sphere strictly ordered by her own rules and, most importantly, stops her regular visits with her parents, the Portellis and Graziella. She wields fanatical control over all aspects of her life, including her consumption of food and develops an eating disorder. Lupton notes that “anorexia nervosa [is often seen as symbolising an] attempt to rebel against the powerful parents and exercise autonomy by refusing the food prepared in the home. Through rejection of food, the once dutiful and compliant daughter … becomes a determined rebel, demonstrating autonomy both through not ingesting food and through the embodied expression of food refusal through emaciation.”27 Grace’s extreme weight loss occurs after she has left the family home and cut herself off from family and friends. Her physical state becomes an embodied expression of her supposed autonomy, but is actually the embodied expression of her denial – denial of food, family and ethnicity. Grace feels a “perverse sense of satisfaction”28 at her parents’ horror upon seeing her emaciated self – the pleasure of having her autonomy acknowledged – but this same horror in the eyes of Pino and Valda makes her sad: “I wished I had flesh on my face so Valda could pinch my cheeks.”29 By starving herself of food and love, Grace rejects the very essence of the Portelli family, with whom she desires to belong. This refusal to eat, as
26 Ibid., pp. 96-97. 27 Lupton, Food, the Body and the Self, p. 58. 28 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 214. 29 Ibid.
146 Guinta observes in Italian American narratives, “is especially significant if one thinks of the place of food in immigrant culture and memory.”30 Depictions of anorexia in Asian American bildungsromane, Ho argues, are tied to the protagonist’s relationship with their family and their ethnicity, reflecting the protagonist’s “longing for a deeper, more sustaining, more nurturing, and more fulfilling relationship with her mother and her cultural motherland, one that mirrors her melancholic desire for a fully integrated Asian American subjectivity.”31 Grace’s eating disorder is also framed entirely in terms of her relationship with her grandmother, the Portellis and her own sense of ethnicity and identity. Grace denies herself any sustenance whatsoever; she does not eat the ‘Australian’ foods, the chocolate biscuits and fast foods, fed to her by Graziella that she had consumed unhappily and guiltily, nor does she eat the Italian dishes, the baccalà and cannoli lovingly prepared for her by Pino and Valda, despite the joy these have brought her in the past. Instead, Grace does not eat anything, thus denying both the assimilationist version of Australianness promoted by Graziella and the warm Italianità shared with her by the Portellis. She embraces a world of absolute control and absolute denial of all cultural (that is, both Italian and Australian) markers. When Grace eventually acknowledges that she has an eating disorder, she turns to the Portellis for help and falls into a fever that lasts seven days and seven nights. Capaldo describes this fever in terms of a battle between light and dark. In terms of Grace’s struggle for identity, ethnic or otherwise, this can be read as a battle between acceptance (of her Italianness and within the Portelli family) and denial (of ethnic identity and her need for family and community, the path chosen by Graziella). Through Grace’s illness, Capaldo portrays this apparent absence of culture and identity as an unhealthy way to live, criticising assimilation and its repercussions throughout the generations. Grace is nourished and healed by Pino and Valda’s traditional ministrations, while Graziella is killed by the mints she eats to negate the foul taste of emotional and cultural denial:
30 Giunta, Writing with an Accent, p. 110. The following studies also engage with the importance of food in migrant culture and memory, particularly in terms of cultural maintenance: M. Bosworth, "Conversations with Italian Women: Close Encounters of a Culinary Kind," in Aspects of Ethnicity in Western Australia, ed. Richard Bosworth and Margot Melia (Nedlands: Centre for Western Australian History, Department of History, Western Australia, 1991); James, "Introduction - Halal Pizza: Food and Culture in a Busy World."; "The Reliable Beauty of Aroma."; Kershen, "Introduction: Food in the Migrant Experience."; Teo, "Future Fusions and a Taste for the Past." 31 Ho, Consumption and Identity, p. 97.
147 Graziella chokes. A Kool Mint lodges in her throat and refuses to move, as stubborn as she has ever been. The moment between gasping for breath and breathing out for the last time, is her whole life. She let her last breath go and sees flashes of light. She thinks of her granddaughter, her one concession. She has an unfulfilled hunger that gnaws and groans. She would feed on the girl if she could, digest her morsel by morsel...32 While the Sabato family has a difficult relationship with eating and ethnicity, the Portelli family provide a more positive example: “[Valda] has a saying, ‘A stomach full of food is the stomach of a rich person.’”33 For Pino, Valda and their family, love and happiness is very much connected to food. Valda came from a poor family, and was often hungry as a child, so Pino relishes feeding his wife rich and lovingly prepared meals. When Pino falls in love with Valda, his admiration for her appearance is shaped according to vegetables: “[h]er hair was as glossy as eggplant and he could just see the hair on her upper lip, like the fuzz of a tomato leaf” and he is “enraptured by the thick chocolate spill of her voice.”34 For Pino, food and cooking is connected also to music as his mother, Maria – who had grown up in the composer Puccini’s household and whose own mother is portrayed as Puccini’s muse, the inspiration behind Mimi in Madame Butterfly – had always played music as she cooked, instilling in her son the connection between food and music: “She cooked to [operas], told her son Pino it enhanced the flavour – the sounds permeated the food and sweetened the taste.”35 The Portelli children – Angelina, Joe, Russell and Alessandro – express some adolescent displeasure at having to eat foods that mark them as different to their Anglo Australian friends and neighbours, but their sense of ethnic identity and their relationship to food is far less complicated and contested than that of Grace and Anthony. The eldest, Angelina, is the most vocal about her horror of “growing up a wog,”36 envious of the seemingly ‘normal’ household of Darlene Doogan, her best friend and next door neighbour: “And the food we eat,” Angelina would complain to Darlene as the two teenagers secretly smoked behind the shed, “it’s not real food like you have. We never have casseroles, or pies, or cheese that doesn’t stink.”37 Darlene faithfully informs her friend that she isn’t “a real wog” because she doesn’t smell and washes her hair. For
32 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 228. 33 Ibid., p. 112. 34 Ibid., p. 24. 35 Ibid., p. 46. 36 Ibid., p. 152. 37 Ibid., p. 196.
148 this, Angelina is grateful and breaks off pieces of fennel for them to chew in order to hide the smell of cigarette smoke on their breath; the irony behind this act being that Angelina’s cultural heritage is responsible for her knowledge of the breath-freshening traits of fennel. Angelina’s christening and wedding are marked by sumptuous feasts – the latter is celebrated with a dish especially concocted by Pino for the occasion and Angelina, “Vegetables better than the Chinese.”38 Grace is also given a feast when she is accepted into university and other feasts are scattered throughout the narrative. William Boelhower establishes the ethnic feast or ethnic group gathering as important literary tropes which are particularly useful for examining ethnic group identity, social interactions and cultural meanings. Recipes in particular play an important role in feast making and cultural maintenance: “without recipes there could be no feast and that both competence and performance are held together by the shared ethnic values that circulate in both.”39 Here, the recipes become the means for the feast, and the feast becomes a “utopian space of ethnic identity through the genealogical exercise of storytelling, music and group recollection.”40 In Capaldo’s novel, while there are several Italian feasts that do indeed become utopian spaces in which Grace may, however briefly, experience an Italian identity, it is the recipes which ultimately confirm her Italian Australian identity. Prior to her departure for Italy, Pino presents Grace with the suitcase he used in his migration to Australia, in which he has also left her a book of his recipes to “remind [her] of [her] home and family while [she] is away.”41 The suitcase and the recipe book construct between them a very particular symbolic space. Despite its Italian origins, Pino gives the suitcase – a symbol of travel, a testimony to his migration and, through its original emptiness, also a symbol of hope – to Grace as a reminder of Australia, but also to remind her of a particular community, her extended family, that exists in Australia because of their migration from Italy. The recipe book inside the suitcase was started by Pino after his migration to Australia. Although all the recipes are for Italian dishes, they are re-written by Pino for the specific purpose of Italian cultural maintenance and negotiation in an Australian context. The recipes thus become no longer simply Italian but Italian Australian, just as the suitcase comes to
38 Ibid., p. 151. 39 W. Boelhower, Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 113. 40 Ibid., p. 115. 41 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 4.
149 symbolise movement and migration between Italy and Australia. In his letter to Grace, Pino writes: this is with you for luck and safekeeping. Maybe it will remind you of your home and family while you are away from us. Bella, one day, when I am gone, you give this to my grandchildren so they too will remember where they came from and who they are.42 The responsibility of cultural maintenance, through the safekeeping of the recipes for future generations, is, significantly, bestowed upon Grace and not Pino and Valda’s own children. In gaining this responsibility, Grace is recognised by Pino – and is thus able to recognise herself – as an important member of his Italian Australian family and community. Food and eating thus chart Grace’s struggle and development as an Italian Australian, but an integral part of this narrative as ethnic bildungsroman is Grace’s journey to Italy as a return to origins and as part of her discovery of home and place. Loretta Baldassar identifies the return visit from Australia back to Italy as “a secular pilgrimage of enormous importance for migrants, particularly the first generation, for whom the return is to the place of their birth [but the] journey ‘back’ can also be a significant rite of passage for the … second generation.”43 Grace’s trip to Italy is also more than just a vacation; it is a journey of self-discovery as she embarks upon a search for her identity, history and a sense of home and place.44 Grace describes being in Italy as “like walking down the driveway of the house you have grown up in, a feeling of familiarity that is so comfortable
42 Ibid. 43 Baldassar, Visits Home, p. 3. As argued in Chapter 2, Emma Ciccotosto’s return to Italy is central in her articulation of her Italian self as belonging to her Australian place, and her declaration of Australia as home. Peter Dalseno, in his preface to Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, declares his Australian identity upon seeing the red Qantas tail out the airport window in Rome as he journeys back to Australia after a return visit to Italy. Pallotta-Chiarolli’s Tapestry, examined in Chapter 3, foregrounds Maria’s journey to Italy as important in gaining an understanding of her self, and her family’s Italian past. See Dalseno, Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, p. vi. 44 It is important to note that none of Pino and Valda’s own children return to Italy. The implication here is that their identities are not in need of affirmation or transformation; although the Portelli children also suffer the trials and tribulations of growing up Italian in Australia, it is implied that Pino and Valda’s loving support and maintenance of a warm Italian household has somehow rescued them from the crisis of identity endured by Grace throughout her childhood and early adult life. On the ‘myth of return’ and the second generation's attitudes towards the homeland, see for a comparative sociological perspective, Z. Skrbis, Long-Distance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands and Identities (Ashgate: Aldershot, 1999), pp. 38-56.
150 that it almost goes unnoticed. It is as natural as breathing.”45 Grace further describes Italy as being like “the Portelli family magnified one thousand times.”46 Grace’s feeling of familiarity with Italy is understood through her familiarity with the Portelli family, who have reconstructed Italy for Grace through their stories and memories – Italy is home because the Portellis are her home: Visiting places Pino has told me of has felt like a homecoming, maybe it is because he is like family to me. The word in Italian is famiglia, but my family has never felt familiar to me before … It is only now when I am far from them that I think of them, hear their voices, recognise them. Only now, when I am far from them that they have become familiar, famiglia.47 The Portellis are not her family, however, and Grace travels south to her grandmother’s village. It is starkly contrasted against the cosmopolitan Italy of the north as “a remote village where they have only recently stopped using oxen to pull the ploughs.”48 The contrasting representations of the ‘cosmopolitan’ north and the ‘primitive’ south are obviously highly contentious and problematic. I do not believe that Capaldo intends to comment on the socio-economic gap and problems between the north and south of Italy, but rather aims to use this contrast as a metaphor for Grace’s journey into her family’s past. Graziella, was feared as a witch in her home village, and Grace’s return to the village allows her to lift the curse Graziella had laid upon a man, who Grace recognises as her real grandfather: He looks up into my face and I see with a shock the round dark eyes, the crease between the eyebrows – it is my father’s face… ‘He says he is old and welcomes death but he is cursed with life. He says, you are the only one who can lift the curse, to free him.’… ‘Ho capito,’ I say. I put my hand on the old man’s shiny head – I don’t know why, it just seems right. In my best Italian I say, ‘Ritorni a casa, sei stato salvato.’49
45 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 223. Baldassar’s description of walking down the road to her family’s old house also reflects this sense of familiarity, as well as recalling Capaldo’s driveway imagery. See Baldassar, Visits Home, pp. 1-2. 46 Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 223. 47 Ibid., p. 228. 48 Ibid., p. 229. 49 Ibid., p. 235. Grace’s Italian words translate to, ‘Return home, you are saved.’ (My translation.)
151 After this encounter, Grace dreams vividly of her family history and through her dreams discovers and absorbs the cultural knowledge that was denied her through Graziella’s strict adherence to assimilation rhetoric. Grace’s return visit allows her to lay claim to an Italian identity that she had previously experienced vicariously through the Portelli family. As Baldassar notes, return visits for the second generation are essential for establishing kinship ties and rejuvenating ethnic identity. The moment of recognition between grandfather and granddaughter saves not only the old man, but Grace’s Italian Australian self. Grace is finally able to construct a healthy Italian Australian identity, with which she has struggled also through her relationship with food, only after she has travelled to Italy and learned of her family’s past. When she finds a jar of Vegemite on the shelf of a little grocery store in her grandmother’s village, the smell of the spread reminds her of Australia, and she is able to recognise Australia as a place wherein she may experience both her Australianness and her Italianness. Grace’s journey to Italy also recalls the migration experiences of Pino, Valda and Graziella, and is important in reconciling the Italian past with the Australian present. The narrative re-enactment of migration through memory and storytelling allows successive generation protagonists to recognise the significance of acts of migration, and to further contextualise their own cultural identities. By returning to Italy and by piecing together her family history, Grace Sabato succeeds in developing a strong (and healthy) Italian Australian identity. As noted previously, such a focus upon food is vulnerable to various criticisms: that it is an easy way of experiencing culture, that food is ‘ordinary’ and therefore not worthy of academic consideration. It is often too true that we do use food as a means of easily digesting other cultures without gaining an understanding of them, or flippantly cite culinary diversity as proof of cultural diversity and acceptance. A closer examination of food, food practices and their intersection with culture and interpersonal relationships, however, reveals value beyond nutrition or, rather, reveals food’s value as cultural nutrition. In literature, food is transformed into a metaphor for culture, community and identity. As argued here, food is central to the portrayal and development of the ethnic identities of the characters, and thus to a reading of Love Takes You Home as an ethnic bildungsromane. What foods are eaten and when, who prepares them and how, and the memories and associations attached to various dishes and meals throughout the narrative reveal social relations between characters, traditions, personal histories, and class and ethnic differences. While food is not entirely constitutive of ethnicity, it is a useful and appropriate metaphor, particularly within
152 literature, for understanding the way in which ethnic identities are ‘cooked up’ and ‘consumed’.
Elise Valmorbida: Matilde Waltzing (1997) Matilde Waltzing provides an example of the second type of critical re-imagining involved in the second stage of Italian Australian narrative development. Where Love Takes You Home used memory and storytelling to integrate migrant experiences into Grace’s identity formation and development, Valmorbida’s narrative almost entirely comprises the life story of a fictional female Italian migrant, Matilde Manin. In brief moments, Matilde’s narrative is interrupted by the disembodied voices of St Barbara, a fictional saint, Remo and the Scottie Dog. These characters, existing in Matilde’s subconscious or imagination, represent abstract concepts significant to Valmorbida’s narrative, particularly her critical construction of a fictional migrant life: history/life story/truth (St Barbara), migration (Remo) and Australia (Scottie Dog). Just as food shaped Capaldo’s narrative, Valmorbida utilises a religious motif throughout the novel, structuring the narrative around hagiographical writing and using ideas of faith and religion to explore migrants’ shifting sense of citizenship and identity. Through this structure, Valmorbida critically re-imagines migrant life narratives, highlighting experiences of dislocation, loneliness and disillusionment, as well as challenging our ability to ever truly know stories of migration beyond representations, particularly challenging notions of the migrant ‘success’ story. Elise Valmorbida was born in Melbourne in 1961, and is described as having grown up “in a very Italian family.”50 Valmorbida graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in English Language and Literature and in 1984, after two years of undergraduate teaching, received a Commonwealth Scholarship to Oxford. Valmorbida soon left Oxford to pursue a career in design in London, and has since worked as the Creative Director for an international design consultancy. She also edits the lifestyle section of Circa, a magazine published by London estate agents, Stirling Ackroyd.51 Valmorbida undertook extensive research in both Italy and Australia for Matilde Waltzing, and has also published several short stories.52
50 Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing, flyleaf. 51 Stirling Ackroyd: Publications: Circa ([cited 17 April 2004]); available from http://www.stirlingackroyd.co.uk/publication_circa.asp. 52 M. Schmidt and P. Schmidt, Valmorbida, Elise ([cited 17 April 2004]); available from http://ozlit.vicnet.net.au/writers.cfm?id=810.
153 Matilde Waltzing depicts the life of Matilde Manin, from her childhood in Villafranca in northern Italy to her migration to Australia, and her subsequent settlement in Melbourne. Matilde migrates to Australia with her husband Piero, who has returned to Italy for the purpose of finding an Italian wife, after having migrated to Australia several years before. They settle in inner-city Melbourne, and together have three children, Carolina, Loretta and Lorenzo. Matilde and Piero find personal and financial success in the Italian community and their ice factory, but it is temporary, as the ice factory eventually burns down and Piero dies of stomach cancer, leaving Matilde alone to raise their children and make a life for herself in Australia. There is little significant interaction between the migrant and successive generations presented in the novel, with the exception of the few chapters written from the perspective of Matilde’s eldest daughter Carolina. Nor is Matilde’s story told to anyone within the novel itself, unlike Capaldo’s narrative wherein storytelling is an important part of cultural maintenance and intergenerational communication. Instead, Matilde’s life story is told to the reader with a sense of futility; that is, the telling is futile because, within the bounds of the novel itself, Matilde’s experiences will not be known by anyone, and there will be no substantial memory carried on throughout the successive generations. In other narratives of the second stage, such as Love Takes You Home, Looking for Alibrandi and The Dons, stories of migration have been used to create a connection between characters of the migrant and successive generations, to perpetuate a sense of Italian identity in Australia. Here, Matilde’s story, and its juxtaposition with the hagiography of the fictional St Barbara of the Apparition, is used to create a connection between the reader and the idea that migrant stories are often unheard, lost, or tailored to suit national or community values. Linda Hutcheon, in The Poetics of Postmodernism (1988), describes the development of a particular mode of fiction, argued to be distinctly postmodern, that combines literature, history and theory to achieve a “theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs (historiographic metafiction) [which is] made the grounds for its rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of the past.”53 Matilde Waltzing does not play with real historical events and figures to the extent found in Hutcheon’s various examples of this literary mode, nor does it exhibit all of the characteristics of this form as outlined by Hutcheon, but the concept of historiographic metafiction is useful in an examination of this narrative’s relationship with history.
53 Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism, p.5. Original emphasis.
154 Historiographic metafiction, Hutcheon argues, “acknowledges the paradox of the reality of the past but its textualised accessibility to us today.”54 From the outset, Valmorbida’s novel emphasises the unreliability of published history, the implications of which for saints, mythical characters and migrant women alike become apparent as the novel progresses. By contrasting the hagiography of the fictional martyred St Barbara of the Apparition to the experiences of pre-World War II migrant Matilde Manin, Valmorbida demonstrates how the experiences of migrants, like the lives of saints, are manipulated into what is historically, economically and culturally useful. Matilde Waltzing begins with a prologue from a somewhat bemused St Barbara as she presents to the reader a hagiographer’s view of her life. St Barbara remarks on the rarity of ‘authentic’ voices: What a rare thing for us to speak out and have a voice – to say for ourselves who we are, what makes us tick, and all that business. … As everyone knows, they write the stories. They make little children learn them, and decide in later years that maybe they’d made a mistake; maybe you couldn’t prove things, it might have all been a big fake. They might call you weak-minded instead of saintly. Or gifted or mad.55 Matilde, like Barbara, is fictional and is not a ‘real’ migrant, just as Barbara is not a ‘real’ saint, therefore her story cannot be taken as a testimony to the experiences of Italian migration to Australia. In juxtaposing these fictional characters against one another, Matilde Waltzing emphasises the way in which migrant histories and saints’ hagiographies cannot be taken on face value and that there are very personal and human experiences to be taken into consideration, along with the possibility that such accounts might be to some extent fictional/ised. Historiographic metafiction privileges two modes of narration: that of multiple points of view or that of an overtly controlling narrator. Both modes problematise the notion of subjectivity and do not display the same confidence in their ability to know the
54 Ibid., p. 114. Original emphasis. Interestingly, Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett Jr. and Robert E. Hogan suggest that the rise of metafiction in the 1960s resulted in a neglect of conventional narrative forms, such as storytelling, and that ethnic writers have actually used storytelling to redefine history and culture. Storytelling, however, is absent from Matilde Waltzing as the narrative serves to highlight the silences of many migrant women. See A. Singh, J. T. Skerrett Jr., and R. E. Hogan, "Introduction," in Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures, ed. Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett Jr., and Robert E. Hogan (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), p. 18. 55 Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing, p. ix. Original emphasis.
155 past as ‘historical’ migrant narrators or biographers.56 It would have undoubtedly been interesting for Valmorbida to have imitated such ‘authentic’ voices as Bonutto or Ciccotosto, and to have used the narrative to subtly highlight absences and silences in migrant experiences by creating a parodic migrant unsuccess story. Instead, Valmorbida opts for multiple points of view or narrative voices to self-consciously highlight absences, silences and the censorship exercised by authors of historical texts. By ‘unsuccess’ I do not mean failure per se, but simply not succeeding in all facets within the context of broader Italian Australian and Australian values. The story of Matilde and Piero Manin’s migration to Australia is, in comparison to the autobiographical narratives of Bonutto and Ciccotosto, a migrant unsuccess story, as is the story of Graziella Sabato in Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home, and both Michele and Emilio Aquila in Armanno’s Romeo trilogy (to be discussed in Chapter 6). Piero temporarily finds financial success with his ice factory, which brings with it social success in the eyes of both the Italian and Australian communities in Melbourne; unfortunately the ice factory burns down in an accident; and Piero is never able to recover his losses, and dies of stomach cancer several years later, his illness exacerbated by the stress brought on by his financial demise. In the traditional and ‘authentic’ migrant narrative, such as that of Bonutto, Piero would have been able to succeed again, and this triumph in the face of adversity would have given his story greater value in the broader context. As the protagonists of historiographic metafictions are usually those figures marginalised in other narratives,57 Piero’s eventual demise, which would have been anecdotal in a traditional migrant narrative, is given greater impact and significance in this narrative. In her prologue, St Barbara issues a challenge to the truth and authenticity of histories, biographies and hagiographies, highlighting their construction. The migrant success story is also arguably highly constructed; while I do not and indeed cannot dispute that there are many successful migrants in Australia, the chances of their stories being heard, let alone published are drastically higher if there is a sense of ultimate success, a happy ending, so to speak. Interestingly, the stories of saints, martyrs especially, are often unsuccess stories in themselves – the protagonists, after all, usually die rather horrific deaths. Unlike unsuccessful migrants, saints and martyrs are rewarded for their struggles both in the afterlife and in being given a place in religious and cultural memory. The price, however, is that the ‘truth’ of their stories will forever remain unknown and their life
56 Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism, p. 117. 57 Ibid., p. 114.
156 events and experiences are manipulated according to religious, political, cultural and even economic reasons. Barbara’s hagiographer, for example, neglects to mention her three children born in her cave and out of wedlock but, as Barbara notes, he “does, of course, tell most enthusiastically of my wonder-working, since this sort of thing is the stuff of hagiography.”58 Barbara thus demonstrates her acute awareness of the way in which the truth of her life story has been necessarily remoulded to fit hagiographical – and religious and political – conventions. Her disembodied voice continues her amused commentary on the published version of her life and death, warning the reader: “You know people change things when they tell stories. Like a view outside through a stained-glass window. Ripples and colours get in the way. You know what I mean.”59 Who speaks, when they speak and what they say is thus important in Matilde Waltzing. The disembodied, deceased, mythical and imaginary states of Barbara, Remo and the Scottie Dog both restrain and liberate these characters’ voices. Bromley refers to imaginary or absent persons who are represented as speaking or acting as figures of prosopopoeia, a term from rhetoric.60 Reading Barbara, Remo and the Scottie Dog as figures of prosopopoeia highlights their roles as characterisations of abstract concepts within Matilde’s imaginary: history/life story/truth, migration and Australia, respectively. Although Barbara resonates through Matilde’s life in her recollections of the celebrations of Sagra in Villafranca, the visions of the proxy bride Giuseppina de Petris and Valmorbida’s chosen narrative structure, her specific role in the narrative is to provide the framework for reading Matilde’s story and to emphasise the aforementioned rarity of authentic voices. Remo, sharing his name with the boat upon which Matilde and Piero journey to Australia, is confined to those chapters describing their passage, and so represents and gives voice to the process of migration.61 The Scottie Dog is Matilde’s most faithful imaginary companion embodying, so to speak, her fascination with Australia. As Matilde’s imaginary friend or spirit guide of sorts, and as the representation of her fascination with Australia, the Scottie Dog’s role is complex. Australia captures Matilde’s imagination at age twelve when, during a geography lesson on her last day of school, she noted the resemblance of the country to the profile of a Scottish terrier she had
58 Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing, p. x. 59 Ibid., p. xxix. 60 Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging, p. 29. 61 Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing, pp. 79-102.
157 once seen in a book, which had previously intrigued her due to its resemblance to a damp patch on her bedroom wall: in between each black starched movement [of the nun’s arm], Tilde saw first the ear, then the snout, then the neck, then the other ear. She saw the Scottie Dog’s bust that floated on the sea like some bizarre cameo…The Scottie Dog was there, that purposeful friend from her private mural. There was something magic here, and she didn’t know its name.62 Matilde queries her teacher, Sister Sebastian, and learns: “’Oh, that’s Australia. One of God’s unique wonders, as it is a continent and an island and a country. It’s like America but very empty. There are some Italians there, and gold. Bruno Sartori migrated there and builds railroads in the desert. It is very hot.”63 After Matilde’s migration, the Scottie Dog disappears from the narrative until Matilde decides to become an Australian citizen and receives her naturalisation papers. The initials S. I. T. (Simon I. Thackeray) remind her of dog obedience, thereby reminding Matilde of the Scottie Dog. After her naturalisation, Matilde begins to wear a brooch in the shape of a Scottish terrier’s head or, rather, the map of Australia. The Scottie Dog is triumphant: Lapels. That’s my territory marked. No need to piss. Portraits of me all over the place these days. Sprattsy dog business, risky whisky, lucky charms. But now I’m mouthing gibberish. As it were. Like a good boy. Heel! Down, boy, down. Down. Wide land, I piss on you all over. You are mine.64 Matilde’s naturalisation advertisement in the newspaper coincides with a nun’s letter in the ‘Christian Diary’ section regarding visions of St Barbara experienced by a young woman, whom Matilde recognises to be Giuseppina de Petris, a proxy bride she had befriended on the boat. This coincidence frames Matilde’s naturalisation as her own
62 Ibid., p.29. 63 Ibid., p. 30. 64 Ibid., p. 207. Original emphasis. Valmorbida’s Scotty Dog is all the more interesting when considering the appearance of dogs in other Italian Australian narratives. In Love Takes You Home, Pino’s impression of Australians’ spoken English, and his confusion of the word ‘wog’ for ‘woof’ leads him to wonder if he had migrated to a “nation of dogs.” Furthermore, the title of Pino Bosi’s Italian-language novel, Australia cane (1971), deliberately evokes confusion between the English word ‘cane’, referring to the cane fields of the novel’s setting, and the Italian word cane, meaning dog. This refers also to the Italian phrase, Dio cane, a strong and blasphemous curse meaning ‘God is a dog’ or ‘dog God’. See Capaldo, Love Takes You Home, p. 9.
158 ‘apparition’ in Australian society, and Valmorbida’s description of the naturalisation ceremony recalls the Roman Catholic mass and rituals: [S]he wondered what it actually meant to swear lifelong allegiance to the faraway Head of Church and State known here only as this floating image, a display of wealth and verisimilitude, an illusion of velvet, fur, jewels, satin, flesh. She formally renounced her nationality, as her husband had done, and her allegiance to the King of Italy. She swore an oath of allegiance to the portrait in oils, his heirs and successors. Almighty God and Il Caporale [the police magistrate] were her witnesses. Only Il Caporale certified her application in writing, confirmed her appearance before him, and placed his signature alongside both her Renunciation and her Allegiance.65 In Chapter 2, I argued that attaining citizenship as civic maturation is analogous to identity formation and maturation in reading migrant autobiographies as ethnic bildungsromane. This is recalled in Valmorbida’s use of religious imagery, particularly recalling the Catholic sacrament of confirmation wherein the priest accepts an individual’s Renunciation of sin and Allegiance to the Church, acknowledging the individual as a full adult member of the Church. The police magistrate here takes the role of the priest, playing intermediary between God, king and citizen, confirming Matilde as a citizen/full adult member of Australian society. Continuing the religious motif established by her use of hagiographical writings for the narrative framework of Matilde Waltzing, Valmorbida frames identity, citizenship and belonging in terms of faith and conversion. Although Matilde ‘converts’ to Australian citizenship, she lacks faith in her new country: If she had been there after the Resurrection, like Thomas she would have had no hesitation in testing and prodding the Saviour’s wounds. Why did the Church so vilify his action? If only she had been able to poke her fingers into the salty flesh of Australia before committing herself, before entrusting her life to stories.66 Matilde chooses to become a naturalised Australian citizen not out of faith in the country but out of necessity. Matilde’s deep scepticism of the Church, developed in her youth, now extends also to Australia. Although on paper Matilde is a ‘New Australian’, a marker
65 Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing, pp. 193-4. Emphasis added. 66 Ibid., p. 194.
159 of success in the traditional migrant narrative, she does not successfully develop an Australian or Italian Australian identity. While Matilde Manin does not succeed in becoming a New Australian, as was the goal at the time of her migration and settlement in Australia, she does succeed in raising children who, unlike Grace, do not have to struggle to create their Italian Australian identities. Carolina, who is given a brief voice in the narrative, does not allude to racism or difficulty experienced because of her Italian ethnicity. Instead, she recalls stories about Italy told by her parents, their attitudes about the war (including their fear of discrimination because of Italy’s involvement), and the spy war game that is played out amongst her schoolfriends. She later marries Simon Simonetti, a young man who migrated from Italy with his parents at age seven. Beyond this, references to Matilde’s children allude to their happy and uncomplicated lives, and her grandchildren who are fond of visiting their grandmother. Carolina and Lorenzo have successfully moved into white collar professions, while Loretta is married and living in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Whilst Matilde Waltzing presents its challenge to our concepts of migrant histories and narratives, this very challenge is also what secures its significance in terms of the ethnic bildungsroman. Matilde Waltzing as a narrative written by an Italian Australian of the successive generations highlights the function of migration as a concept in the imagination of those generations and demonstrates the way in which imagining the migrations of previous generations can be a viable form of experiencing ethnic identity. Most importantly, Valmorbida’s novel does not tell us to ignore these migrant histories and narratives, but merely to imagine between the lines.
Conclusion This chapter has explored Capaldo and Valmorbida’s novels, Love Takes You Home and Matilde Waltzing, as examples of second stage Italian Australian narratives written for adult audiences. This second stage of Italian Australian narrative and identity development, I have argued, foregrounds the relationship between the past and the present, migrants and their children and grandchildren. Stories of migration are retold as an integral part of the protagonist’s search for origins, identity and place, and are critically re-imagined by successive generation writers for the purpose of highlighting experiences of racism, dislocation and conflict. The novels of Capaldo and Valmorbida combine to present an interesting picture of this stage in the arc of Italian Australian narrative and identity development.
160 Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home more strictly adheres to the conventions of the bildungsroman, clearly depicting the evolution of Grace Sabato’s Italian Australian identity and the role of family histories of migration in this development. Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing, on the other hand, challenges our ability to really ‘know’ stories of migration, and also challenges the idea of a migrant’s successful development. The idea of migrant unsuccess stories is highly problematic; such stories might help provide a more well- rounded view of experiences of migration to Australia, but they may also perpetuate more negative ideas about the migrants themselves. As was seen in Chapter 2, assimilation rhetoric, whether or not the migrant or protagonist pays heed to it, is important to our understandings of migrant identity development, and has lasting repercussions in the successive generations. Graziella Sabato, in Love Takes You Home, completely immerses herself in the assimilation rhetoric prevalent at the time of her migration to Australia. In terms of the national values in circulation at that time, such enthusiasm was highly desirable, thus Graziella could be viewed as having succeeded but her assimilation eventually results in the identity crises of both Anthony and Grace. In comparison, Matilde makes no effort to assimilate, and only becomes a citizen when the looming threat of the Second World War makes it a wise idea; she migrates to Australia out of curiosity and interest in starting a new life, not in order to discover or create a new identity. Matilde does, however, instil her children with a sense of their Italian heritage while they unquestioningly build lives and identities for themselves in Australia. Where Graziella succeeded, Matilde failed and vice versa. Consequently, what is a success narrative in one context is an unsuccess story in another. Valmorbida’s challenge to history and authenticity makes Matilde both representative and non-representative of unheard migrants, and is a reminder that Italian Australian development is not always successful. In her introduction to The Dream Book, an anthology of Italian American women’s writing, Barolini states that the collection was “intended not as an act of separatism … but rather as an act of inclusion and completion.”67 Similarly, Enza Gandolfo hesitates about focusing on the category “Italo-Australian women writers” but perseveres as she is “committed to making them visible within the culture, within the community, within Australian literature, and to each other.”68 Likewise, the separation of the fictions of Venero Armanno from those of Capaldo and Valmorbida is not intended to set contemporary Italian Australian women writers away from male writers, but to include
67 Barolini, "Italian American Women Writers," p. 193. 68 Gandolfo, "In/Visible Presence: Italo-Australian Women Writers," p. 11.
161 them whilst openly acknowledging the way in which their work does differ from that of Italian Australian male writers. Questions of gender inhabit a self-conscious role in both these narratives, exploring perceptions of ‘traditional’ Italian gender roles, such as the wife, the witch and who it is that rules the kitchen, and challenging the relationship between history, migration and gender. Capaldo’s approach to gender is complex and often contradictory, reinforcing ‘traditional’ Italian gender roles as often as she subverts them, perhaps in a deliberate attempt to explore gender as personal and fluid a concept as ethnicity and identity. Matilde Waltzing, on the other hand, deliberately engages with the feminist historical project to explore women’s experiences of migration and to expose their silences. Valmorbida’s juxtaposition of St Barbara’s hagiography against Matilde’s life story highlights the conventions to which life narratives adhere, but this also highlights the way in which women’s stories are often re-written, overwritten or completely ignored. To some extent Capaldo and Valmorbida are thrown together due to their shared gender, forced to share a single chapter in this thesis looking at their critical re- imaginings of migration as opposed to the exclusivity of Armanno’s chapter. Setting aside other more practical reasons for this separation based upon the sheer bulk of Armanno’s published works, almost any thematic combination of the three authors’ works is possible: Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home and Armanno’s Romeo trilogy and Firehead all demonstrate the connection between food, culture and identity while both Armanno’s The Volcano and Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing challenge notions of authenticity and form in fictional migrant life narratives. All three authors’ works demonstrate a critical re-imagining of Italian migration to Australia that, I argue, is central to this stage in the Italian Australian literary development. Where their works significantly differ is in their treatment of issues of gender, and the way in which this affects experiences of ethnicity, identity and culture.
162 Chapter 6
Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo? Questioning Memory, Ethnicity and Gender in the Works of Venero Armanno
I don’t know if you believe in God or heaven or the afterlife but, if soul is memory, it’s up to us to remember our parents, not just for the sake of remembering because we love them, but also to learn from the past so we don’t do some of the stupid things that they did. Venero Armanno1
Armanno, both in his quote above and in his fiction, perhaps best sums up the essential goal of the second stage of Italian Australian narrative and identity development. As shown through an examination of Capaldo and Valmorbida’s fiction in the previous chapter, a key feature of this stage is the role of migrants and migration in the imagination of the successive generations, the way in which migrant characters and stories of migration are essential to the (usually successive generation) protagonist’s development, and the way in which these writers re-imagine stories of migration through a critical, successive generation perspective. Armanno explores migrants’ stories through his narratives but often places these stories within the context of narratives addressing the lives and identities of successive generation characters who, to paraphrase Armanno, learn from the past so that they don’t do some of the stupid things that their forebears did. These “stupid things” in Armanno’s fiction are usually allowing oneself and one’s life to be ruled completely by passion, dislocation and destiny. Armanno’s ‘Romeo trilogy’ – The Lonely Hunter (1993), Romeo of the Underworld (1994), The Volcano (2001) – and novel Firehead (1999) are exemplary of the second stage of Italian Australian narrative and identity development, and Armanno is the most explicit in his use of reconciliation with the past as a means of moving forward into the future. In this chapter, I identify three distinct themes in his work that affect and reflect the journey of development for his Italian Australian protagonists. First, the city of Brisbane, Queensland, in three of the four narratives examined here, provides an urban setting that undergoes a process of development almost parallel to the characters. Second, Armanno’s male characters are absorbed in a fantastic and idealised view of Italian Australian femininity that is intrinsically tied to their ethnic journeys. Third and finally, his
1 M. V. Grau and C. Zamorano, "Encounter with Venero Armanno," Westerly Winter (1999): p. 39.
163 novels contain the critical exploration and development of Italian Australian identity and ethnicity through the interactions of the present and the past, which resonates throughout the other two themes. To avoid a repetitive analysis of these shared themes, this chapter is divided thematically, rather than according to each narrative, but also provides narrative summaries in order to prevent confusion between characters and storylines.
Venero Armanno Venero Armanno was born in Brisbane in 1959 to Sicilian migrants. After studying both law and psychology at the University of Queensland, he worked in a computer company for ten years, during which time he “wrote ten books in ten years, and these are the crappiest books you can imagine.”2 In 1990 he was accepted into the Australian Film and Television School, an experience which he did not enjoy, but in that same year his first book, Jumping at the Moon, a collection of short stories, was accepted for publication and released in 1992.3 Since this first book, Armanno has published six novels for the adult market: The Lonely Hunter (1993), Romeo of the Underworld (1994), My Beautiful Friend (1995), Strange Rain (1996), Firehead (1999) and The Volcano (2001), as well as three illustrated books for younger readers. He now works as a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Queensland. The Lonely Hunter, Romeo of the Underworld and The Volcano, often referred to as the ‘Romeo trilogy’, and Firehead will be those of his narratives under consideration in this chapter. In interviews, Armanno has identified his recurring theme as that of “apartness,”4 and that his ability to write about “apartness,” or being an outsider, has stemmed directly from his experiences as the son of migrants growing up in a small Sicilian community: “being rejected by a particular society means that you are able to step back from it and actually look at it a little more clearly.”5 Nerina Caltabiano and Stephen Torre argue that “Armanno’s writing is a medium through which he is able to explore his own apartness and his own experience. But as a professional writer he is able to fictionalise and
2 Ibid.: p. 31. 3 Ibid.: pp. 31-32. 4 Ibid.: p. 33. 5 Interview with Venero Armanno, 1 February 2005. This interview has also been published. See J. Carniel, "A Conversation with Venero Armanno," Studi d'italianistica nell'Africa Australe: Italian Studies in Southern Africa - Special Issue: Representing Italian Diasporas in Australia: New Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2005): p. 145.
164 universalise what would otherwise be autobiographical and personal.”6 Caltabiano and Torre create here a problematic hierarchy between the autobiographical and fictional, suggesting that while Armanno draws upon his personal experiences, he is successful because he ultimately transcends the personal in his writing. While autobiographical and fictional narratives are placed in a developmental model in this thesis, I argue that these different approaches to identity formation open up various ways of knowing, and illuminate the processes of ethnic identity formation.
Armanno’s narratives: a brief summary of the storylines This chapter has been organised according to the prevailing themes in Armanno’s fiction, as identified above. While this choice is expedient for my analysis, it does result in a confusing mix of names and storylines for the uninitiated reader. In order to forestall this possible confusion, it is necessary to briefly recount the plots and characters of each of the novels explored in this chapter.
The Lonely Hunter is set in Sydney and follows the lives of Eddie Bevelacqua, a successful businessman, and Romeo Costanzo, his second cousin who works as a gardener. Romeo feels he has lived his entire life in Eddie’s shadow. He covets Eddie’s beautiful wife, struggling actress Kelly Robinson, whom he believes to be the pinnacle of Eddie’s success. However, the image of Eddie’s success soon shatters. He is fired from his job when it is discovered he slept with a high-profile client’s girlfriend. Eddie then seeks solace in a sexual encounter with his new neighbour, Milena DeMarco. Kelly is awakened to her husband’s fidelities when Eddie rushes to defend Milena from her violent husband Joe. Eddie leaves his marital home and resides in an expensive hotel while he plans to leave the country. Before he is able to leave, Eddie becomes concerned by the personal situation of two high class prostitutes, who ultimately resort to murdering their pimp. Milena also murders her husband Joe in order to escape her abusive marriage.
Having suffered extreme jealousy of his handsome and successful cousin, Romeo watches Eddie’s decline with a degree of relish. Romeo’s own life has been troubled. He has a tense relationship with his parents, who migrated from Sicily in the 1950s. His young wife, Anna, committed suicide several years prior to the time at which the narrative is taking place. Romeo is both plagued by guilt for Anna’s death and driven
6 Caltabiano and Torre, "Italo-Australian Identity in Venero Armanno's Writing," p. 430.
165 by his obsession with Eddie’s wife, Kelly. Eddie’s downfall acts as a catalyst in Romeo’s life. He moves out of his parents’ home, where he has lived since Anna’s death and decides to reveal his feelings to Kelly. At first Kelly rejects him but a tentative friendship and affection grows between them, and is eventually sexually consummated. Their affair, however, is brief. In the narrative’s conclusion, Kelly finds success in her acting career and supports Milena during her murder trial. Eddie is also helping the two prostitutes with their murder trial, and plans to marry one of them. Romeo is disappointed by his affair with Kelly, with whom he has a lingering fascination, but seeks contentment in his renewed solitude.
Romeo of the Underworld is set several years after the events depicted in the first novel. There are no references to the events or characters of The Lonely Hunter, with the exception of Romeo’s late wife and his pet cat. Romeo travels to Brisbane on a house- sitting favour for his old high school friend, Johnny Armstrong, who has mysteriously hastened off to Switzerland for an extended holiday. Romeo lived in Brisbane for six months at the end of high school and returns with a great deal of nostalgia and trepidation. The narrative’s present is frequently interrupted by Romeo’s recollections of 1976, the year in which he lived in Brisbane, befriended Johnny Armstrong and became involved with Monica Aquila and her family. Although he kept in touch with Johnny Armstrong, Romeo has not seen or heard from Monica since he left Brisbane after learning that she was pregnant with Johnny’s child.
One night soon after his return to Brisbane, Romeo is ambushed at Johnny’s front door. Romeo is ‘saved’ by Mary. Romeo initially believes Mary to be Johnny’s lover but later discovers she is Johnny and Monica’s daughter. Although Mary and Romeo eventually embark upon an affair, his obsession with his memories of Monica remains a barrier between them. Driven by these memories, Romeo seeks to discover what happened to Monica and literally stumbles across Monica’s father, Michele Aquila. Once a proudly successful restaurateur together with a beautiful wife, Gloria, Michele’s descent into alcoholism and despair at the loss of his family and business have left him a poor man living in a derelict boarding house. Romeo brings Michele to stay with him and Mary in Johnny’s house. In exchange for information regarding Monica, Romeo agrees to help Michele regain the family, restaurant and life that he lost soon after Romeo’s departure from Brisbane. Both Romeo and Michele eventually realise that they are seeking impossible and unnecessary dreams. Romeo learns that Monica died in the fire that burnt down the Aquila’s restaurant, Il Vulcano, which was started by Michele. Although he is
166 saddened by this knowledge, Romeo is finally able to release the memory of Monica. Meanwhile, Michele abandons his plans for revenge against his ex-wife Gloria and contents himself with the discovery of his granddaughter, Mary. The novel concludes with Johnny’s return to Australia and Romeo’s departure for Sydney. Before leaving, Romeo offers his love to Mary, who chooses instead to establish relationships with her father and grandfather. The final book in Armanno’s Romeo trilogy, The Volcano, is set in Brisbane and Sicily. It introduces us to another Sicilian migrant, Emilio Aquila, and continues the story of Mary Aquila approximately five years after Romeo’s departure from Brisbane. Despite the shared surname, Emilio and Mary’s families are not related but do originate from the same Sicilian province. (Romeo’s family is also from this area.) Emilio migrated to Australia in the 1950s with his beautiful young wife, Desideria, whom he kidnapped and held hostage in his lair in the foothills of Mt Etna in Sicily. Their married life is troubled by Emilio’s acquaintance with an underworld crime lord, Oscar Sosa, and Desideria eventually leaves him for another man. Devastated, Emilio, together with an old friend, Rocco Fuentes, seeks employment with Sosa. Emilio and Rocco eventually kill Sosa. Sosa’s mistress and Rocco are also killed by another of Sosa’s henchmen and Emilio returns to a quieter life as a handyman and groundskeeper. Forty years later, Emilio comes to the aid of two elderly female neighbours during a robbery and is hospitalised by a blow to the head. Newspapers report Emilio’s bravery, mentioning his chequered past as both an underworld figure and key player in railroad strikes of the 1950s. Mary Aquila’s curiosity is aroused by Emilio’s story and their shared surname. Mary befriends him and takes him into her home, which was formerly her father Johnny Armstrong’s house in Romeo of the Underworld. Mary has had no contact with Romeo after his departure and her grandfather soon died. Johnny gave her his house and moved into a modern flat built on the site of Brisbane’s famous dance hall, Cloudland. Mary has since returned to university, where she is enrolled in a creative writing course. Mary and Emilio’s relationship is mutually beneficial as she is seeking a subject for her writing and he is seeking someone to whom he can tell his life story. It is through Mary’s writing and Emilio’s storytelling that Emilio’s romance with Desideria and involvement with Sosa are revealed. After Emilio suffers and recovers from a stroke, Emilio and Mary travel to Sicily together. They return to Emilio’s home town, where he makes peace with Desideria and returns to the foothills of Mt Etna to die. Mary becomes involved with the grandson of Emilio’s former padrone and, it appears, does not return to Australia.
167 Firehead is set in Brisbane and is divided into three parts, each corresponding with the years 1975, 1985 and 1995. It relies less on the narrative technique of chronological fracturing and flashback prominently featured in the other texts, allowing the reader to access the protagonist’s thoughts contemporaneously. Firehead depicts Sam Capistrano’s consuming obsession with the disappearance of his first love, Gabriella Zazò. In 1975 Gabriella, whose family has recently migrated to Sicily, moves into Sam’s predominantly Italian neighbourhood in the suburb of New Farm. The two become close friends. Sam is also fascinated by Gabriella’s precocious sexuality and is thus easily led into her plan to take her elderly grandfather, Enrico Belpasso, to a brothel (Nocturne) for his birthday. At the brothel, Enrico suffers from a heart attack, which he survives, and Gabriella disappears. In 1985, Sam lives in a luxury high rise apartment on the other side of town from his old neighbourhood and runs a nightclub, La Notte, with his childhood friends, the Solero brothers. Sam is haunted by the memory of Gabriella and carries the blame for her disappearance in the eyes of her family and other members of the Italian Australian community at the time. However, one night in La Notte, Sam meets Irina Luna, a nightclub singer. Irina leaves her husband to marry Sam, and is instrumental in helping Sam to move on from Gabriella’s disappearance. In 1995, Sam and Irina are happily married with two young daughters. Sam runs a successful Italian restaurant, Notte e Giorno, with his parents. Although he still remembers Gabriella, Sam appears to have relinquished his previous consuming obsession with her memory. This is, of course, until Enrico Belpasso dies and Sam discovers from Gabriella’s younger sister, Sandy, that Gabriella is in fact alive. Shocked by the news and seduced by the memories of Gabriella that her sister evokes, Sam has sex with Sandy. His infidelity is discovered immediately by Irina who demands that he confront Gabriella and his obsession with her. Sam goes to the nearby island of Stradbroke in Brisbane’s Moreton Bay where Gabriella is living with Pietro Pierucci and their child. In 1975, Pietro was their local policeman. He became obsessed with Gabriella’s disappearance, for which he blamed himself, and eventually tracked her down and married her. Gabriella and Sam are reunited but they both realise that they cannot change or recapture the past, and so choose to return to their families. The Lonely Hunter, Romeo of the Underworld and The Volcano can be read individually or as part of a broader narrative. Upon first glance, the novels seem to be
168 unified simply by their recurring characters.7 When reading them within the conceptual framework of the ethnic bildungsroman, however, the way in which the novels progress and the characters interact becomes increasingly complex. Each character’s development is a catalyst for the next character’s development: Eddie Bevelacqua’s downward spiral spurs on Romeo Costanzo’s journey of development, which enables Mary Aquila’s discovery of her true family history, which in turn influences her interest in Emilio Aquila’s life story. Firehead, on the other hand, is a stand-alone novel that, of all Armanno’s fiction, perhaps best resembles the structure of the traditional Bildungsroman as we follow the protagonist, Sam Capistrano, from adolescence, into young adulthood and then into maturity.
Cloudland, Stronzoland, Brisbane: urban and ethnic development in Little Italy 8 A significant presence in Armanno’s books is the evolving urban landscape of Brisbane as an alternative site of Italian migration to Australia, separate from the often more documented sites of Sydney, Melbourne and the Queensland cane fields. The use of Brisbane as the setting for Armanno’s novels is significant in that this city, like the characters he creates within it, is often seen as being in search of its own culture and identity, having ‘grown up’ in the shadow of the reputedly more cosmopolitan cities of Sydney and Melbourne.9 Brisbane’s recovery from a somewhat shady past in the 1970s and 1980s involving corrupt government and law enforcement echoes the journey upon
7 Boelhower argues that the ordering principle of the ethnic trilogy is fundamentally generational, depicting a movement from the Old World (country of migration) to the New World (host country). Despite recurring themes and characters, Armanno’s narratives do not adhere to the genealogical and generational progress outlined by Boelhower, but deliberately fragment and interweave stories of migration and the development of successive generation characters. See W. Boelhower, "Ethnic Trilogies: A Genealogical and Generational Poetics," in The Invention of Ethnicity, ed. Werner Sollors (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 8 An early version of this section has been published as an article. See J. Carniel, "Cloudland, Stronzoland, Brisbane: Urban Development and Ethnic Bildung in Venero Armanno's Fiction," Studi d'italianistica nell'Africa Australe: Italian Studies in Southern Africa - Special Issue: Representing Italian Diasporas in Australia: New Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2005). 9 In Johnno: A Novel, David Malouf describes Brisbane as ordinary and essentially characterless: “Brisbane is so sleepy, so slatternly, so sprawlingly unlovely! I have taken to wandering about after school looking for one simple object in it that might be romantic, or appalling even, but there is nothing. It is simply the most ordinary place in the world.” D. Malouf, Johnno: A Novel (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1975), pp. 51-52.
169 which Armanno’s protagonists embark. Furthermore, Brisbane, and more specifically the suburbs of New Farm and Fortitude Valley, act in Armanno’s work as a symbolic Little Italy to which the protagonists might retreat in search of their ethnic beginnings. A brief discussion of this area’s history serves to illustrate Armanno’s subject more clearly. Italian settlement in Brisbane was particularly concentrated in the inner-city suburbs of New Farm and Fortitude Valley, both of which feature prominently in Armanno’s fiction.10 These areas remained a popular site for Italian settlement well into the 1970s, after which Italian migration to Australia began to wane and those that had settled there began to relocate to the outer suburbs.11 In ‘If you had your time again, would you migrate to Australia?’ A study of long-settled Italo-Australians in Brisbane (1985), Vasta argues that while Brisbane’s Italian Australians formed a cohesive community at the level of communication, language and culture, they were at the time “too fragmented to be in a position to develop their own support networks.”12 Combined with the movement of Italian migrants into the outer suburbs, and the systematic urban development instigated by the State government throughout the 1970s and 1980s (discussed below in relation to
10 Burnley, The Impact of Immigration on Australia, pp. 321-22. Burnley reports that 20 per cent of the population in New Farm was Italian-born in 1976, but that other Italian settlements could be found in other inner-city suburbs such as Spring Hill, which is adjacent to Fortitude Valley and also features in Firehead, Kelvin Grove, South Brisbane and Dutton Park. He also identifies small internal migrations by Italians who had originally settled in southern Australian cities taking place in the 1980s and 1990s. Burnley reports: “Most of the Italian migrants from the southern parts of Australia had learnt English, developed economic means, were aware of wider opportunities, were retired, and often came from different subregions of Italy. They thus tended to disperse in the metropolitan area.” These internal migrations thus did not strengthen the Italian community in Brisbane. Armanno has also observed that this movement of Italian Australians into the outer suburbs has meant that the type of community in which he grew up no longer exists. Interview with Venero Armanno, 1 February 2005. See Carniel, "A Conversation with Venero Armanno," p. 151. 11 Burnley, The Impact of Immigration on Australia, p. 322. Burnley identifies the movement of socially mobile Italian middle-class businessmen to Windsor, Newmarket and Red Hill, and observes that the Italian population in Brisbane was more widely dispersed than in other mainland cities, such as Sydney and Melbourne. Vasta’s study of southern Italian migrants in Brisbane is helpful for gaining an understanding of both the city’s Italian community and their inter-suburb migration patterns. Vasta found that Italians also moved into other outer suburbs such as Wooloowin, Albion and Lutwyche, which are now considered to be inner city areas, as well as Capalaba and Richlands, identified by Burnley. See Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again...' p. 10, 54-67. 12 Vasta, 'If You Had Your Time Again...' p. 67.
170 the landmark known as Cloudland), this fragmentation of the Italian community is perhaps amongst the best explanations for the early demise of Brisbane’s Little Italy.13
Although some remnants of an Italian presence remain in various cafés, restaurants, specialty stores and delicatessens, the areas of New Farm and Fortitude Valley have not been maintained or cultivated as a Little Italy in the same manner as Sydney’s Norton Street in Leichhardt or Lygon Street in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. Given such, it is important to consider these Brisbane suburbs not as a physical Little Italy but as a symbolic Little Italy. Aiming to construct San Diego’s Little Italy as a third space, Teresa Fiore suggests that we look at Little Italy:
as a spatial laboratory of ideas, dreams, and practices that defy any binary or exclusionary conception of space (historical preservation vs. utilitarian adaptation), and allow for a more flexible definition of urban space, especially in consideration of the complex ethnic history of the area.14 This understanding of Little Italy allows us to construct such spaces from memory and storytelling, and is therefore most amenable to literary reconstructions of this ethnic space, as found in Armanno’s fiction. Gardaphé’s arguments support this reading:
13 This urban development sought to eradicate many aspects of Brisbane’s cultural heritage. I do not suggest, however, that Brisbane’s Little Italy was at all targeted in this program, but that its demise was merely endemic to this process. 14 T. Fiore, "Reconfiguring Urban Space as Thirdspace: The Case of Little Italy, San Diego (California)," in Adjusting Sites: New Essays in Italian American Studies, ed. William Boelhower and Rocco Pallone (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1999), p. 93. My analysis here also draws upon broader studies of so-called migrant enclaves and precincts, including: K. J. Anderson, "Otherness, Culture and Capital: "Chinatown's" Transformation under Australian Multiculturalism," in Multiculturalism, Postmodernism and Difference, ed. Gordan L. Clark, Dean Forbes, and Roderick Francis (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993); P. Carter, "Lines of Communication: Meaning in the Migrant Environment," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); F. Colombijn and A. Erdentug, "Introduction: Urban Space and Ethnicity," in Urbane Ethnic Encounters: The Spatial Consequences, ed. Aygen Erdentug and Freek Colombijn (London: Routledge, 2002); D. Crow, "Geography and Identity: Living and Exploring Geopolitics of Identity," in Geography and Identity: Living and Exploring Geopolitics of Identity, ed. Dennis Crow (Washington, D. C.: Maisonneuve Press, 1996); H. Grace et al., Home/World : Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney's West (Annandale: Pluto Press, 1997); J. Krase, "America's Little Italies: Past, Present and Future," in Italian Ethnics: Their Languages, Literature, and Lives, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 11-13, 1987, ed. Dominic Candeloro, Fred L. Gardaphé, and Paolo A. Giordano (Staten Island: American Italian Historical Association, 1990); L. McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).
171 “Historical and sociological approaches to preserving Little Italy are limited to what is physically there or what was recorded that was there. Free of these restrictions are the literary representations that are the result of images conjured from memory.”15 In an analysis of Little Italies as settings in Italian American novels, Boelhower argues that the protagonist’s “return to [their] childhood world (in form of a descriptive narrative of the Italian community) … allows [them] to shed light on [their] present condition of existential bewilderment.”16 In Armanno’s novels, Brisbane plays the same role as the Little Italies of Italian American literature, as well as featuring a specific inner-city space that is remembered as a Little Italy even if it has since disintegrated. We see in these novels the return of the characters to the sites of their youth for personal and ethnic catharsis, and memories of a strong Italian Australian presence in these locations. In Romeo of the Underworld, for example, Romeo Costanzo’s Sicilian Australian ethnicity and identity are more strongly played out in Brisbane than they were in The Lonely Hunter, which is set in Sydney. The scenes from his Brisbane youth in Romeo of the Underworld serve to explain his reluctance to be a ‘good Italian son’ in The Lonely Hunter. Romeo must return to Brisbane, specifically to Fortitude Valley and New Farm, in order to resolve his past and facilitate his personal and ethnic development. In Firehead, Sam does not leave Brisbane but does move away to the other side of the city, and must return to his childhood neighbourhood of New Farm in his attempt to resolve his lingering obsession with Gabriella Zazò. References to delicatessens, to family gatherings and to the large number of Sicilians living in the neighbourhood combine to create a sense of a Little Italy (or Little Sicily) in Armanno’s novels. When stacks of newspapers from the local shop disappear in Firehead, Sam and Gabriella develop creative theories to explain their little local mystery, including “a plot by some racist political group to keep New Farm Sicilians ignorant of the world and Australian events and hence out of the greater running of the country.”17 The children’s imagined victimisation of the local Sicilian population indicates both the significance of this population and their perception that there existed a sense of community and cohesion, further supported by their construction of the ‘Australian’
15 F. L. Gardaphe, Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian American Culture (Albany: SUNY, 2004), p. 153. 16 W. Boelhower, "Adjusting Sites: The Italian-American-Cultural Renaissance," in Adjusting Sites: New Essays in Italian American Studies, ed. William Boelhower and Rocco Pallone (Stony Brook, New York: Forum Italicum, 1999), p. 62. 17 V. Armanno, Firehead (Sydney: Vintage, 1999), p. 12.
172 population as ‘other’. In Romeo of the Underworld, Michele Aquila remembers his restaurant, Il Vulcano, as a hub of the Italian Australian community in Brisbane throughout the 1950s and 1960s: “when we had money and courage enough we made our own place, a place the friends Gloria made came to eat pasta and meet Italian and Sicilian migrants just like themselves.”18 While The Volcano also evokes a sense of Italian community in New Farm during the 1950s, Emilio Aquila wryly suggests that it was somewhat affected: “All the Sicilians in Brisbane were calling one another cummare or compare these days, really hamming it up sometimes so that everyone was clear about how much affection they felt for one another.”19 The Volcano is littered with short descriptions indicating a strong Italian presence in the area, such as the proximity of neighbours, the gatherings for wine, cards and gossip and the existence of Italian food stores and delicatessens. A passing reference to biscotti bought at “the struggling Sellano Delicatessen”20 demonstrates the availability of ethnic foods while also foreshadowing the weakening of the suburb of New Farm as a Little Italy. The character of Pietro Pierucci, a local police officer in Firehead who was born in Sicily and migrated to Australia as a child, best indicates the precariousness of the Italian community in New Farm during the 1970s, and the sense that it is slowly edging towards its demise. Sam describes him as “our local hero”21 and as “our local guardian angel,”22 later explaining: “The thing is, Pietro in Italian means Peter in English but more than that pietro is the word for rock and that was exactly what that young man was to the Sicilian families of those days, the rock upon which they understood the solid foundation of Australian law.”23 Pierucci’s supervision of the community is an attempt to prevent significant damage to or destruction of Little Italy through a disintegration of values (manifest in criminal activities performed by the community’s members) or unfair treatment (discrimination against Italians by the host society), but he cannot prevent its slow disintegration through class mobility and migration to outer suburbs. Pietro Pierucci is unable to continue in his role when he fails to protect Gabriella Zazò, whose
18 V. Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld (Sydney: Vintage, 2001), p. 168. Original italics indicating that the passage is spoken in Italian. 19 V. Armanno, The Volcano (Sydney: Vintage, 2001), p. 384. Please note: Armanno frequently uses Sicilian dialect and spelling, as this is the language that his characters use. 20 Ibid., p. 385. 21 Armanno, Firehead, p. 11. 22 Ibid., p. 25. 23 Ibid., p. 29.
173 disappearance becomes symbolic of the disintegration and loss of innocence of this Little Italy. Analysing spatial narratives in the work of other Queensland authors, Gillian Whitlock argues that they: by no means universally glorify the local. However [these narratives] do cast it in terms of a retrospective, reading Queensland regions spatially in terms of a lost innocence and simplicity, a wilderness space which cannot be recaptured. Even when the urban space enters Queensland narratives, it retains the qualities of wilderness, impermanence and excess.24 Both Romeo of the Underworld and Firehead feature scenes set in New Farm and Fortitude Valley in the 1970s that remember this area as a Little Italy and depict its demise, tying this to the loss of innocence of its Italian Australian youth. Both Gabriella’s disappearance at the end of the summer of 1975 in Firehead and Monica Aquila’s death in Romeo of the Underworld, occurring at the beginning of the 1980s, mark this demise. This connection is made most explicitly in Firehead: I thought too many of the families had moved out of ‘their’ suburb of New Farm. They’d left to show that they’d done well in the new country. It was their way of demonstrating progress. Too many of them now lived in big brick houses. Too many of them were in distant Brisbane suburbs nicely planted with trees in rows on the footpaths, where the surroundings were as whistle-clean as the grounds of a retirement estate. … There used to be energy, there used to be life; to my mind it had all gone too quickly and I blamed that on Gabriella’s disappearance – but who knows, it might just be the thing that happens to migrants in any country. They stay together as long as they can but then life intrudes and the old connections get lost.25 In Romeo of the Underworld, Monica dies when Michele, in a drunken act of revenge against his wife who took Il Vulcano in their divorce settlement to run in partnership with her new Australian husband, burns down the restaurant with Monica in it. Il Vulcano is moved to a prominent riverside location outside of New Farm and Fortitude Valley. Thus it is removed from Little Italy and gentrified in the process, signalling its diminished role as a
24 G. Whitlock, "The Child in the (Queensland) House: David Malouf and Regional Writing," in Provisional Maps: Critical Essays on David Malouf, ed. Amanda Nettelbeck (Nedlands: The Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia, 1994), p. 75. 25 Armanno, Firehead, pp. 134-36.
174 gathering place for the local Italian community but also signalling commercial and mainstream success of Italian food and culture in Australia. Through memories of the Cloudland Ballroom featured in both Romeo of the Underworld and The Volcano, Armanno identifies the appeal of New Farm and Fortitude Valley to Sicilian migrants, as well as identifying another symbol of the rise and fall of this area as a Little Italy. Armanno creates an explicit connection between Cloudland and migrants’ sense of home, place and community in Brisbane: ‘Guardi.’ I follow his pointing finger toward Cloudland at the top of the hill. ‘Etna,’ he says, ‘Etna with a fire that never goes out. It’s the only thing you can see, day and night, the volcano always there above you. Always on fire in the belly, always with fire coming out of its mouth. We came here and saw Cloudland and we felt like we were home again. So we wrote to our friends and our relatives and they came and they stayed too.’26 Destroyed early in the morning of November 7 1982 by the notoriously mercenary demolitionists, the Deen Brothers, Cloudland Ballroom was an important social centre in Brisbane. Completed in 1940 and opening in August of that year, Cloudland was originally known as Luna Park Brisbane, located on Cintra Hill in the inner city suburb of Bowen Hills. The ballroom featured a funicular to transport its guests up the steep hill on which it was perched. There were plans to incorporate an amusement park, but it was never built due to events of the Second World War and the occupation of the site by the United States army.27 After the war, the ballroom was sold and reopened in 1947 as Cloudland Ballroom. Cloudland witnessed generations of dancing by socialites, migrants and teenagers, university examinations, flea markets and rock bands. One of over sixty heritage-listed buildings demolished in Brisbane between the mid 1970s and early 1990s whilst the anti-heritage, pro-development National Party was in power in Queensland, Cloudland’s demolition is seen as one of the most significant, together with the BelleVue Hotel and the Queen Street Commonwealth Bank. Fisher suggests it was these demolitions that transformed the “prewar town … into a nondescript high-rise city.”28 Cloudland has played a significant role in Brisbane’s social and cultural past, and is a notable presence and absence in Armanno’s fiction. Armanno highlights its importance to
26 Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld, p. 128. 27 R. Fisher, "'Nocturnal Demolitions': The Long March Towards Heritage Legislation in Queensland," in Packaging the Past? Public Histories, ed. John Rickard and Peter Spearritt (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1991), p. 57; F. McBride and H. Taylor, Brisbane: One Hundred Stories (Brisbane: Brisbane City Council, 1997), p. 47. 28 Fisher, "'Nocturnal Demolitions': The Long March Towards Heritage Legislation in Queensland," p. 57.
175 migrants of the 1950s and to their teenage children growing up in the 1970s, reflecting Brisbane’s nostalgia for the lost landmark, lamenting its loss and sharply criticising the construction of an ultra-modern apartment complex on its former site. As his plane circles above Brisbane with smoking engines at the beginning of Romeo of the Underworld, Romeo scans the landscape outside his window for the landmarks of his youth spent in Brisbane only to find that the final one, and the most important, has been replaced by modern townhouses. Cloudland’s absence provokes both anger and nostalgia in Romeo: For once upon a time at the peak of Bowen Hills’ hillock there was a place we’d go for music and dancing and beer, and for girls. A huge and ornate structure from a bygone era, that Cloudland Ballroom, and never was a place so properly named. You saw it from all over Brisbane, perched on its hill with its neon lights more colourful than anything in the evening sky. The ballroom always seemed so kind of nice, so magical. It must have burned to the ground, a Brisbane tragedy, for no one would knock such a place down for anything as crass as commercial housing. The red lights of Cloudland’s central dome always made me think of the silhouette of a volcano – the active Mt Etna, of course. Its sprung wooden dance floors used to make me think of the canvas floor of the wrestling ring, bouncing up and down, up and down, ready for sparring, skirmishing, for the beery-dreamy love match that would start when you latched onto some new Friday night girl.29 The likeness he draws between “the red lights of Cloudland’s central dome” and Mt Etna establishes a parallel between Cloudland, Romeo’s Sicilian origins and the restaurant, Il Vulcano. Romeo’s assumption that Cloudland must have accidentally burned to the ground foreshadows his discovery of Monica’s own fiery demise. Romeo’s Cloudland of the 1970s is contrasted against migrants’ experiences and memories of Cloudland in the 1950s, revealed by Michele, as quoted above, and Emilio. Echoing an earlier description of a reddened night sky outside Emilio Aquila’s volcanic lair in Sicily,30 Cloudland is described thus: “In the Cloudland Ballroom Emilio looked from the holy city of stars, which were the multicoloured lights set so high amongst the vast colonnades, the brocaded royal blue
29 Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld, p. 12. 30 Armanno, The Volcano, p. 287.
176 and gilt ceilings, the leadlight dome, then he spun Desideria into his arms. … Mansion of music, palace of dreams: in those days the price of admission was two shillings per adult.”31 Although each of the novels comprising the Romeo trilogy are easily read as individual narratives, certain images, characters and themes recur throughout all three narratives that act to unite them as a whole. The image of the volcano, specifically Mt Etna, is the most significant of these unifying images. Romeo’s description of Cloudland as a volcano establishes a parallel between the ballroom, his Sicilian origins and the Aquilas’ restaurant. As its title reveals, The Volcano constantly draws upon imagery and stories relating to volcanos, specifically Mt Etna. As Michele points out, Cloudland, with its red dome glowing from its vantage point on the top of Cintra Hill, reminds Brisbane’s Sicilian migrants of their homeland and serves as an enticement for future migrants – they will not have to leave the volcano for it will still be there when they arrive in Australia. Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson argue that “the imagining of migration and exile become constitutive parts of the construction and experiences of place and landscape.”32 The Sicilian migrants of Armanno’s narratives imagine the Brisbane cityscape as reflecting the Sicilian landscape they have left, and so construct a sense of home and place. Although Cloudland was by no means a social centre exclusive to migrants, Armanno represents it as an important one in his fiction and a beacon to which his characters are drawn, and in close proximity to which they create their own Little Italy. Like Gabriella’s disappearance in Firehead and Monica’s death in Romeo of the Underworld, Cloudland’s demolition parallels the demise of Brisbane’s Little Italy, and the demise of the Sicilian community’s Etna-esque beacon. In Firehead, the theme of ethnic and urban development and renewal is played out through a different site, although it is again a building situated on a hill in a suburb neighbouring New Farm and Fortitude Valley, Spring Hill. At the beginning of the novel, it is Nocturne, the brothel to which Gabriella and Sam take Gabriella’s grandfather, Enrico Belpasso, for his birthday, and the place from which Gabriella disappears that day. Nocturne’s former “palatial, colonial splendour”33 is replaced ten years later by Sam and Tony Solero’s nightclub, La Notte, a modern steel and glass construction. Nocturne’s demolition and La Notte’s construction are placed within the context of the “rapidly
31 Ibid., p. 358. 32 A. Dawson and M. Johnson, "Migration, Exile and Landscapes of the Imagination," in Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy, ed. Stephen Cairns (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 116. 33 Armanno, Firehead, p. 58.
177 disappearing colonial architecture of Brisbane’s past”34 previously explored in Armanno’s depictions of Cloudland and its demolition. Ten years later again, in 1995, La Notte is replaced by Notte e Giorno, a successful restaurant run by Sam and his parents. Andreas Huyssen argues that “cities and buildings [can be] read as palimpsests of space.”35 The Spring Hill site’s various incarnations create a palimpsest wherein what is imperfectly erased (local Brisbane memory of the brothel where a young Italian Australian girl disappeared and of the underhand dealings that eventually led to the closure of the nightclub that ruined the lives of promising young Italian Australian men) is written over (by a successful Italian restaurant). Yet these memories exist beneath the layers (through the memory of the Italian Australian man who runs the restaurant and was involved in the notorious events of the past). Huyssen argues that although buildings themselves may not be actual palimpsests, “an urban imaginary in its temporal reach may well put different things in one place: memories of what was there before, imagined alternatives to what there is. The strong marks of present space merge in the imaginary with traces of the past, erasures, losses, and heterotopias.”36 The repetition of ‘Italian Australian’ above is deliberate, indicating how Armanno transforms the site into a stage for a drama played out in the Italian Australian community, within their ethnic and urban imaginary, depicting the community’s fall (signified by Gabriella’s disappearance and the illegal activities of the Solero brothers) and the promise of resurrection (signified by the success of Sam’s legitimate, family-run business). Armanno’s site in Spring Hill is made to reflect the changes occurring within Brisbane and the character of Sam Capistrano – their loss of innocence, their corruption and their redemption – through its various incarnations and their resonating names. Scutter identifies the house that is the central location and source of conflict in another Brisbane narrative, Tom Moloney’s young adult novel The House on River Terrace (1995), as “a syncretic house with a highly syncretic history which is made to stand for the jostling and competing elements of Australia’s cultural identity.”37 Likewise, the Spring Hill site
34 Ibid., p. 95. 35 A. Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Standford University Press, 2003), p. 7. In this collection of essays, Huyssen uses literary techniques to read urban spaces, focusing particularly on sites upon which we attempt to rewrite history or erase trauma, such as post-unification Berlin and Ground Zero in New York. 36 Ibid. 37 Scutter, Displaced Fictions, p. 191.
178 featured in Firehead is a syncretic site with a syncretic history that stands for the history of Brisbane’s Little Italy. In the second part of the narrative, Sam and Brisbane are both in the process of erasing and recreating new identities – Brisbane through its modernisation and Sam through his attempt to forget Gabriella in the love and happiness found with Irina Luna. In the third part, it is learnt that such erasure is imperfect or impossible, and that balance and acceptance are paramount in their processes of identity formation. Nocturne, La Notte and Notte e Giorno all refer to the night and, through this, darkness. Only Notte e Giorno, the final incarnation that coincides with Sam’s personal and ethnic catharsis suggests day, light, hope and balance. In the third and final part of the narrative, Sam finally establishes a balance between the present and the past, his memories and his lived reality, his Italianness and his Australianness. In Romeo of the Underworld, Romeo makes an explicit connection to his mental and emotional state and his presence in Brisbane. The opening chapter, entitled “Stronzo in a Stronzo Land,” opens with rumination upon the word stronzo: Stronzo is a seriously Italian, Italian type word. More so when used in one of the Southern dialects, preferably Sicilian. … It’s best to have too much to drink before you utter the word, it’s best to ache to the very core of your bones and, if you can manage it, to have not slept well for longer than you can remember. Then the word takes on its legitimate meaning and, when applied inwardly, with great personal insight, describes that gut-queasy sensation of realising you’ve made a mess of not only your own life but the lives of those who have been luckless enough to become intimate with you.38 This chapter ends with Romeo thinking as he falls asleep on his first night back in Brisbane, that he is a “Stronzo in a stronzo land,”39 for he has returned to the place where he believes he has made a mess of his life and the lives of the Aquila family. The connection between his ‘stronzo’ state of mind and his geographical location is more explicitly drawn later in the novel when, left with only five dollars to get home after a night on the town, he ponders: “How far would that get me through Stronzoland?”40 Taking a cab as far as his money will allow, Romeo walks the remaining distance home, unafraid of passing cars and fellow pedestrians, and trapped in his own thoughts: “Oh, here in Brisbane we walk
38 Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld, pp. 1-2. 39 Ibid., p. 32. This is also a play upon “stranger in a strange land.” 40 Ibid., p. 50.
179 without any fear of each other at all. Why should I choose to call it Stronzoland? That name was only right for the terrain of my heart.”41 Romeo’s state of nostalgia, melancholy and discontent, while an ongoing problem previously established in The Lonely Hunter, is expressed through his perception of his urban environment. In this previous novel, Romeo often seeks to shrug off the cultural burden of his Sicilian background, yet succumbs to it after every resistance. He accepts a job in a factory because he needs it, despite feeling resentful that he has obtained it through some cumpare of his parents’ that he has never met. He also marries a woman of Italian descent, despite vowing he never would do so as it would please his parents too much. Although Anna is not entirely the ‘good Italian girl’ that his parents would have hoped for, they are satisfied simply because she is Italian, and Romeo is displeased that he has brought about this satisfaction for them. An integral part of Romeo’s development in the first novel is his departure from his parents’ home, where he has lived since Anna’s suicide. But having dealt with one aspect of his experience of his Sicilian heritage – that is, his failed ‘Italian’ marriage – Romeo must return to Brisbane to reconcile the other aspect – his idealisation of Monica as the “Italo-Australian princess,”42 echoed in his later relationships with his late wife Anna and Monica’s daughter, Mary. Whilst Romeo does not return to a physical Little Italy, his return to Brisbane signals a return to a symbolic Little Italy. In a sense, his interactions with the prominent and ostensibly successful Aquila family become representative of his interactions with the greater Italian Australian community, and his Italian/Sicilian Australian identity is bound up in the Aquilas’ perception of him. In order to resolve his identity as an Italian Australian male, Romeo must acknowledge the way in which his idealisation of Monica has impacted upon his life and his relationships with women, particularly Anna and Mary, and must orchestrate a catharsis for Gloria, Michele and Mary Aquila. In The Volcano, Emilio returns to Brisbane’s Little Italy in his memories as he recounts his story to Mary Aquila. His departure from this symbolic space occurs upon his agreement to work for Oscar Sosa. It is through his connection with Mary and her own search for a sense of her origins that Emilio is able to return to a symbolic Little Italy and to participate in cultural maintenance through his story, despite the fact that he has never left the physical space of New Farm. The Volcano is significant in this aspect of return as important to personal and ethnic catharsis. This novel, and thus the Romeo
41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., p. 90.
180 trilogy as a whole, closes with Emilio’s and Mary’s return to Sicily. As argued by Baldassar, returning to Italy is a significant journey for migrants and the successive generations.43 In Italian Australian narratives, as demonstrated in Chapter 5 through the examination of Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home, the journey to Italy aids protagonists in the articulation of their Italian Australian identities. Returning to Sicily, Emilio is able to make peace with his ex-wife, Desideria, and returns to the foothills of Mt Etna to die. Mary, upon travelling through Sicily towards Etna and the town from which her family originates, experiences a “shift into a different sensory zone, one she needs … The Sicilian Zone.”44 Although this journey is important in awakening her Sicilian identity, Mary’s ethnic development is complicated by her gender, discussed in detail below.
“I Wish I Knew Her”: 45 ethnic masculinities and the ‘mystic signorina’ As explained previously, the sheer bulk of Armanno’s published work, combined with his recurring themes and characterisations, has necessitated his separation from Capaldo and Valmorbida as a second stage Italian Australian writer. Most importantly, I intend this separation to emphasise the difference in their considerations of gender. In Chapter 5, I argued that gender has played an essential and self-conscious role in the narratives by Capaldo and Valmorbida, and that the interplay between gender and ethnicity is easily read in these narratives. Gender, in Armanno’s fiction, is not the self-conscious layer previously witnessed in Capaldo and Valmorbida’s narrative, but specific patterns do emerge in his characterisations of males and females and in their roles in the overall development of both the narratives and the protagonists. With the exception of Mary Aquila’s brief interjections, Armanno always uses male protagonists who frequently narrate the story in first person. The main protagonist, or multiple protagonists – as is the case in The Lonely Hunter and The Volcano – whose development is central to the narrative are almost invariably male. In The Volcano, the relationships between protagonist, narrator and subject are further complicated. While the majority of the narrative comprises Emilio’s story, it is told for the purpose of Mary Aquila’s development both as an Italian Australian and as a writer. It is often unclear whether Emilio is providing the narration, or if Mary is narrating under the guise of Emilio. The male protagonist’s development is almost entirely defined
43 Baldassar, Visits Home, p. 3. 44 Armanno, The Volcano, p. 505. 45 Armanno, Firehead, p. 284.
181 by his relationships with women, advancing and retreating accordingly, further complicating Mary’s potential to be read as a protagonist. Armanno’s female characters are often heavily idealised, and are more symbolic than active players in Armanno’s narratives. The nickname, the Romeo trilogy, refers not only to the recurring character of Romeo Costanzo but, I argue, to the doomed desires and obsessions of the male protagonists for the various women in their lives. Enza Gandolfo, in a review of The Volcano, acknowledges the possible existence of the types of brutish, sexual Sicilian Australian men Armanno so frequently portrays, but laments his exclusion of characters that refute this stereotype.46 Gandolfo’s criticisms, however valid, suggest that Armanno is not seeking to unpack or further explore the mechanisms of such stereotypical characters but that this is Italian/Sicilian Australian masculinity as he has observed it and chooses to represent it. Certainly the frequency of these particular characterisations of Italian/Sicilian Australian men in Armanno’s fiction seems to suggest the latter. Armanno acknowledges the exploration of sexuality and masculinity in his writing, but does not necessarily believe that he explores femininity.47 However, Peter F. Murphy observes that, in general, “[m]en have been far more willing to discuss female sexuality than their own … When men consider the issue of female sexuality they often speak from assumptions of security about their own unexamined masculinity.”48 Regardless of Armanno’s intentions but agreeing wholeheartedly with Gandolfo’s critique, I argue that the Romeo trilogy and Firehead provide interesting material for the exploration of gender, ethnicity and identity in their depiction of men, women and their relationships. Armanno’s men, while often brutish and oversexed, are more nuanced than Gandalfo suggests. Many of them are expert cooks, and never suggest that their ease in the kitchen in any way threatens their masculinity.49 Emilio and Romeo in particular are extremely well read and it is evident, although never explicitly stated, that Romeo, who is a talented gardener, wishes to be a writer (which does not provide the kind of salary with which one can support a large Italian family).50 The passions of Armanno’s male
46 Gandolfo, "The Volcano." 47 Interview with Venero Armanno, 1 February 2005. See Carniel, "A Conversation with Venero Armanno," p. 152. 48 P. F. Murphy, "Introduction: Literature and Masculinity," in Fictions of Masculinity: Crossing Cultures, Crossing Sexualities, ed. Peter F. Murphy (New York: New York University Press, 1994). 49 This centres upon the assumption that the kitchen is a ‘traditionally’ ‘female’ domain. 50 Romeo’s parents disapprove of his reading habits: “For losing myself in these books I’m lazy. For my collection of music I’m a dreamer. And if they knew I went to the cinema sometimes during the day between
182 characters are depicted as running against the strict and often conservative social and cultural mores of their Sicilian communities. They are not, in other words, good Sicilian boys. Armanno attempts, perhaps unsuccessfully, to excuse the brutish male sexuality identified by Gandalfo as being driven by passion and (violently passionate) love. It must be remembered that Gandalfo was reviewing The Volcano, wherein Emilio kidnaps Desideria and keeps her captive in his cave until she is compromised into marrying him. Emilio’s actions and the actions of his other important male characters, while not wholly defensible, should be contrasted against the minor character Joe DeMarco in The Lonely Hunter. Joe is a recent migrant from the Italian region of Calabria married to Milena DeMarco, a woman with whom Eddie Bevelacqua shares a brief sexual tryst. It is Joe DeMarco’s violence and abuse of his wife – because of which Milena eventually kills him – that is portrayed as brutish, anomalous and unmasculine. Even the violent scene in which Eddie beats Joe is not glorified, is unnecessary and leaves Eddie in anguish. The women portrayed are heavily idealised and flawed, but are pivotal to the male protagonists’ development. I have labelled Armanno’s problematic female characterisations as the ‘mystic signorina’ type. The ‘mystic signorina’ is created through the male protagonist’s idealisation of femininity, and his perception of her is shaped by his desire for that ideal. She is, in a sense, a ‘good Italian girl’ who is able to be a little bit dirty; her sexuality is mysterious and uncontrollable, her voice throaty, her cool composure unnerving. All these characteristics are quite remarkable considering she is often between fourteen and seventeen years of age.51 Most importantly, the ‘mystic signorina’ exists exclusively in the past, in the male protagonist’s memories. In Armanno’s works, she is best represented by Monica Aquila, Romeo’s wife Anna, and Firehead’s Gabriella Zazò. This type of female characterisation is integral to the male protagonist’s perception of his own Italian or Sicilian Australian identity, often helping to create his awareness of this identity. The protagonist’s ethnic masculinity hinges upon this idealised femininity, and is fractured when the object of his desire ultimately fails him, usually in the form of her disappearance from his life. The protagonist’s recognition of his responsibility for this idealisation and its inevitable failure allows him to progress in his development.
jobs, to dream in that dark womb of my own, what would [my parents] have said?” V. Armanno, The Lonely Hunter (Sydney: Vintage, 2001), p. 27. 51 Gabriella Zazò was fourteen years-old when she disappeared and is remembered that way by Sam Capistrano and the Italian Australian community. Monica Aquila was seventeen years-old when Romeo Costanzo last saw her and is likewise captured in his memory at that age. Anna’s age is never mentioned, but she is characterised as being young, possibly in her early twenties at the oldest.
183 Romeo’s first sexual encounter with Monica in Romeo of the Underworld is couched in terms of his internal ethnic and class conflict: It crosses my mind that Monica is a goody-two-shoes, a little Italo- Australian princess from a family made royalty by their economic success and I only like her because every now and then she undoes my fly and rubs away with an impetuous rush. All the rest are my idealised projections. What do I know about the ballet and piano lessons she took, the subtext of impenetrable Ingmar Berman films, the lunatic ravings of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Gurdjieff? I’m just trying to fit an image so she won’t send me away … I’m selling my soul through my cock; Monica and I are so worlds apart it’s not even funny …52 Throughout their brief relationship, Monica teaches Romeo how to cook, what to read and how to listen to Italian opera; in short, she teaches him how to be Italian, and how to be Sicilian. His desire for Monica represents his desire for his ethnic heritage, which he has hitherto rejected, and his desire for acceptance within the Italian community. When their romance quickly turns sour upon the discovery that Monica is pregnant to Johnny Armstrong, Romeo’s rejection of Monica is voiced through a rejection of Sicilian culture: I see clearly Monica was like a god with good thighs who wanted to make me in her own image. Music, books, dancing; Sicilian pasta sauce, Sicilian chianti and Sicilian basil. Give me a break. This is Australia. Our families left the old country far behind, long ago, and forever. Why should kids like Monica and me perpetuate old-world myths, old-world romance? Old-world bullshit.53 Although Romeo maintains the love of cooking, music and books nurtured by Monica, it is only when he reconciles their past within himself that he is able to regard his Italian Australian identity unproblematically, as it was previously wrought with bitter memories of her. Romeo’s renewed relationship with Michele when he returns to Brisbane is driven by his desire to learn what has happened to Monica. Although his is angered to learn of Monica’s death and Michele’s role in it, Romeo is ultimately able to accept it by orchestrating a tentative reconciliation between Michele, Gloria and Mary. Also, by refusing Mary’s offer of love he is able to avoid a repetition of the past and his relationship with Monica.
52 Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld, p. 90. 53 Ibid., p. 104.
184 Romeo’s ill-fated relationship with Monica and her family explains his failed wish never to marry an Italian woman, as well as his love of the music, books and art, in The Lonely Hunter. Anna, like Monica in Romeo of the Underworld and Gabriella in Firehead, exists in the narrative predominantly as an idealised memory, but she is still a driving force in Romeo’s relationships, just as his relationship with her is affected by his memories of Monica. Romeo, conscious of the pressure upon him to marry an Italian woman, fulfils this family expectation, despite having vowed never to do so,54 which Romeo of the Underworld reveals to be due to his relationship with Monica and the Aquilas. Although Anna is not a ‘good Italian girl’, Romeo’s parents approve of the marriage because, in the context of their expectations that their son be successful and marry, marrying an ethnically suitable woman is Romeo’s first achievement: “She was a runaway and a bar-waitress and she lived alone in a flat the way no self-respecting girl of a good family would ever do, but she was Italian.”55 Romeo and Anna’s marriage, however, is loveless, destructive and brief, ending with Anna’s suicide. Continuing this pattern, Romeo’s memories of Anna affect his relationship with Kelly Robinson, his second cousin’s Anglo Australian wife. Although in the character of Kelly, Armanno succeeds in creating a slightly more fully-realised female character, she, too, is the object of Romeo’s fantasies, idealisation of women and ethnic dilemma. Despite their real connection, Romeo’s desire for Kelly is driven by his jealousy of his cousin, Eddie Bevelacqua, as much as his memories of Anna and Monica. Kelly, for Romeo, is a symbol of Eddie’s success and wealth in both their Italian community and Australian society; Romeo seeks to destroy his cousin and access his success through the seduction of Eddie’s wife. As a consequence of Eddie’s success as a businessman, it does not signify that he married a non-Italian woman until the marriage breaks down, caused by his infidelities which also result in the loss of his job. Before the family are made aware of the details of the marriage’s failure, the blame is immediately foisted upon the innocent Kelly because of her Australianness: Cousin Eddie Bevelacqua had always been such a good boy, he was such a hard worker, he was so rich, any Italian girl would have begged for a husband like him, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. You’re not Italian, Kelly, you’re not Sicilian. It had to be all your fault, the family knows with absolute fucking certainty just how little an Australian
54 Armanno, The Lonely Hunter, p. 64. 55 Ibid.
185 wife will support her sainted Italian husband. There was a lot of talk about the ‘mixed marriage’ and ‘bad blood’.56 Eddie’s fall from grace in the eyes of their extended family coincides with Kelly’s disappearance from Romeo’s life. Romeo is able to forget his lust and love for her because he is no longer jealous of Eddie. Although Kelly is, as stated previously, Armanno’s most fully-realised female character, she too plays only a symbolic role in the protagonist’s development. Gabriella Zazò is perhaps the best example of the ‘mystic signorina’ character type. Not only does her memory haunt Sam Capistrano for twenty years after her disappearance, but she also becomes a symbol of lost innocence in a foreign land and the demise of Little Italy, as discussed above. Interestingly, the adult Gabriella seems to be aware of her own mystical status: “Now that you know what I’m like, you’re not that impressed with me any more. But do me a favour, please Salvatore. Sometimes – remember me the way you used to. I used to feel it everywhere I went. And when I felt it, I just loved myself that way.”57 Gabriella’s younger sister Sandy, born several years after Gabriella’s disappearance, is also obsessed with her absent sister and deliberately evokes her memory in her seduction of Sam: When this new Gabriella who was the old Gabriella came close, and then entwined her meaty arms around me, it was as if a spirit had come to lift me from this world into a place so lovely I had no right to even look at it. The body that pressed to me was the opposite of what I remembered. … I looked at her, searching her face for her every feature, and of course it was Sandy Zazò, twice the size of her long-gone sister, and she was so entranced by what she thought she knew about her that she was playing this game, and I thought, You bitch, you mind-fucking bitch, then almost at the same time, What does it matter? And I played the game too, because I’d been cheated all those years ago, I’d never got to make love with my Gabriella, only to dream of her, and if Sandy was going to want me to do that to her in Gabriella’s name, then why should I stop it? Why shouldn’t I take whatever scraps this fart of an inconceivable universe sent me?58
56 Ibid., p. 157. 57 Armanno, Firehead, p. 396. 58 Ibid., pp. 320-1.
186 Armanno’s description emphasises Sandy’s corporeality and Sam’s awareness of the differences between the two sisters; Sam hopes to consummate his fantasies and desires for his memories of Gabriella with the physically available Sandy. When Sam and Gabriella are finally reunited, he is still absorbed by the memory of Gabriella as a teenager, whom he believes is present within her aged body: Twenty years hadn’t passed, not even twenty days. … She was a woman in her thirties and the child of fourteen was still somewhere in her eyes. … She was breathtaking. Not in the way of film actors or catwalk models or photogenic specimens whose perfect features adorn the covers of magazines, but breathtaking in the way that she carried years of living. Living, real living. That’s what made my heart soar so high – Gabriella’s living.59 Like Monica and Romeo, Gabriella is instrumental in awakening Sam’s adolescent ethnic identity: I wrote on the soft white skin of her inner forearm the three letters of my name: Sam. She shook her head and put out her other forearm for me to try again. In a very rough and exasperated Sicilian dialect exactly the same as my parents spoke or screamed in the home, she said, Sam? Who cares for a name like Sam? Where we come from its Salvatore or even sometimes we change it to Turiddu and one of those is what you are. Understand?60 Gabriella’s own Sicilian identity is contested because of her half-Irish parentage, physically manifest in her red hair: He was a butcher from Dublin on holiday in Sicily. My ma met him and fell in love with him and she ran away to Dublin to be with him. And after nearly a year she came back because it didn’t work and by then she had me inside her. … I grew up with shame on my head. No-one let me be Sicilian. I was something else. A foreigner who wasn’t foreign.61 Sam recognises that in Australia Gabriella’s Anglo Celtic physical appearance and Sicilian cultural identity is equally as problematic: “an Irish-looking kid who had a heavy, throaty Mediterranean accent and who didn’t know what hell Australian schools
59 Ibid., pp. 380-1. 60 Ibid., p. 5. Emphasis added. 61 Ibid., p. 72.
187 would be for someone like her.”62 Gabriella also later explains her sense of dislocation in both Sicily and Australia, and her need for community and acceptance: “In Sicily I wasn’t home because of [her Irish appearance] … Then when we made our escape this was supposed to be my place of hope. I needed all these new people surrounding me, I really needed them, and instead what were we? Wogs dagos eyeties.”63 Gabriella’s disappearance and her subsequent travels around Australia reflect her sense of dislocation from her urban environment and its various social and ethnic groups, as well as her desire to connect with her adopted country. Although Gabriella instils in Sam the importance of remembering his cultural heritage, she must travel away from her family and their Little Italy in order to learn how to be Australian. It is when Sam meets this changed, Australian version of Gabriella, who has Anglicised her name to Zazuella O’Connor, that Sam is able to accept the changes in his own self, and return to Irina and their daughters. Just as learning about Monica’s death and rejecting Mary’s love allow Romeo to reconcile his past and his identity, reuniting with Gabriella allows Sam to release his guilt and completely accept his adult and ethnic responsibilities, thereby facilitating his personal and ethnic development. Irina Luna, the Spanish nightclub singer who leaves her husband in order to marry Sam, is instrumental in Sam’s release of Gabriella’s memory, although this process is not fully completed until after Sam and Gabriella’s reunion. Although Irina is not Italian Australian, her non-Anglo Australian ethnic otherness makes her a suitable partner for Sam and a suitable mother for his children. As a migrant, she understands the importance of cultural maintenance while also providing another, non-Anglo Australian cultural influence that signals a movement on from ideas of Italian assimilation or integration into an Anglo Australian mainstream to interactions between different ethnic groups and the creation (through Sam and Irina’s daughters) of new culturally hybrid identities. Finally, the character of Mary Aquila plays a complex, important and ultimately problematic role in this investigation of gender in Armanno’s fiction. At the end of Romeo of the Underworld, Armanno seems to suggest that the Romeo trilogy, and the intertwining lives of its characters, will end with Mary: “the hope of the future is no with me and is no with you. Is with Mary.”64 Mary, as a woman of both Sicilian Australian and
62 Ibid., p. 18. 63 Ibid., p. 388. 64 Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld, p. 260. As with Marchetta, Fusillo and Montano, Armanno aims to reflect Italian migrants’ use of English in his dialogue. In an interview with Maria Vidal Grau and Carmen
188 Anglo Australian parentage, is a suitable character with which to end the Romeo trilogy as a narrative of Italian Australian identity development, although not nearly as progressive as the concept of Sam and Irina’s daughters. Armanno, however, is unable to explicitly chart Mary’s development; it is mediated through Emilio’s story and his own reconciliation with the past. Interestingly, just as Romeo’s development is hinged upon his relationship with Monica, Mary’s development seems to hinge upon her various attachments to men of Sicilian (and Australian) descent, all of whom are older than her, arguably linking her search for her ethnic identity to her desire for a father-figure.65 When Romeo returns to Sydney, having necessarily ended their affair in order to break free from the influences of Monica’s memory, Mary remains in Brisbane so that she may nurture her relationship with her father, Johnny Armstrong, and her maternal grandfather, Michele. Mary reappears in the trilogy at the end of Part One of The Volcano wherein her struggles as a writer – specifically, her struggle to find something to write about, about which she is passionate – are resolved through her relationship with Emilio, who tells his story to Mary in an act of confession and testimony. Deliberate narratorial confusion in The Volcano – what is told by Emilio to Mary and what Mary writes is often unclear – blends the subject, narrator and protagonist positionings of Mary and Emilio. I argue, however, that Armanno never succeeds in transforming Mary from object (as she is originally characterised in Romeo of the Underworld) to subject or protagonist. Mary constantly seeks definition and belonging through her relationships with men, and Armanno, too, defines her primarily through her failed relationship with men: We find Mary Aquila as a young woman from a long line of young and old women whose menfolk have either been absent, irrelevant, or both. She’s alone but not lonely. Growing into womanhood she has discovered that above all else she fears that a certain hardness – an inflexibility, a stubbornness
Zamorano discussing the novel in its earlier stages, Armanno responded to a query as to who was the protagonist of The Volcano: “[it is] a character by the name of Maria Aquila, a twenty-three or twenty-four year old girl living in Brisbane, who discovers the family mythologies, the family history, and through them she discovers more about herself, more about who she is, and why she is the way she is.” See Grau and Zamorano, "Encounter with Venero Armanno," pp. 37-38. 65 This is also linked to her sexual discovery. When seeking a solution to what Mary believes to be her sexual dysfunction, her therapist points out the “awfully familiar physical characteristics and age concurrence between one Dr Johnny Armstrong and one Big Man James Ray. You need your father’s love, but you would never allow yourself to experience a sensual sensation in his presence, would you, Mary?” Armanno, The Volcano, p. 88. Italics in original.
189 – has been a dominant gene acquired through the ancient Sicilian bloodline: how many worthwhile men has she sent away already? ... Mary is bad news to X-chromosomes and knows it.66 Included amongst Mary’s failed relationships are Romeo and her father, Johnny Armstrong, both of whom ultimately reject her affections and thereby deny her a sense of place and belonging. Although Mary does not enjoy sex with James Ray, the lover from whom she has most recently separated, she eventually realises that his possessive treatment afforded her a fleeting sense of belonging: “Possession: for one to three minutes Mary belonged.”67 By befriending Emilio, Mary continues her search for belonging as well as her search for her cultural heritage. Her search for origins through her maternal family ends with Michele’s death, and is largely ignored by her grandmother: The most horrible thing is that even though I know you’re lying to me, I still yearn for you, Gloria. I yearn to be held on your lap as you caress my cheeks and brush my hair for me, and I yearn for you to tell me those stories about the old country you came from and the things you dreamed of when you were a little girl. This is because you are my mother. I yearn to hear you tell me about my biological mother Monica – but you, you’re all I’ve ever had. So when you die, I die. You take away the only truth I’ve ever had, your touch, and replace it with something so untrue. It diminishes everything else for me. Why are you lying about one three-quarters-dead old man?68 Although Mary’s curiosity about Emilio is piqued by Gloria’s evasiveness, it is the death of her former lover, James Ray, that triggers in Mary the desire to capture people’s stories before they are lost through death. By discovering, in Emilio’s life story and through James Ray’s death, a subject about which she can write with passion, Emilio and James Ray facilitate Mary’s development as a writer. As she says to Emilio as he lies unconscious in the hospital: “I’m waiting for you to open the book that I will write.”69 Mary’s development both as an Italian Australian and a writer, however, is not overtly depicted but is presumed through the writing of Emilio’s story, endangered when he suffers a stroke. Ultimately her development does not eventuate through the narrative. Travelling to Italy and Sicily is an important event for both Mary and Emilio. Mary, however, appears to abandon Emilio and her search for origins, directing all her attention
66 Ibid., p. 85. 67 Ibid., p. 86. Original emphasis. 68 Ibid., p. 112. Italics in original. 69 Ibid., p. 116.
190 and energies to a new lover, Santino Malgrò, the grandson of Emilio’s former padrone. Mary is, in a sense, a sacrifice made for Emilio’s resolution; in becoming Santino’s lover, Mary becomes an offering that resolves Emilio’s problematic past relationship with the Malgrò family. In resolving Emilio’s life narrative, Mary’s development and her future promise hinted at in Romeo of the Underworld is forgotten. Memory and the past impact significantly upon the relationships between Armanno’s men and women. Lingering and idealised memories of Monica and Gabriella influence Romeo’s and Sam’s contemporary relationships, and have helped shape their identities as Italian Australian men, while Mary’s development as an Italian Australian woman is necessarily subsumed by the life story of an Italian Australian man. Interwoven amongst these relationships and evident also in the construction and demise of ethnic space and identity discussed in the first section, is the recurring theme that the past must be resolved and understood in order to progress in the present.
“If soul is memory”: 70 critically re-imagining the Italian Australian past Narratives of the second stage in the development of Italian Australian identities and narratives utilise stories of migration to create a connection between characters of the migrant and successive generation, as I have demonstrated in Chapters 4 and 5. Armanno’s works are perhaps prototypical of the second stage of successive generation literature. With the exception of his thrillers, My Beautiful Friend and Strange Rain, and the first novel in his Romeo trilogy, The Lonely Hunter, Armanno’s narratives are thematically preoccupied with the reconciliation of pasts and selves through intergenerational interactions between successive generation Italian Australian characters and the migrant generation.71 Regarding Armanno’s novel Firehead, and applicable to all of the narratives explored here, Hsu-Ming Teo observes: “The Sicilian past plays a crucial role in determining the story set in the Australian present.”72 From this I argue that, in Armanno’s narratives, the development of Italian/Sicilian Australian identities hinges upon the resolution and understanding of the past in the present in both Australia and Italy.
70 Grau and Zamorano, "Encounter with Venero Armanno," p. 39. 71 Interestingly, however, these thrillers do feature Italian and Italian Australian characters, but do not problematise their ethnicity to the extent found in his other works. For Armanno’s view on the ‘ethnic’ content of his books, see Carniel, "A Conversation with Venero Armanno," pp. 146-47. 72 Teo, "Future Fusions and a Taste for the Past," p. 137.
191 Nicola King argues that “[c]onsistency of consciousness and a sense of continuity between the actions and events of the past, and the experience of the present, would appear to be integral to a sense of personal identity. … [I]dentity, or a sense of self, is constructed by and through narrative: the stories we all tell ourselves and each other about our lives.”73 Armanno emphasises memory as an important process and relationship that connects the generations: “if soul is memory, it’s up to us to remember our parents, not just for the sake of remembering because we love them, but also to learn from the past.”74 His narratives foreground storytelling as memory, reconciliation and development that occurs over several generations, and that continues to occur. The protagonists’ sense of identity and self, and the development of their Italian Australian identities, hinges upon their understanding of the personal stories and histories of their families and members of their Italian Australian communities. Just as Capaldo and Valmorbida use their migrant characters to explore more negative experiences of the past, Armanno also uses migrant characters and stories to explore resonating themes between the past and the present. Through the sharing of stories of migration and dislocation by migrant characters with successive generation characters, Armanno’s characters are able to recognise recurring themes and patterns in their own lives, and so are able to interrupt the cyclic repetition of history and destiny. Bona and Gardaphé both identify the importance in Italian American narratives of successive generation protagonists’ transcendence of the immigrant world and of their freeing themselves from Old World notions of destino, destiny.75 Michele, in recounting the story of the “angel of forgetfulness”76 to Romeo and in claiming kinship with him, attempts to instil in Romeo the sense of destiny that has plagued his own life. Romeo, in a pivotal moment of his development, rejects destiny as a force in human lives: “What are you talking about, you stupid old man! Is this Sicily? Does this look like Sicily? Isn’t this Brisbane? … Nobody wants you. You don’t have a family anymore. You fucked your family up, not some ‘angel’.”77 Although Romeo accepts his Sicilian culture and identity, he rejects the notion that this heritage must necessarily govern his life through tradition and superstition. Romeo’s need for the past is simple – he must re-evaluate his memories
73 N. King, Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 2. 74 Grau and Zamorano, "Encounter with Venero Armanno," p. 39. 75 Bona, Claiming a Tradition, p. 12; Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 83. 76 Armanno, Romeo of the Underworld, p. 163. 77 Ibid., p. 239. Original emphasis.
192 of Monica as an adult, which involves letting her memory go, but he is not able to do so until he discovers the truth about her death and learns from Michele’s saddened existence the dangers of allowing obsessive desires to take control of one’s life. This recurs again in Firehead, wherein Enrico Belpasso’s love and desire for his deceased wife is played out through his relationship with his granddaughter. Gabriella’s disappearance is directly linked not only to her sense of dislocation discussed previously, but to her desire to escape the way in which her grandfather confuses and conflates the past and the present. Gabriella’s diary excerpts, subtitled “Dear Diary: Gabriella’s Book of Fire,” function on two important levels: they signify the way in which the characters dwell in the past and, in her disappearance and consequent abandonment of her diary, Gabriella’s desire to shed her own and her family’s past. The diary begins, not with the thoughts of a fourteen year-old girl living in 1970s Brisbane, which occur in later excerpts, but with the story of Enrico Belpasso’s seduction in the early twentieth century by Fortunata, his future wife. This apparent family history, however, is also the narrative of Enrico’s sexual abuse of Gabriella who, through great love for her grandfather, submits to his desires and assumes for him the guise of Fortunata. In bringing Enrico to the brothel, Nocturne, for his birthday in 1975, Gabriella hopes to escape her grandfather’s abuse and, in disappearing that day, also seeks to escape Enrico’s past, within which she has become entangled. In her second last diary entry, Gabriella discusses a book she has been reading entitled The Aleph and Other Stories.78 The ‘Aleph’ of the story is “a place … that is really all places,”79 which provides the key to Firehead’s narrative, and Gabriella’s disappearance: The Aleph can be found under the nineteenth step of the staircase into Daneri’s basement, and to see it you have to lie down there in a special position. So Borges does this. To his utter amazement he truly does see a phenomenal thing. It turns out to be a sphere two or three centimetres in diameter and inside it he sees, well, the whole universe. Past, present and future too, all at once, and as a living thing with every facet of existence perfectly clear
78 For the original story (translated into English), see J. L. Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933-1969: Together with Commentaries and an Autobiographical Essay, trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970), pp. 15-30. 79 Armanno, Firehead, p. 301.
193 and visible all at the same time. … This made me so excited to read. The possibilities of this really made my head swim.80 The story of the Aleph gives Gabriella a means of understanding her role in Enrico’s life: we are ourselves and everyone. We are here and everywhere. Our special individual moments are everyone’s moments. We live inside ourselves and we live through others, and there’s no such thing as death because not everyone dies at once, quite the opposite, we all stay alive together forever, joined into eternity, and that’s why life is so much a mystery and so utterly beautiful it can ache in your soul.81 Through the Aleph, which she later ‘discovers’ in her own basement hiding spot – the place where Enrico and Gabriella engage in sexual activity – Gabriella is able to reinforce her necessary belief that when she is with her grandfather sexually, she is actually her grandmother, Fortunata. She thereby erases what is happening to her in the present by imagining that it is actually occurring in the past (and the future too, by the logic of the Aleph) as all time occurs at once. By the same token, Fortunata is able to live through Gabriella and remain with her husband: “I’ll see all of Enrico Belpasso’s stories entwined with the stories of everyone we have known and the multitudes we haven’t. My grandmother Fortunata will smile at me, and her mother, and her mother’s mother, then back the other way I’ll see my own babies wailing, and then theirs, and so on.”82 Ultimately Gabriella, like Romeo, refuses to be bound by the Sicilian past and so runs away in order to escape the past and to forge her own identity and future. The relationship between Mary and Emilio in The Volcano is based upon their shared desire to recapture and resolve the past. Mary, addressing Emilio while he is still unconscious in hospital and emotionally driven by the recent death of her former lover, expresses her need for his recovery and his life story in order to give her meaning and purpose: My name is Mary Aquila and I’ve come to hear about your life. People live and they die and in their histories is their immortality. I want to know about your history. I want to record and tell your stories. I want people to remember you and to know that when you were alive you did things and made things and felt things and thought things. I’ve looked up records in libraries
80 Ibid. Emphasis added. 81 Ibid., p. 302-03. 82 Ibid., p. 304.
194 and newspapers on microfiche and so I know a little of who you are, but only a little and I don’t call that life. I want to know who you loved and why and why they loved you in return. I want to know who you hated and why and why they hated you in return. When you were a boy did you dream and when you were a man did you dream again? Have you ever taken a life? Have you ever pulled a baby into the world? Have you known rage so great it could split the ground and love so strong it made you blind? I want you to tell me your stories that then become other people’s stories, that become all stories. I’m waiting for you to open the book that I will write.83 Mary explicitly expresses a desire to know Emilio’s story beyond the official history, recalling a similar theme in Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing. Mary’s words stress the importance of capturing Emilio’s narrative in order to fill in the gaps of her research and to secure his immortality through storytelling as an act of personal and cultural maintenance.84 Mary’s and Emilio’s development as characters is bound up in the tensions between storyteller and listener, writer and subject, Emilio’s past and Mary’s present. This intricate relationship is also foreshadowed earlier in the book when one of Emilio’s lovers during his youth, a young Australian university student, fervently reads to him a passage from Doctor Zhivago: ‘History is beautiful,’ she said. ‘The history of the world and the history of generations. …’ She reached past his head and found the copy of Doctor Zhivago. … ‘You in others, this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived in and enjoyed throughout your life. Your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on it is called your memory? This will be you – the you that enters the future and becomes part of it.’85
83 Armanno, The Volcano, p. 116. 84 Singh, Skerrett Jr. and Robert E. Hogan argue that storytelling plays an important role in ethnic writing. It is often used to “redefine history and culture and to legitimise personal and collective memory.” See Singh, Skerrett Jr., and Hogan, "Introduction," p. 18. For a discussion of the importance of storytelling in Italian and Italian American cultures, see G. Timpanelli, "Stories and Storytelling, Italian and Italian American," in The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, ed. Pellegrino D'Acierno (New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1999). 85 Armanno, The Volcano, p. 29.
195 Emilio sadly and silently objects: “In this country he wasn’t really a man but an artefact from another time and place. Simple. A foreigner.”86 In his relationship with Mary, however, their common origin transforms Emilio’s life story not into a curious cultural artefact but into a shared journey of development. As Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett Jr. and Robert E. Hogan argue, memory “interrupts linear conventional narratives in order to make room for multiple voices and perspectives … This use of multiple voices [in ethnic literatures becomes] … a means of creating community as part of the dialectic between the past and the present in moving toward the future.”87 Emilio is able to tell his story to someone who is able to understand and appreciate its significance, and with whom he can engage in an act of cultural maintenance, while Mary is able to learn more about the Sicilian culture and the Sicilian and Australian past that is bound up in her family history and sense of identity. Through this sharing of memory, and their connection of common ethnic origins, Emilio and Mary create their own sense of shared history and community. As discussed in the previous section, Mary is unable to gain a sense of her personal and cultural history from her surviving relatives, specifically her grandmother. Gardaphé argues that, in Italian American narratives, the grandparent “serves as the mythic figura who is the source of ethnic stories created by the third generation.”88 Gloria’s silence regarding the past is therefore all the more significant as she denies her granddaughter the ethnic stories and myths of origins that she craves, absorbed as she is in her commercial success within the Australian mainstream.89 Gloria’s Anglicisation of her ex-husband’s name from Michele to Michael also indicates her ambivalence regarding cultural maintenance.90 Consequently, Mary is forced to seek out Emilio, who was her grandparents’ acquaintance and contemporary, as a source for her ethnic stories. While The Volcano continues investigating this theme of the resonating relationship between the past and the present, it is, in many ways, also an historical novel in ways that Armanno’s other narratives are not. Considering Mary’s desire to create a narrative out of Emilio’s life story and the actual research that was involved in the process
86 Ibid., p. 30. 87 Singh, Skerrett Jr., and Hogan, "Introduction," p. 18. 88 Gardaphé, Italian Signs, American Streets, p. 121. See also Bona, Claiming a Tradition, p. 128. 89 This recalls Graziella’s assimilation to Australian culture in Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home, which stemmed from her desire to move on from her troubled past in Italy. 90 Armanno, The Volcano, p. 112.
196 of writing the book,91 it is useful once again to consider this narrative through Hutcheon’s concept of historiographic metafiction, utilised in the discussion of Valmorbida’s narrative in Chapter 5. Armanno provides a fictionalised migrant story that is contextualised in the history of Italian migration to Australia, specifically Italian settlement in Brisbane, and the lesser known history of Brisbane’s underworld. This is layered yet again in Mary’s narrativisation of Emilio’s story, and through the deliberate problematisation of the roles of protagonist and narrator shared by Mary and Emilio. Thinking about The Volcano as an historical novel and, more specifically, as historiographic metafiction empowers the narrative as an adjunct and adjacent cultural knowledge. The Volcano critically examines the relationships between the past and the present, Italianness and Australianness. It critically re-imagines stories of migration, and the role of these stories in the imaginations of the successive generations.
Conclusion The prevailing theme throughout Armanno’s ethnic bildungsromane is the importance of resolving the past in order to live through the present and to create a positive future, which resonates through his use of Brisbane as a symbolic space for ethnic development and his examination of Italian Australian masculinities and femininities. Sam and Romeo both return to their past through visiting the former site of Brisbane’s Little Italy and engaging again with characters from their past. Armanno creates a link between Brisbane and the past – or of Brisbane as the gateway to the past – for his protagonists. In addition to its being the site where his development had previously gone awry, Romeo’s return to Brisbane gives him access to the past by forcing him to think about his past actions and experiences and through his renewed acquaintance with Michele. Similarly, Mary is either unwilling or unable to leave Brisbane, despite an offer from Romeo, and only does so once she has negotiated her identity and her family’s Sicilian past through Emilio’s story; when she does leave Brisbane, it is to accompany Emilio to Italy. Despite the passage of time, Sam, Romeo, Michele and Emilio hold on to their pasts and must eventually involve themselves in its painful resolution in order to move forward with their own lives, and the
91 V. Armanno, "Acknowledgements," in The Volcano (Sydney: Vintage, 2001), pp. 676-77. See also V. Armanno and T. Alexander, Interview with Venero Armanno (Dymocks, 2001 [cited 26 April 2004]); available from www.dymocks.com.au/contentstatic/literarymatter/interviews/venero_armanno.html.
197 lives of future generations. Mary, on the other hand, must discover the past in order to realise her identity as an Italian Australian and as a writer. Significantly, these male characters’ various crises are bound up in their relationships with women or, more accurately, their relationships with their memories of these women and their idealised perception of women and femininity. These memories and this idealisation of Italian Australian femininity in turn reveal more about their ethnic masculinities played out in their urban Australian environment. The early demise of Brisbane’s Little Italy is played out symbolically through Gabriella’s disappearance in Firehead and Monica’s death in Romeo of the Underworld. With the death of their Italian communities and the death of their women, these men are lost, and must revisit their own memories and the memories of others in order to create for themselves a sense of place and identity. Most importantly, Armanno presents an understanding of the human soul as something that is created through memory and storytelling, and that is the essence of cultural maintenance. Armanno’s narratives provide what is perhaps the most sophisticated approach to the prevailing themes of the second stage in the development of Italian Australian narratives and their representation of Italian Australian identities, also suggested in Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing and in Cappiello’s Oh Lucky Country, the latter of which belonged to the intermediary stage between stages one and two. These narratives, in form and content, do not provide easy developmental journeys for their protagonists in the course of the ethnic bildungsroman, nor do they result in clearly defined Italian Australian identities. Ironically, this unclear definition foreshadows the third stage in the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities. Having challenged concepts of Italianness and Italian Australianness, the third stage heralds a broader dialogue amongst various ethnic groups which issues a challenge to notions of Australianness, thereby changing again the meaning of Italian Australian identities. This third (but perhaps not final) stage in the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities is yet to emerge fully, although it is becoming evident in other ethnic narratives. Evidence of this third stage is also emerging in recent Italian Australian film narratives. The developmental trajectory of Italian Australian feature film narratives is the subject of the final chapter which, significantly, also charts the movement of Italian Australian ethnic identities into mainstream representation.
198 Chapter 7
From Wogboys to Proxy Brides: The Journey from Melodrama to Romantic Comedy in Italian Australian film
The rite of passage appears to be the Australian [film] genre… Jonathan Rayner, Contemporary Australian Cinema1
Fifty years ago they arrived in their thousands, some of them got hold of a camera and quietly they started filming their transformation. The Weird Mob: 1st Italian/Australian Film Festival2
In his study of contemporary Australian cinema, Jonathan Rayner employs an evolutionary approach, seeing Australian film as undergoing a process of development, particularly in its contribution to and depiction of national identity.3 Most importantly, Rayner identifies the rite of passage or coming of age film – which, loosely defined, can be read as the film equivalent to the bildungsroman – as the most important, if not definitive Australian film genre. Rayner is preceded by Raffaele Caputo, who argues that Australian coming of age films reflect national development, particularly the development of national character and identity.4 Roy Jones, through a comparison of Far Country (1952 and 1983 as a film) and Silver City (1986 as both film and literary adaptation) in their various incarnations, demonstrates the suitability of using film and literature to chart paradigm shifts and, more specifically, the development of national identity, which is at the core of this thesis’ argument. Jones argues that a comparison of Far Country and Silver City, as both films and novels, suggests a movement of Europeans from outsider to insider status, claiming them a home both in the nation and in memory.5
1 J. Rayner, Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 162. Original emphasis. 2 The Weird Mob: 1st Italian/Australian Film Festival [Website] (2005 [cited 23 June 2005]); available from http://www.theweirdmob.com/index.php. 3 Rayner, Contemporary Australian Cinema, pp. 9-10. 4 R. Caputo, "Coming of Age: Notes Towards a Re-Appraisal," Cinema Papers 94 (1993): pp. 13-14. 5 R. Jones, "Far Cities and Silver Countries: Migration to Australia in Fiction and Film," in Writing across Worlds: Literature and Migration, ed. Russell King, John Connell, and Paul White (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 260.
199 In order to plot the journey of Italian Australian identities as represented within film narratives, this chapter focuses upon four feature films written and, in two of the examples, directed by Italian Australians: Moving Out (1983), Fistful of Flies (1996), Looking for Alibrandi (1999) and Love’s Brother (2003). As narrative feature films, these films roughly correspond to the second stage in Italian Australian narrative and identity development wherein the generic focus of the ethnic bildungsromane shifted from autobiography to fiction. While I maintain a developmental model in the analysis of these films and concentrate upon protagonists’ ethnic identity formation as I have in reading Italian Australian literary narratives as ethnic bildungsromane, Italian Australian film does not necessarily follow the same trajectory as Italian Australian writing. This chapter argues that representations of Italian Australians in narrative feature films, written by (and about) Italian Australians, revisit the themes of generational and cultural conflict, and the necessary negotiation of Italian and Australian cultures in the formation of Italian Australian identities with which we have become familiar in exploring second stage Italian Australian writing. Nevertheless, it also argues that the trajectory of Italian Australian film does not follow the same generic lines as Italian Australian written narratives; rather than moving from autobiography to fiction, or documentary to fiction, there occurs a generic shift from melodrama to comedy. More importantly, drawing upon Rayner’s and Jones’ arguments, these films also chart the movement of Italian Australians from the outside into the mainstream, wherein they have become an acceptable face of ethnicity in Australian film. The gradual shift from melodrama (Moving Out) to romantic comedy (Love’s Brother and, to some extent, Looking for Alibrandi) via black comedy (Fistful of Flies), in addition to the increasing mainstream acceptance of these films (especially Looking for Alibrandi and Love’s Brother), affects the way in which Italian Australian identities are developed and represented in these films. Mark Nicholls views Italian Australian cinema as a sub-genre of both Australian and Italian film, and defines Italian Australian cinema as a broad category encompassing productions by Italian Australians and non-Italian Australians, as well as Italian productions made in Australia.6 While Nicholls does not necessarily draw a distinction between Italian Australian cinema by Italian Australians and non-Italian Australians, he does argue that there is good reason to maintain such a division.7 However
6 M. Nicholls, "Italian Australian Cinema," (Lecture for Italian National Cinema, University of Melbourne: October 2004). 7 Ibid.
200 Rosa Colosimo, a film and television producer who has often acted as an adviser on programs with Italian Australian content, states: I believe that we Italo-Australians should relate our own experiences and lives, and not leave the job of representing us to others, whether they’re Italian or Australian … they can never really understand us, or know what it means to be Italo-Australian. It is our responsibility to tell our own story, and the cinema is probably the best medium for this, as long as we can avoid the pitfalls of stereotypes.8 While admitting its successes and benefits, Rando is somewhat more reticent than Colosimo about the possibilities of Italian Australian film as a form of cultural negotiation, linking this to the marginalised status of Italian Australian cultural production and artistic expression in general.9 Pieter Aquilia argues that a tendency towards ethno-centric analysis in Australian film and television criticism results in a failure to consider the role of Anglo Australian filmmakers in encouraging a multicultural presence in commercial film and television.10 Questioning Hage’s notion of ‘white multiculturalism’, Aquilia argues that white multiculturalists’ use of ethnicities as national objects actually contributes to the development of a more representational cinema, as it eases the way for ethnic filmmakers to present their own stories to mainstream audiences;11 that is, by familiarising audiences with the concept of ethnic characters and storylines, they will then be more open to ‘authentic’ representations. The question remains, however, whether authentic representation is commercially viable, which particular cultures are seen as such and, more specifically, what aspects of these cultures are considered so. The question of authentic representation is further complicated by debates about casting for the roles of ethnic characters – that is, whether an Italian Australian character should be played by an Italian Australian actor – and also the opportunities given to non-Anglo Australian actors in roles not defined by ethnicity.12
8 Rosa Colosimo, “Cinema e televisione: La presenza italiana,” Il veltro 31 (1987), p. 153, quoted in T. Mitchell, "Through Anglo Lenses: Italians in Australian Television Drama," Australasian Drama Studies 22 (1993): p. 25. Mitchell’s translation. 9 Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries." 10 Aquilia, "Wog Drama and 'White Multiculturalists'," p. 104. 11 Ibid. 12 For a discussion of the problems of ethnic typecasting faced by Australian actors, see L. Marinos, "Robert De Niro's Waiting: Media Images of Ethnicity," in Ethnic Minority Youth in Australia: Challenges & Myths, ed.
201 Due to the framework for authentic representation and production established throughout this thesis, this chapter focuses only upon feature films whose screenplays are by writers of Italian Australian heritage, although three of the films are collaborative efforts between Italian Australian screenwriters and Anglo Australian directors, and which feature Italian Australian characters and narratives. Such limitations necessarily exclude in-depth analysis of such feature films as They’re a Weird Mob (1966, directed by Michael Powell, adapted from the novel by John O’Grady), Street Hero (1984, written by Jan Sardi and directed by Michael Pattinson), The Wog Boy (2000, written by Nick Giannopolous and directed by Aleksi Vellis), 15 Amore (2003, written and directed by Morris Murphy) and the short films Arrivederci Roma (1979, written and directed by Geoffrey Wright), Hey Sista! (2001, written and directed by Jan Cattoni) and Claudia’s Shadow (2003, written and directed by Ruth Borgobello), amongst others. Sadly, this results also in the exclusion of the first Italian Australian filmmaker, Giorgio Mangiamele.13 The films used here have all achieved
Carmel Guerra and Rob White (Hobart: NCYS, 1995). For a statistical analysis of NESB participation and representation in film, television and the arts, see S. Bertone, C. Keating, and J. Mullaly, "The Taxidriver, the Cook and the Greengrocer: The Representation of Non-English Speaking Background People in Theatre, Film and Television," (A Research Report commissioned by the Australia Council and prepared by Workplace Studies Centre in association with Effective Change and Communications Law Centre, Victoria University of Technology, 2000), pp. 16-26. 13 Giorgio Mangiamele (1926-2001) was born in Catania, Sicily, and migrated to Australia in 1952. He studied filmmaking extensively whilst still in Italy, established a photographic studio in Carlton after his migration and was a highly-regarded stills photographer, reflected in his critically-acclaimed filmmaking style. Considered “a pioneer of Australian avant-garde and ‘art cinema’ filmmaking,” Mangiamele’s Clay (1965) was the first Australian film to be invited to compete in the Cannes Film Festival, an Australian cultural milestone often erroneously attributed to Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978). Mangiamele’s first four films, The Contract (1953), The Brothers (1958), The Spag (1961) and Ninety-Nine Percent (1963) all feature Italian Australian characters and storylines. Mangiamele’s oeuvre is of particular interest as we can observe a movement from a concern with migrant experiences in his earlier films to non-ethno-centric dramas, such as the quasi-sci-fi drama, Beyond Reason (1970). Mangiamele was contracted as a documentary filmmaker for the Papua New Guinea Office of Information between 1969 and 1972, but after his return to Australia found increasing difficulties in obtaining funding, which he believed was a result of discrimination. Graeme Cutts relates this discrimination to the cultural cringe, as several Australian filmmakers have been rebuffed by Australian funding authorities, despite receiving critical acclaim overseas. Cutts makes an impassioned call for the recognition of Mangiamele’s achievements through the amendment of this particular fact in film history. He also notes that Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (1971, shown as OutBack) also preceded Schepisi’s film. Interestingly, Schepisi is also of an Italian background but he does not explore Italian Australian themes and issues in his films. See A. Castro, "A Profile of Giorgio Mangiamele," Senses of Cinema, no. 4 (2000); J. Conomos, "Cultural Difference and Ethnicity in Australian Cinema," Cinema Papers 90 (1992): p. 13; G. Cutts,
202 cinematic release, are written by second and third generation Italian Australians and focus predominantly upon the development of adolescent or young adult protagonists.
The original wog boy: Moving Out (1983) Moving Out is a teenage coming of age film narrative couched in terms of generational and cultural conflict, which has been commended for its attempts to address issues of dislocation, alienation and cultural conflict, as well as its representation of Italian Australian urban-suburban migration. Marcus Breen suggests that “what Moving Out offers is realist drama, tempered by sceptical optimism for the future.”14 The film depicts three weeks in the life of Gino Condello (Vince Colosimo) and his family before their move from the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy to the outer suburb of Doncaster, or “Wogsville,” as one of Gino’s Australian friends calls it (referring to its high population of increasingly upwardly mobile Italian Australians). In this time, Gino becomes increasingly sullen and rebellious, forsaking family responsibility to hangout with his fellow Italian Australian Renato (Maurice de Vicentis) and their Anglo Australian friends. Also of import is the arrival of relatives from Italy who are to move into the Condello’s Fitzroy house and Gino’s burgeoning friendship with his cousin, Maria (Nicole Miranda). Gino ultimately resists the pressure to assimilate to Anglo Australian culture, successfully negotiating his Italian and Australian cultures to forge an Italian Australian identity. Moving Out thus depicts the emergence of Italian Australian identities in the early 1980s prior to the wider dissemination of multicultural policy and discourses, particularly within schools. It was at this time that conscious expressions of Italian Australian identities as such began to emerge, nurtured by the encouragement of a publicly articulated multiculturalism. Prior to developing a successful career as a screenwriter, Jan Sardi was a high- school teacher of Drama and English at Saint Joseph’s College, North Fitzroy.15 The culturally diverse composition of this school and the phenomenon of Italian families
"Giorgio Mangiamele," Cinema Papers 90, no. October (1992); R. Lampugnani, "Depicting the Italo-Australian Migrant Experience Down Under: Images of Estrangement in the Cinema of Giorgio Mangiamele," Studi 'italianistica nell'Africa Australe: Italian Studies in Southern Africa - Special Issue: Representing Italian Diasporas in Australia: New Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2005); Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema."; Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries."; Q. Turnour, "Giorgio," Senses of Cinema, no. 14 (2001). 14 M. Breen, "Moving Out: Scripting and Casting," Cinema Papers 43 (1983): p. 117. 15 J. Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies," Italian Historical Society Journal 11, no. 2 (2003): p. 35.
203 moving into the outer suburbs of Melbourne inspired Sardi’s first script, Moving Out16 – although Rando highlights the film’s many uncredited parallels to Giuseppe Abiuso’s novella, Diario di uno scolaro italo-australiano (1975).17 Many of Sardi’s students were cast in the film, including now well-known Australian actor Vince Colosimo in his acting debut.18 Sardi collaborated with director Michael Pattinson on two feature film projects, Moving Out and Street Hero (1984), featuring Italian Australian protagonists, supporting characters and leading actors. Street Hero is notable for the predominance of Italian Australian characters and its urban Melbourne setting marked by the various ethnicities of its residents, and is essentially a rite of passage teen flick, but Vinnie Romano’s (Vince Colosimo) ethnicity is not problematised or foregrounded, nor is it an essential part of his coming of age.19 It is notable, however, for its depiction of a newly multicultural Australia in turmoil; conflict occurs between characters of various ethnicities, but the film’s statement is more about class and unemployment than about cultural difference. In an interview regarding Street Hero, Pattinson and Sardi baulk at the suggestion that they are preoccupied with ethnicity, ethnic communities and assimilation, yet emphasise the importance of representations of cultural diversity in Australian film and television.20 Pattinson admits that his interest in multiculturalism developed only as a result of being involved in the making of Moving Out.21 Pattinson subsequently contradicts himself, characterising Moving Out as “a film about the assimilation of an Italo-Australian boy,” yet describes Gino as successfully negotiating his conflicting Italian and Australian cultures, which is more in line with integrationist or multicultural approaches than assimilation.22 While Tony Mitchell recognises Moving Out as “an important step forward from the assimilationist outlook of They’re a Weird Mob in portraying the bicultural dilemma of [a] young Italo-Australian of the
16 Ibid. 17 Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries." Rando’s brief reading of Moving Out is subsequently drawn in comparison to Abiuso’s novella. For the English version of this novella, see J. Abiuso, The Male Model and Other Stories (Adelaide: Dezsery Ethnic Publications, 1984). 18 Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies." Michael Pattinson, however, reports that the cast was selected from a variety of inner-city Melbourne schools. See Breen, "Moving Out: Scripting and Casting," p. 117. 19 D. Enker, "Michael Pattinson and Jan Sardi," Cinema Papers 48 (1984): p. 318. 20 Ibid.: pp. 317-18. 21 M. Breen, "Moving Out: Scripting and Casting," Ibid.43 (1983): p. 116. 22 D. Enker, "Michael Pattinson and Jan Sardi," Ibid.48 (1984): p. 318. Emphasis added.
204 1980s in sympathetic terms,”23 Neil Rattigan finds its representation of ethnicity to be negative: “It seems to be arguing for the recognition of the need for assimilation … and therefore to be implying that the multicultural policy of integration, in contradistinction to assimilation, can be personally and psychologically damaging.”24 Gino’s desire to assimilate is a response to the trauma of migration: Gino reacts to his sense of personal and cultural dislocation by vehemently embracing Anglo Australian popular culture (represented in the film by Australian Rules Football and video game parlours), and the English language. In the film’s resolution, however, Gino chooses to negotiate Italian and Australian cultures by accepting the responsibilities placed upon him by his Italian family because of their settlement in Australia. Conversely, as opposed to Rattigan, I argue that Moving Out depicts assimilation as a destructive force on the ethnic family unit and actually looks forward to multiculturalism as an opportunity for people like Gino and his cousins to more successfully and easily negotiate their Italian and Australian cultures to create Italian Australian identities. Gino’s cultural negotiation is played out in various ways through his interactions with his family, peers and his approach to language. Gino’s relationship with English and Italian language and cultures is ambivalent. He is often needed to act as an interpreter for his parents, and is both embarrassed and angry at his parents’ failure to assimilate linguistically.25 In one scene, Gino’s mother laments his reluctance to speak Italian, even at home, and Gino responds: “Dopo ott’anni, after eight years and all you can say is ‘Sorry, no speaka da English.’”26 In another scene, Gino is forced to translate for his father (Peter Sardi, who is Jan Sardi’s brother) at a parent-teacher interview. Initially, Gino takes advantage of this situation but soon feels guilty for duping his father.27 Here, Gino comes to recognise his bilingualism as a source of power over both his father and his teacher. The use of un-subtitled Italian throughout the film forces the viewer to follow conversations in Italian through Gino’s responses in English and, in conversations in
23 Mitchell, "Through Anglo Lenses," p. 22. 24 N. Rattigan, "Ethnicity and Identity in the New Australian Cinema," Metro 13 (1998): p. 23. 25 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema." 26 M. Pattinson, Moving Out, (Australia: Roadshow, 1983). 27 Pallotta-Chiarolli also writes about the unequal power relationships between her Anglo Celtic Australian Catholic schoolteachers and her migrant father in a parent-teacher meeting. Although she relates this more to her parents’ ambivalent attitude towards the Catholic Church, she also alludes to the cultural assumptions made about her Italian background, her father’s silence during the interview and his submissive body language. See Pallotta-Chiarolli, Tapestry, pp. 166-67.
205 which he is not involved, his reaction to them. It effectively communicates his sense of alienation from and shame of his Italian background, as well as allows for an accurate portrayal of Italian migrant communities in Australia, who often communicate in a mixture of Italian and English, including Italianised English words.28 Student-teacher relationships at Gino’s school are based upon this dynamic of cultural power. The students, who are mostly from Italian and other European backgrounds, maintain a relationship of cultural difference with their teachers that they use in acts of resistance and defiance. Only Gino’s art teacher, Miss Stanislaus (Sandy Gore), whose name implies an ethnic background, is portrayed with any sympathy, suggesting the possibility of more promising teaching practices and role models with the entrance of ethnic Australians into the education system.29 The students’ awareness and use of their cultural difference is opportunism rather than pride, although their posturing is certainly a precursor to the ‘wog phenomenon’, wherein southern European Australians reclaim the
28 Rattigan, "Ethnicity and Identity in the New Australian Cinema," p. 24; C. Tsiolkos, "Aleka Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Some Musings on Suburbia, Migration and Film," Cinema Papers 117 (1997): p. 45. Regarding Italian language use in Australia, see Kinder, "Italian in Australia 1940-1990."; Rando and Leoni, "The Italian Language in Australia: Sociolinguistic Aspects." Kinder argues that accompanying the history of Italian people in Australia is a history of the Italian language in Australia and its various shifts over the generations, relating these shifts to migrants’ necessary communications with English-speaking Australians as well as to relationships between the first and second generations of migrants. Kinder, and Rando and Leoni also document the use of a hybrid Italian Australian language, often called Australian Italian or Australitalian, wherein English words and Australian place names are adapted to an Italian phonetic pronunciation. R. A. Baggio also includes a list of Italian Australian words used in his Italian community at Werribee in his family biography. See Baggio, The Shoe in My Cheese, pp. 67-71. For a study of the impact of southern Europeans and the ‘wog phenomenon’ on colloquial English, see also Warren, "'Wogspeak': Transformations of Australian English." 29 For further discussions the impact of migration and multiculturalism on education practices, see C. Inglis, "Australia: Educational Changes and Challenges in Response to Multiculturalism, Globalisation and Transnationalism," in Migration, Education and Change, ed. Sigrid Luchtenberg (London: Routledge, 2004); M. Kalantzis and B. Cope, "Multiculturalism and Education Policy," in Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia, ed. Marie De Lepervanche and Gill Bottomley (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984); "Multicultural Education: Transforming the Mainstream," in Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education, ed. Stephen May (London: Falmer Press, 1999); J. I. Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947-1977 (Syndey: Allen & Unwin, 1978), pp. 84-145; G. Sherington, "Youth Policy & Ethnic Youth: A History," in Ethnic Minority Youth in Australia: Challenges & Myths, ed. Carmel Guerra and Rob White (Hobart: Clearinghouse for Youth Studies (NCYS), 1995), pp. 27-29. Although Tsolidis’ study focused upon the experiences of Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) girls, it does include a comparative study of a group of boys in its findings. See Tsolidis, Educating Voula.
206 slur ‘wog’ and use shared stereotypes as an ironic source of identification and pride.30 The wog phenomenon and the students’ behaviour are both means of undermining Anglo Australian authority, which the teachers in Moving Out represent. For the majority of the film, the term wog is used in its racist sense. It is only in one of the final school scenes, when Gino has his last meeting with his English teacher, Mr Aitkens (Brian James), that the phrase “Wogs rule” is written proudly and defiantly above the blackboard’s ever- present map of Australia. The juxtaposition of this phrase against the image of Australia precedes Gino’s successful development into an Italian Australian. Mr Aitkens’ attempt to teach his class Dorothea Mackellar’s poem, “My Country,” is also an attempt to impart upon his largely non-Anglo students a sense of Australian identity and culture. Mackellar’s imagery, however, is too far removed from their urban existences. The poem also becomes a symbolic site of struggle between Gino and Mr Aitkens. In one scene, Gino is made to read out the Mackellar poem in class. On the blackboard behind Mr Aitkens is a map of Australia, as yet not tampered with by the students. The English teacher is thus presented as standing for and in front of Australia as the cultural gatekeeper, while Gino stands in an unruly pit of ethnic teenage boys. By attempting to teach the poem to Gino and his classmates, Mr Aitkens is, in a sense, offering them the chance to become Australian. Mackellar’s poem is a symbol of Anglo Australia,31 a romantic description of the landscape that attempts to connect British settlers to their adopted environment. The poem’s imagery, however, is not something to which Gino and his classmates can relate.32 In scenes featuring Gino and his friends walking through what seems to be a “sweeping plain” – a grassy vacant lot –there are usually several rundown Victorian cottages in the background and a rusty shell of a car nearby. As migrants, Gino and his family are settlers too, but it is an entirely different landscape and environment to which they must connect.33
30 Interestingly, Vince Colosimo was involved in the early “Wogs Out of Work” and “Wogarama” productions of the late-1980s. He also appears as Nick Giannopolous’ ‘Italian stallion’ best friend in Aleksi Vellis’ The Wog Boy (2000). For more on the wog phenomenon, see Anatolitis, "Wogs and New Media."; Andreoni, "Olive or White?," pp. 89-91; Aquilia, "Wog Drama and 'White Multiculturalists'."; Bunney, "From Wogboy to Mallboy."; Megalogenis, Faultlines, pp. 7-12; Pellizzari, "A Woman, a Wog and a Westie."; Warren, "'Wogspeak': Transformations of Australian English." 31 Rattigan, "Ethnicity and Identity in the New Australian Cinema," p. 23. 32 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema." 33 Christos Tsiolkas commends the use of Melbourne’s inner-city (and particularly western) suburbs in his examination of representations of ethnicity in recent Australian film, seeing these areas as sites wherein
207 Gino’s urban experience of Australia, and its contrast to the imagery of Mackellar’s poem as representative of Anglo Australian settlement as the prevailing interpretation of settler experiences in Australia, is further highlighted in an exchange with Maria. Queried by Maria about what is taught about Australia in Australian schools, Gino rattles off a list of geographical facts as he sits at the kitchen table doing his geography homework; once again, a map of Australia is visible in Gino’s notebook. The geographical features of Australia Gino lists, such as several mountains and plains, correspond to those transformed into romantic verse by Mackellar: the “droughts and flooding rains” of Mackellar’s poem become “unreliable rainfall” in Gino’s geographical terms. His tone as he speaks, however, is ambivalent and it is clear that geography means as little to him as Anglo Australian poetry; it is still too far removed from his experience. Maria displays a more positive attitude towards Australia, and is more determined to make a life for herself in Australia. She is clearly disturbed by Gino’s attitude. In an attempt at conversation with Gino, however, Maria reveals that her knowledge of Australia, learnt while still in Italy, has also been limited to information about the creation of Anglo Australia. Her actual impressions of Australia are, like Gino’s experiences, limited to the modern, urban landscape rather than Mackellar’s sunburnt country. Gino’s attitudes to Australia and his Italian ethnicity and culture are contradictory and always shifting throughout the film. In criticising Australia, Gino does not embrace Italy, but settles uneasily between the two, lashing out at whichever culture chafes him at the time, often both. His cousins Maria and Pippo become integral in the negotiation of his Italianness and his Australianness; he sees in Maria what it would have been like to stay in Italy while Pippo reminds him of his own newly migrated self from years before. Maria in particular impels Gino to think more about his culture and identity with her persistent curiosity; she does not understand why he insists on trying to be so Australian, yet seems to hate Australia so much. “What’s so good about Australia?” Gino snarls.34 Rattigan asks the same question, observing: Moving Out (with other ethnic films) fails to provide any clear sense of what the desirability of being Australian might actually mean, or of being a full member
“multi-culturalism is embodied in the physical terrain,” yet suggests that the concentration of such film in these inner-city areas is often in danger of “avoid[ing] the reality of working communities scattered across the stretch of the urban sprawl.” See Tsiolkos, "Aleka Doesn't Live Here Anymore," pp. 30-32, 45. 34 Pattinson, Moving Out,
208 of Australian society (that is, if Australian society is seen to be singular rather than functionally multicultural), or of being a fully encultured Australian.35 Nicholls also observes that Anglo Australian culture in Moving Out is “at best, incomprehensible and, at worst, sterile, indolent, miscreant and without ambition.”36 Rosa Colosimo, who acted as an adviser for the film, also later reflects upon this defect in the film: “the Australian characters are all unsympathetic or racist, which is not entirely accurate.”37 This negative representation of Anglo Australian culture, while perhaps not accurate or fair, eases Gino’s process of development and ethnic identity formation. As Gino has no choice regarding his family’s relocation, his gradual disillusionment with his gang of unambitious Anglo Australian friends and his experience of the Anglo Australian education system as sterile and ineffective – it is suggested in his conversation with Miss Stanislaus, for example, that his school in the outer suburbs will be better – allows Gino to more easily accept his family’s move to Doncaster and, encouraged by Miss Stanislaus, to see it as an opportunity to start afresh. Having resisted the move for so long, just as his resentment and alienation signals his protest against his family’s migration to Australia eight years earlier, Gino’s acceptance is both a negotiation of his relationship with his parents and a symbol of his cultural negotiations between Italian and Australian cultures. As he leaves, Gino gives his beloved Collingwood football scarf to Pippo. Rather than signalling a denial or sacrifice of Australian culture in his move to a predominantly Italian suburb, Gino’s sudden act of kindness towards Pippo signals Gino’s growth into a suitable Italian Australian role model for the young boy: Gino helps Pippo to learn about Australian culture but, by accepting his family’s move, reminds Pippo of his responsibility to family and community. A new generation is installed in the Fitzroy house, but the film’s end suggests they will not have to face the same problems that Gino did because he is breaking the way before them. Moving Out was critically acclaimed and the novelisation of the film was used as a text in some schools.38 Moreover, despite Rosa Colosimo’s retrospective reservations about the film, Mitchell recognises it as an important step towards the sympathetic
35 Rattigan, "Ethnicity and Identity in the New Australian Cinema," p. 24. 36 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema." 37 Quoted in Mitchell, "Through Anglo Lenses," p. 22. 38 Ibid. For this novelisation, see H. Garner and J. Giles, Moving Out (Melbourne: Nelson, 1983).
209 portrayal of Italian Australian experiences in Australian film.39 Christos Tsiolkas provides another positive reading of the film, claiming that “Moving Out represents a working-class milieu that is instantly identifiable to anyone growing up in Melbourne in the 1970s and ’80s.”40 Rando, on the other hand, states: “The producers of Moving Out have glossed over the ugly features of immigrant working-class existence, possibly in part to appeal to the mass consumption, largely Anglo-Australian, market which would find more palatable a story of relative immigrant success in the lucky country.”41 Ultimately, however, Moving Out emphasises migration and suburban relocation as socio-economic melodrama,42 but it also portrays the successful formation of Gino’s Italian Australian identity as part of the personal experience within this context. While successful, Moving Out is essentially an educational text that depicts problems faced by migrants in Australia, proposes a narrative solution, but does not closely examine or problematise the issues. Although it recognises migrant and second generation experiences, it also highlights these experiences not so much as problematic, but simply as problems.
Italian Australian women on the verge: Fistful of Flies (1996) Monica Pellizzari’s Fistful of Flies moves away from this melodramatic approach to representing Italian Australian experiences. While Pellizzari, whose parents arrived in Australia from northern Italy in the late 1950s, uses film to “address [her] reality as a bi- cultural Australian,”43 she also explicitly addresses the representation and misrepresentation of Italians in film and television: I grew up addicted to TV and yet never saw anybody that looked like my immediate family on screen. In the rare moments they were represented, they were misrepresented. I wanted to tell stories from my roots to represent people who had migrated as three-dimensional characters, not just mafiosi or greengrocers with heavy accents and greasy hair.44 Gender issues, specifically the representation of women and the exploration of female sexuality, and the heterogeneity of Italian culture are further thematic preoccupations in
39 Mitchell, "Through Anglo Lenses," p. 22. 40 Tsiolkos, "Aleka Doesn't Live Here Anymore," p. 32. 41 Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries." 42 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema." 43 M. Colbert, "Bi-Cultural Visions: The Films of Monica Pellizzari," Cinema Papers 117 (1997): p. 23. 44 Ibid.
210 Pellizzari’s work. Pellizzari’s feature film debut, Fistful of Flies, is a lengthy exploration of the issues of female sexuality and oppressive Italian patriarchy touched upon in her earlier work.45 In writing the script, Pellizzari engaged in extensive research and amalgamated her own experiences with those of other Italian Australian women.46 Pellizzari’s contribution to the collection Growing Up Italian in Australia: eleven young Australian women talk about their childhood (1993) reveals the autobiographical aspects of some of her films, such as looking up the term ‘wog’ in the dictionary (Rabbit on the Moon) and sitting in the aviary with her father’s birds, pretending to meditate (Fistful of Flies).47 The film, however, is a visual and aesthetic departure from Gino Condello’s coming of age in Moving Out, accentuating hyper- realism and surrealism.48 Pellizzari was trained at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and Il Centro Sperimentale Di Cinemografia in Italy, where she worked with Fellini and Wertmuller, and observed Bertolucci and others at work.49 The effect of her combined Australian and Italian film training is a hybridised or, as Pellizzari describes herself, bi-cultural visual aesthetic and thematic approach similar to the neo-realism of Mangiamele.50 Pellizzari began to come to the fore of Italian Australian cinema in the late 1980s with several short films, such as her first short films Velo nero (1987), Rabbit on the Moon (1987) and No no nonno (1989), all of which directly addressed issues of migration, cultural difference and intergenerational conflict through the specific lens of Italian
45 Pellizzari’s short films prior to Fistful of Flies, since which she has not released any new work, are marked by her feminist approach to themes of cultural dislocation, particularly her last two short films, Just Desserts and Best Wishes. Just Desserts juxtaposes a young woman’s sexual maturation against scenes of food preparation to comment on domesticity and tradition. As with Fistful of Flies, the mother enforces patriarchal restrictions on female sexuality, against which her daughter struggles. In Rabbit on the Moon, the mother is also shown as the primary figure against whom the daughter must struggle in the Italian Australian home, not the father. Regarding Best Wishes, Colbert argues that its depiction of the sexual abuse of a young girl by a family friend “shatters some of the most sacrosanct values of Catholic Italo-Australian culture.” Not in the least of these values are the emphasis placed upon female virtue and the role of the male as protector. See R. Capp, "Looking Awry: The Cinema of Monica Pellizzari," in Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia, ed. Lisa French (Melbourne: Damned Publishing, 2003); Colbert, "Bi-Cultural Visions," p. 24; Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries." 46 Capp, "Looking Awry," p. 247. 47 Pellizzari, "A Woman, a Wog and a Westie," pp. 135-36, 42. 48 Colbert, "Bi-Cultural Visions," p. 25. 49 Capp, "Looking Awry," p. 241. 50 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema."
211 Australianness, making Pellizzari the most prolific and arguably the most important contemporary Italian Australian filmmaker. Her second short, Rabbit on the Moon, won an AFI award for Best Director of a non-feature film and was nominated in the short film category of the Academy Awards. Another short, Just Desserts (1993), won the Leoncino d’Argento for Best Short Film at the 50th Venice International Film Festival. With her next film, Best Wishes, Pellizzari became the first Australian filmmaker ever to be invited to screen her short films at Venice in successive years.51 Set in a fictional rural town, Pellizzari’s feature film debut, Fistful of Flies, centres upon Maria ‘Mars’ Lupi (Tasma Walton) as she struggles against her father’s violent and oppressive patriarchy. Often seeking refuge in the company of her estranged maternal grandmother, Mars is consistently punished for her defiant exploration of her sexuality and resists her parents’ solution to this, which is to arrange for her a suitable marriage partner. Her prospective suitor’s sympathy with her plight, however, gains him a place in her affections and her sexual fantasies. In the final climactic scenes, Mars’ failed attempt at suicide forces her mother to publicly face the reality of her husband’s violence and infidelity, which has destroyed their marriage and her relationship with her own mother. Pellizzari herself describes Fistful of Flies as a “coming of age of three generations of women.”52 While Mars’ sexual awakening and personal development is at the forefront of the narrative, she also acts as a catalyst in bringing about the belated development of her mother, Grace (Dina Panozzo), and her grandmother (Anna Volska).53 By witnessing Mars’ sexual awakening, Grace becomes aware of her own sexuality, causing her to question both her husband Joe’s (John Lucantonio) neglect of her sexual needs and his violence against herself and their daughter. Joe’s violence against Mars also reminds Nonna of her own abusive marriage and of her abandonment of Mars and Grace to the same fate. When the three women are finally reunited at the conclusion of the film, it is because each of them has undergone the same process of development: they have liberated themselves from violence, the memory of violence, sexual repression and oppressive patriarchy. This triple development of the film’s three main female characters and the accompanying theme of repetition throughout the generations recall the prevailing theme of narratives belonging to the second stage in the development of Italian Australian written narratives. Pellizzari states: “I wanted to set up a notion that violence is carried on through
51 Capp, "Looking Awry," p. 251. 52 Ibid., p. 247. 53 Colbert, "Bi-Cultural Visions," p. 24.
212 the generations, but that maybe there is hope for the next generation brought about by the act of rage of Mars.”54 By halting the vicious cycle of violence into which she, Grace and Nonna are trapped, Mars enables each of them to develop. In terms of the development of the characters’ Italian cultural identity, however, Colbert suggests that Nonna, Grace and Mars represent the decline of Italian ethnic identity and culture in Australia: “Grandma is rooted in the traditional Italian culture; Grace, Mars’ mother…straddles both cultures; while Mars [is] an Australian girl growing up.”55 Colbert’s reading is integrationist, if not assimilationist, as it suggests that Nonna and Grace’s entrapment within the cycle of violence is directly linked to their Italian and Italian Australian cultural positions, whilst it is Mars’ Australianness that allows her to break free of this cycle; Italian and Italian Australian traditions and identities are represented as outmoded, limited, ignorant and hypocritical, and become associated with patriarchal violence and oppression. The apparent ‘backwardness’ of Italian Australians is further depicted in the interactions between Grace and the local general practitioner, Dr Powers (Rachael Maza), who is asked to examine Mars and explain her obsession with masturbation and sex. Grace is shocked not only by the discovery that Dr Powers is female and black but also in her revelation that Mars’ sexual behaviour is normal for teenage girls. In their second consultation, Grace demands medical proof of Mars’ virginity but Dr Powers again confounds Italian sexual morality with ‘Australian’ medical knowledge.56 The film’s title also signals this ambivalent tension between Italian tradition, culture, morality and Australianness. In the opening scene Grace admonishes a young and apparently distressed Mars for watching two dogs mating, pulling a Hessian sack over her head to block the view by which Mars is transfixed, warning her: “The way you’re going, my child, you’ll end up with a fistful of flies, a fistful of nothing!”57 This scene foreshadows both Mars’ preoccupation with sexuality throughout the remainder of the film and the constant parental disapproval of her interests, activities and ambitions. Most importantly it suggests that Mars’ departure from traditional Italian Catholic morality and
54 Ibid.: p. 25. 55 Ibid. 56 For studies of Italian Australian attitudes towards female sexuality, see Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife."; Pallotta-Chiarolli, "Beyond the Myth of the 'Good Italian Girl'."; "From Coercion to Choice."; Vasta, "Gender, Class and Ethnic Relations."; "Italian Migrant Women." 57 M. Pellizzari, Fistful of Flies, (Australia: 1996). See also Colbert, "Bi-Cultural Visions," p. 24.
213 culture will lead her nowhere.58 Ultimately, however, the film reverses this image: Nonna, Grace and Mars are shown to be the flies trapped in the oppressive fist of Italian Australian patriarchal traditions. The assimilationist and integrationist undertones of Colbert’s reading are challenged by these tensions between matriarchal and patriarchal power. Rather than a rejection of Italian Australian culture and identity, the return of Nonna into the Lupi household signals a revision and return of these. Nonna’s return upsets the patriarchal hierarchy presumed to be traditional to Italian culture, but it also signals a return to a different and lesser known Italian tradition of matrifocal households established in the absence of the father.59 The cultural and ethnic significance of Nonna’s return is signified in Grace’s culturally specific introduction of Nonna to Mars’ younger brother, Johnny, as his nonna and not simply his grandmother. Felicity Collins reads Fistful of Flies as part of a trend of “grotesque comedy” in contemporary Australian women’s filmmaking which, she argues, “end in wish-fulfilment, avoiding surrender to a new paternal order.”60 In the film’s final mise en scene, Mars stands on a chair as Grace and Nonna pin her dress for alteration, and Johnny pauses at the doorway. That Johnny is welcomed by the matriarchal trinity and moves to join them – in stark opposition to Joe’s marked exclusion – indicates “hope for a different future for Italian-Australian masculinity.”61 Mars and Johnny, as part of the third generation, are positioned to create new ways of being Italian Australian, and female and male. Rose Capp argues that while Pellizzari bases her films within the specificities of Italian Australian experiences of migration, she effectively communicates the universality of their central themes of cultural identity, racism, generational conflict and
58 The hypocrisies of Italian Australian Catholicism are also addressed in Pellizzari’s short film, Best Wishes. See Colbert, "Bi-Cultural Visions," p. 24. For an examination of the relationship between religion and Italian Australian identities, see A. M. Barbaro, "What's Religion Got to Do with It? The Emergent Italian Australian Identity," in In Search of the Italian Australian into the New Millennium, Conference Proceedings: Melbourne, 24th, 25th, 26th May 2000, ed. Piero Genovesi, et al. (Thornbury: Gro-Set, 2000). Pallotta-Chiarolli also interrogates the impact of religion on second generation women’s identities, and the formation of their social and moral codes. See Pallotta-Chiarolli, "From Coercion to Choice," pp. 40-42. 59 For an examination of patriarchal and matriarchal family structures in Italian culture, see Gucciardo and Romanin, "Someone's Mother, Someone's Wife," pp. 6-7. 60 F. Collins, "Brazen Brides, Grotesque Daughters, Treacherous Mothers: Women's Funny Business in Australian Cinema from Sweetie to Holy Smoke," in Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia, ed. Lisa French (Melbourne: Damned Publishing, 2002), p. 177. 61 Ibid.
214 feminism: “Pellizzari’s films offer a pungent commentary on the history of multicultural Australia from the perspective of characters who are arguably doubly disenfranchised – marginalised by virtue of age and/or gender, in addition to cultural difference.”62 Rather than being simply about Italian Australians, as is the case of Moving Out, Pellizzari’s films suggest a culturally hybrid, Italian Australian mode of filmmaking. As a black or, as Collins designates it, ‘grotesque’ comedy, Fistful of Flies challenges images and representations of Italian Australians but also challenges the way in which Italian Australian narratives are filmed and viewed.
Teenager of the year: Looking for Alibrandi (1999) Nicholls describes Looking for Alibrandi as “a more optimistic version of Fistful of Flies and Moving Out.”63 Indeed the storyline, which does not vary from Marchetta’s novel of the same name examined in Chapter 4, unites the cultural conflict foregrounded in Moving Out with the triple, intergenerational development motif found in Fistful of Flies. One might argue, of course, that this originates with Looking for Alibrandi, as the novel was published before Pellizzari’s film was fully developed and released. In contrast to both these films, Woods and Marchetta present a less edgy, more commercially viable depiction of ethnicity that flirts, to its advantage, with the teen film genre without fully adhering to those generic limitations. This film adaptation of Marchetta’s novel was released in 2000, with Marchetta herself adapting her novel into a screenplay. The film proved to be a great success with audiences, evading the common danger of creating a mediocre or unfaithful adaptation of a novel that would disappoint its existing fans.64 In terms of thematic content, there is little to expand upon the analysis of the novel provided in Chapter 4. Rather, it is the approach to this thematic content, played out through casting and production, and significantly affected by the time lag between the novel (1992) and film (produced in 1999, but released in cinemas in 2000), that alters. Most importantly, Looking for Alibrandi as a film signals the
62 R. Capp, "Looking Awry: The Cinema of Monica Pellizzari," Ibid. (2003), p. 240. 63 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema." 64 Aside from its box office success, one reviewer notes the audience’s response at their screening of Looking for Alibrandi: “Producing a film such as this is fraught with danger as it aims directly at teenagers, many of whom have read and loved the book. Judging by the tears rolling down the faces and knowing smiles of the teens in the audience at this screening, Woods and Marchetta have satisfied a most critical audience.” See L. Gough, Review of Looking for Alibrandi [Website] (2000 [cited 3 November 2005]); available from http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?Article_ID=3344.
215 entrance of Italian Australianness into the mainstream imagination as an acceptable face of ethnicity. In the majority of these Italian Australian film narratives there is a high involvement of actors of Italian heritage. In Looking for Alibrandi, Josie (Pia Miranda),65 Christina (Greta Scacchi) and Michael (Anthony LaPaglia) are all Italian Australian actors while Katia is played by an Italian actress, Elena Cotta; LaPaglia and Scacchi in particular are renowned internationally. There are conflicting arguments as to whether such casting adds ‘authenticity’ to the narrative or contributes to the pigeonholing of actors according to their apparent ethnicity.66 Both Scacchi and Miranda, however, admit that they were drawn to the script for Looking for Alibrandi because it struck a chord with their own personal experiences as Italian Australians.67 In further ‘authentic’ casting, the opening and closing Tomato Day scenes feature Marchetta’s own relatives in the role of Josie’s extended family. Felicity Collins and Therese Davis argue that this, together with the use of hundreds of secondary school students and the choice of locations, adds to the director’s desired effect of an “authentic urban” visual quality.68 Nonna Katia’s house, for example, was a double- fronted house in Sydney’s suburb of Fivedock (a suburb into which a large number of Italians settled) that was actually renovated by Sicilian migrants.69 While the film utilises voice-over narration that evokes Josie’s first-person narration in the novel, the film effectively reflects Josie’s negotiation of her Italian and Australian cultures visually, through cinematography and production design, and aurally, through the musical soundtrack. The production design deliberately emphasises Josie’s sense of difference between her Italian and Australian worlds: The whole of Josie’s family life revolves around red and different kinds of red. So Nonna’s became a type of magnolia shade on the red scale. Throughout Christina’s house there were lots of pinks and reds, and Josie’s bedroom – there was a lot of red in that room. I suppose the other side of it is, having established the warmth of Josie’s family life, the opposite of that was the
65 On an aside, the line where Josie expresses disbelief at her paternal grandmother’s name, Pia Maria, and relief that she was not named after her was not used in the film. See Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 96. 66 Bertone, Keating, and Mullaly, "The Taxidriver, the Cook and the Greengrocer." 67 Production notes (dvd), K. Woods, Looking for Alibrandi, (Australia: Roadshow, 1999). 68 F. Collins and T. Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 154-55. 69 A. L. Urban, Looking for Alibrandi (1999 [cited 3 November 2005]); available from http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a+3529&s=Feature.
216 school world. As soon as we went out to St Martha’s, Kate and I lived it, and all the cold colours were already there. The halls were all carpeted in different shades of blue/green, the stark ivory coloured walls, the very dark wood – I worked around those. The same with [costume designer] Michael Wilkinson – that’s what motivated the teal blue school uniforms. So we could feel a very definite shift from the cool privilege of the Eastern suburbs and the warmth of the Western suburbs.70 Both the cinematographer and music supervisor deliberately drew upon Italian influences and flavours of the 1950s to further enhance Josie’s Italian culture and the audience’s sense of her origins: The script seemed to need three things – irony, Italian flavours and emotional punch, and that to me seemed to be evoked in Nino Rota’s compositions. The added bonus in drawing from the music of Italy in the ‘50s was that it matches Josie’s ironic take on things in the present … it links those two worlds in a comic and emotional way.71 An early reference point for the film’s visual style is the work of the legendary film-maker Federico Fellini. … The Tomato Day scenes exemplify that Italian style of film-making, neo-realist too, in that you think parts of it are semidocumentary but at the same time deliberate and controlled, with the long shots that move from one group to … another.72 Louise Hynes observes that the Tomato Day scenes function to bookend the film, allowing group tensions and relationships to be made visible.73 Most importantly, these scenes allow the viewer to chart Josie’s development from a disgruntled teenager suffering from a cultural cringe to an active young adult member of her Italian Australian community. The repeated use of the 1950s song “Tintarella di luna” reinforces this change. At the beginning of the film Josie changes the stereo from this song as originally sung by Gina Zoia, which is a favourite amongst her relatives, to Australian rock music. At the end, however, Josie happily joins Nonna Katia and her relatives in their dancing to this same song, encouraging her boyfriend Jacob (Kick Gurry) to do likewise. Josie’s successful negotiation of Italian
70 L. Tudball, P. White, and D. White, Looking for Alibrandi: Study Guide (Melbourne: Australian Teachers of Media, 1999). 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., pp. 13-14. 73 Hynes, "Looking for Identity," pp. 31-32.
217 and Australian cultures is further signified in the rock rendition of “Tintarella di luna” by the Australian band Happyland over the closing credits as Josie smiles into the camera at the audience. Enhanced by assumed audience knowledge that Happyland comprised an Anglo Australian woman and Vietnamese Australian man – both of whom belong to other, iconic Australian bands74 – Happyland’s version of “Tintarella di luna” becomes an Australian multicultural signifier in its marriage of Italian kitsch, Australian rock music and the culturally diverse backgrounds of its musicians. Looking for Alibrandi is the most commercially successful Italian Australian film to date, grossing $8.3 million in the Australian box office.75 Various reasons contribute to this success, such as the existing popularity of the novel, a mainstream marketing campaign that focused on Pia Miranda and Kick Gurry and emphasised their teen sex and romance appeal, and another campaign aimed at school teachers, incorporating a study guide.76 In his summary of Australian cinema in 2000, Andrew Bunney observes: We can certainly say unequivocally that by the end of the year 2000, Nick Giannopolous’ mission to claim the word ‘wog’ for his people had been accomplished. Like Vince Colossimo’s [sic] character in Chopper, ‘Euro-wogs’ are now mainstream Australian. Two of the hit films, The Wogboy and the school-prescribed, book-based, Looking for Alibrandi, made previous waves of immigrants the well-represented darlings of our cinema. My Mother Frank was a little over-cautious in not allowing its ‘ethnics’ into the story after populating the university to look like the United Nations, leaving Giannopolous paradoxically, as the only one openly clinging to the old racist ideas. Embarrassingly, his stereotyped yet lovable ‘new Australians’ were intellectually slow, emotionally immature, gullible and aggressive. He also played his own hairy-faced mother and revealed his ‘disabled’ friend to be a compo fraud. All that without suggesting any positive value of migration to this country. On the other hand, the real ‘wogs’ now, Asians, ‘illegals’, Aborigines, women, were all-but omitted from the year’s screen stories.77
74 Happyland was a collaboration between Janet English, the bass guitarist and singer from Spiderbait which also features on the film’s soundtrack, and Quan Yeomans, the guitarist and singer from Regurgitator. Both Spiderbait and Regurgitator are well-known, successful and highly influential Australian rock bands. 75 Bunney, "From Wogboy to Mallboy." 76 J. Pearlman, "To Market to Market: Looking for Alibrandi," Cinema Papers (2000): p. 35. 77 Bunney, "From Wogboy to Mallboy."
218 The majority of Bunney’s criticism is reserved for Giannopolous’ comedy, and he later commends the performances of the actors playing the three Alibrandi women and notes that it was the only film of that year to feature a woman in a leading role. Bunney’s overall meaning, however, is clear: European minorities are no longer ‘real’ minorities, especially if this can be measured by box office success.78 It is indeed an important issue that the groups mentioned by Bunney do not receive adequate representation in film, but the successes of both The Wogboy and Looking for Alibrandi do serve to demonstrate the shifts experienced by Italian and Greek Australian ethnic groups over the past fifty years. Collins and Davis commend Looking for Alibrandi because its “foregrounding of questions of personal history and shame resonates with a wider post-Mabo politics of shame.”79 They also state that Looking for Alibrandi “is also very much a film of its time.”80 Once again, the soundtrack supports this through its use of Lo-tel’s song, “Teenager of the Year.” This song and the timing of the film’s release suggest Josie Alibrandi as a suitable representative for a multicultural Australia moving into the new millennium. In viewing Looking for Alibrandi as an iconic Australian coming of age film and in viewing Australian cinema as reflective of national development – although Collins and Davis argue that Looking for Alibrandi “is not a mirror reflection of the nation’s coming of age but of the traumas preventing maturity”81 – this film celebrates a commercially viable form of multiculturalism through presenting Italian Australian ethnicity as a familiar and acceptable face of this Australian multiculturalism. To recall Hage’s concept of white multiculturalism, Looking for Alibrandi (as a film) represents a European Australian mainstream culture, as opposed to the hybridisation of migrant culture and European Australian culture to create a multicultural mainstream.82 This problematic concept of European, or European Australian culture is also addressed by Gunew, who argues that the concept of “Europe” signifies modernity and civilisation exemplified by those of Anglo
78 Ibid. 79 Collins and Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo, p. 157. Collins and Davis recognise the Mabo decision as “a rupture in the continuity of Australian history that informs our understanding of Australian cinema after Mabo.” Furthermore, they “use concepts of shock, recognition and trauma to define a post-Mabo social imaginary grounded in memory.” See ibid., p. 9. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., p. 158. 82 Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism, p. 59. For a further examination of the shifting relationships between ‘dominant’ cultures and ‘ethnic minorities’, see E. P. Kaufmann, ed., Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (London: Routledge, 2004).
219 Celtic descent.83 Looking for Alibrandi, I argue, marks a different kind of coming of age for Italian Australianness in that the film represents the coming of age of Italian Australianness into the mainstream imaginary. Nicholls inadvertently reinforces this reading in his argument that ethnicity is not an all-pervasive part of Josie’s coming of age, and in his description of the film as “a collaboration between the [Italian Australian and Anglo Australian mainstream cultures] for commercial and cultural ends.”84 While Collins and Davis also argue that the film “manages to sidestep the problematic binary structure of good Ethnic/bad Anglo,”85 Looking for Alibrandi presents Australian society as neatly divided into white Australians and white European ethnic others. The exclusion of other migrant groups is reflected visually in the film: all of the characters and the vast majority of students and extras are white. Marchetta’s two novels, Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca, chart a shift from the problematic binary described by Collins and Davis above towards an idealistic depiction of lived diversity that has broken down the power dynamic between ethnic Australians and Anglo Australians. While the film version of Looking for Alibrandi is often praised for its realistic depiction of Australian multicultural society,86 it actually maintains the problematic “good Ethnic/bad Anglo” binary structure through its production design, explored above, and through its lack of further visual and narrative cues. For example, Josie’s friend Anna is described in the novel as “your typical Slavic-looking girl,”87 while in the film she is simply lumped into the category of “ethnic” girls whose fathers work very hard to send them to good schools. While Nicholls’ argues that Serafina’s dyed blonde hair “strikes out against fixed notions of ethnicity,”88 I argue that Anna’s natural blondeness still acts to signify her ethnicity as Eastern European, and not Italian like Sera, who is a stereotypically ‘woggy’ Italian, or Josie, who wears a complex and shifting understanding of ethnicity and multiculturalism on
83 Gunew, Haunted Nations, p. 34. 84 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema." 85 Collins and Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo, p. 157. 86 See, for example, Ibid; Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian- Australian Cinema."; G. Simmons, "From the Bush to the Mall," Australian Screen Education, no. 28: p. 78. 87 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 18. 88 Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema."
220 her sleeve.89 Anna’s presence and unstated ethnicity highlights the invisibility of European ethnicities that is taken as multiculturalism in this film. With audiences already familiar with Josie and her story through the wide success of the novel, the film version of Looking for Alibrandi merely updates the narrative into a multicultural coming of age narrative suitable for Australia as it approaches a new century. Its approach to issues of identity formation in contemporary Australia is safe, familiar and marketable. With this film, Italian Australian ethnicities become a safe means of discussing migration and multiculturalism, drawing upon the notion that Italians are an ethnic group that have achieved great commercial and cultural success in Australia.
A cultural affair to remember: Love’s Brother (2003) While not as successful as Looking for Alibrandi, Love’s Brother also signals the mainstream marketability of Italian Australian identities and narratives and, most importantly, reinforces yet again the idea of Italian Australianness as the acceptable face of migration and ethnicity. Where Looking for Alibrandi takes an unsentimental view of the past as problematic,90 Love’s Brother is heavily nostalgic and sentimental, viewing the past as a time of innocence and new beginnings. Love’s Brother, I argue, creates a nostalgic myth of origins for Italian Australian culture, communities and identities that elides the more problematic experiences of Italians in Australia, largely due to its guise as a gentle romantic comedy. Although writer-director Sardi, who also wrote Moving Out and Street Hero, achieved his aims to create a magical and light-hearted romantic comedy,91 the result significantly impacts upon the representation of Italians in Australia, and particularly the experiences of proxy brides. Set in rural Victoria during the 1950s, Love’s Brother tells the story of two brothers, Angelo and Gino Donnini (Giovanni Ribisi and Adam Garcia), who have migrated to Australia under the sponsorship of their uncle and aunt, and Angelo’s quest for a bride from Italy via proxy marriage. After having no luck in securing a bride, the reserved Angelo resorts to sending a photograph of his charismatic and good-looking younger brother to the beautiful but poor Rosetta (Amelia Warner). Rosetta accepts the
89 Baldassar describes the stereotypical ‘wog’ look in her study of Italian Australian youth in Perth, but this description is dated to the late 1980s and early 1990s. See Baldassar, "Italo-Australian Youth in Perth," p. 218. 90 Collins and Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo, p. 157. 91 Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies," p. 36.
221 marriage proposal but, in order to deal with the separation from family and homeland, she creates a fictional romance between herself and the man in the photograph whom she believes to be Angelo; that is, that he was her lover who left after the war to seek fortune and opportunity for their future happiness together. Upon arriving in Australia, however, Rosetta discovers Angelo’s deceit and must decide whether to return home to Italy, to remain married to Angelo or to pursue her imaginary love for Gino. Gino at first eludes Rosetta’s charms and throws himself with desperate enthusiasm into his existing relationship with Connie (Sylvia de Santis), the Australian-born daughter of Italian migrants. Angelo and Connie, however, realise that Rosetta and Gino have fallen in love and aim to bring them together, resulting also in their finding love in one another. Love’s Brother is clearly a romantic comedy of errors but its greater role in depicting the Italian Australian past is best understood through the concept of the “nostalgic memory film.”92 Pam Cook argues that the nostalgic memory film “reconstructs an idealised past as a site of pleasurable contemplation and yearning.”93 This type of film is not about educating its audience about the past but addresses that audience’s relationship to the past, highlighting the connections between past and present and eliciting an emotional response.94 Nostalgia foregrounds elements of fantasy and disavowal that are excluded, Cook argues, from conventional historical analysis and representations, and presents a different way of knowing, remembering and experiencing the past, thus making nostalgia a more interesting and challenging concept than it is usually considered: “Rather than being seen as a reactionary, regressive condition imbued with sentimentality, it can be perceived as a way of coming to terms with the past, as enabling it to be exorcised in order that society, and individuals, can move on.”95 Collins and Davis view Australian cinema as “a public sphere for reprising or going back over established themes of national history, as a site for the politics of recognition, and as a traumatised space of public memory.”96 Australian cinema, they argue, often uses the past to refer to the present, echoing the predominant theme of the second stage of Italian Australian narratives explored in this thesis. Viewed in light of Cook’s concept of the nostalgic memory film and the relationship between the past and the
92 P. Cook, Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 5. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 95 Ibid., p. 4. For an in-depth discussion of the concept of ‘nostalgia’ and the debates that have surrounded it, see Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, pp. 21-37. 96 Collins and Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo, pp. 9-10.
222 present in Australian film highlighted by Collins and Davis, Love’s Brother thus becomes less about portraying the lives of Italian migrants settling in 1950s rural Victoria with historical accuracy, and more about the relationship of Australians and Italian Australians to their migrant past.97 In other words, Love’s Brother, for both its nostalgia for a lost, irretrievable and above all, imagined past and its deliberate representation of the happy beginnings of a successfully settled (white) migrant group, becomes a film about how we wish to remember the past. Most importantly, it is a symbolic representation of the beginnings of Italian Australian communities and identities.98 As Gunew asks in her study of nostalgia in migrant writing: “isn’t [nostalgia] precisely this, a desire for beginnings, for lost origins?”99 Central to this argument are questions of who is remembering, what this film reveals about Australia’s relationship with its migrant past (and through this, its migrant present) and why the past portrayed in this film is desirable. On the one hand, the Italian Australian writer, director and subject matter indicate that this is a film about Italian Australian nostalgia and place making but, on the other hand, Love’s Brother can be seen also as an Anglo Australian nostalgic memory film, wherein migration to Australia can be remembered as white and ultimately successful (in terms of financial success and cultural acceptance).100 Here, however, I concentrate upon this film as an Italian Australian nostalgic memory film that imagines the symbolic beginnings of Italian Australian community and identity. The Hepburn-Daylesford region in which Love’s Brother was filmed was home to a large Swiss-Italian migrant population, which first settled there during the gold rush.101
97 Mieke Bal, in a more general discussion of the role of nostalgia and memory, emphasises nostalgia as an expression of the relationship between the past and the present: “Nostalgia … is only a structure of relation to the past, not false or inauthentic in essence.” See M. Bal, "Introduction," in Acts of Memory : Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999), p. xi. 98 Janelle L. Wilson sees an explicit connection between individuals’ nostalgia and their desire to recreate a sense of community. See Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, pp. 85-87. 99 S. Gunew, "Home and Away: Nostalgia in Australian (Migrant) Writing," in Island in the Stream: Myths of Place in Australian Culture, ed. Paul Foss (Leichhardt: Pluto Press, 1988), p. 35. 100 Wilson, in her study of individuals’ memories of the 1950s in America, found that the degree and type of nostalgia expressed by her participants was shaped by their racial and ethnic identities: the majority of her white participants remembered the 1950s as a time of racial harmony, while her African American participants recalled experiences of exclusion, segregation and racism. See Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, pp. 68- 73. 101 Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, p. 34-35; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp. 72-73.
223 With the exceptions of Connie, whose family is indicated as being from Friuli, the regional origins of most of the characters remains unclear, although it is implied that the Donnini family and Rosetta are from the south. The narrative itself is not necessarily set in the Daylesford region per se, nor is it aiming necessarily to represent the Italian population that lived there. Rather, the town’s history, and the marks left on its landscape, enable it to be used to recreate a nameless rural town in the 1950s that represents all Italian Australian communities and yet none. Daylesford’s historic Lucini Macaroni factory serves as Luigi and Norma Donnini’s (Joe Petruzzi and Dina Panozzo) café, Il Café Latino, which is the centre of the fictional town’s Italian community.102 Through both its own history and its incarnation as a café in the film, the building references the length of Italian presence in Australia, the impact of this presence on Australian culture (especially food culture), the importance of Italian Australian community and the growth of Little Italies. While Pascoe argues that the urban settlements of Carlton, Leichhardt, North Perth and Fremantle were “the crucible of the Italo-Australian identity, in a far more confident way than had been true in the relatively circumscribed world of the rural settlements,”103 the town in Love’s Brother, when seen as a symbol of Italian Australian community as an abstract concept, unites rural and urban settlements through an historical pastiche enabled by the nostalgic memory film. In other words, the narrative is set in a nameless rural town so that it is not attached to the specific histories of Melbourne or Sydney’s Little Italies, enabling it to symbolise these locations and communities’ collective histories.104 The idea of this town as a symbolic rather than real location is further enhanced by the arrival of Australia’s first espresso machine into this rural setting and the ever-changing mural on the café wall, upon which the townspeople’s own feelings of nostalgia are played out. Australia’s first espresso machine was actually installed at University Cafe in Carlton in 1954.105 Because of the film’s rural setting, Sardi cannot present this event with any pretence to historical accuracy. What Sardi draws upon in his film is not so much the historical event itself, but the meaning of this event to Australian
102 Luigi and Norma Donnini were the names of Sardi’s own maternal grandparents who ran a grocery and bakery on Lygon Street, now Donnini’s Café. On the one hand, Sardi is merely paying homage to his grandparents; on the other, he is inserting his family as an important part of the Italian Australian past. See Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies," p. 36. 103 Pascoe, "Place and Community," pp. 90-91. 104 Interestingly, this can be contrasted to the highly located use of space in Looking for Alibrandi. 105 C. Sagazio, "The Italians," in Carlton: A History, ed. Peter Yule (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004), p. 87.
224 food culture and to Italian Australian communities. When the espresso machine is first installed in Il Café Latino, the town priest, Father Alfredo (Barry Otto), blesses the machine and is offered the first espresso by Zio Luigi, only to be begged by an older townsperson, Pepe (John Bluthal), to be allowed the first taste as he has been in Australia for thirty years without espresso coffee. To Pepe, espresso is the taste of ‘home’, that is, of Italy. Il Café Latino, especially once the espresso machine is installed, becomes “like a jewel in a foreign sea, a sanctuary for the local Italians, a home away from home.”106 The mural inside Il Café Latino is used as a means of transporting the narrative between Italy and Australia prior to Rosetta’s arrival and as a way of articulating the town’s memories of Italy. It is a constant work in progress, altered according to the needs of the townspeople. Pepe, for example, symbolically enacts a return to Italy by requesting that the gypsy artist (Reg Mombassa) paint the boat on which Pepe migrated, returning back to Italy. When the boat is later removed from the mural, Pepe’s obvious distress is eased when Zio Luigi assures him that the boat has disappeared because it has already taken him home. Nostalgia, Cook states, is “predicated on a dialectic between longing for something idealised that has been lost, and an acknowledgement that this idealised something can never be retrieved in actuality, and can only be accessed through images.”107 Pepe, knowing that the Italy of his youth has long since been lost, does not physically return to Italy but, through the painting, is able to act out his nostalgic desires for Italy without actually having to witness the changes that would have occurred in his absence. Sardi also uses the past and the future to describe the differing outlooks of the two brothers: “While Gino looks to the future, all too willing to relinquish his ancestry, Angelo looks to the past, unable to let go of it.”108 Angelo’s determination to marry a proxy bride from Italy is therefore also driven as much by ethnic and cultural maintenance as nostalgic desire. Susanna Iuliano argues that proxy brides fulfilled several functions: they helped fulfil the goals of postwar immigration policy, as marriage ‘settled’ migrant men and ‘protected’ Australian women, and they helped to foster Italian ethnic identity and community in Australia, particularly through the selection of partners from nearby regions
106 Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies," p. 37. 107 Cook, Screening the Past, p. 4. Nicola King also sees nostalgia as “a mode of remembering the past as lost, but also as a regret for the passing of a ‘true’, ‘spontaneous’ or ‘organic’ form of memory.” Pepe, removed from the Italian landscape, is also removed from this passed form of memory. See King, Memory, Narrative, Identity, p. 5. 108 Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies," p. 36.
225 in Italy.109 Love’s Brother utilises the proxy bride phenomenon in terms of these brides’ function in cultural maintenance as well as their potential to be reconstructed as bittersweet tragi-comic romantic heroines.110 Sardi discovered the proxy marriage plotline while researching another project in the Queensland cane fields, later discovering that stories of deception were quite common in recollections of proxy marriages.111 Iuliano, who aims to move away from the perception of proxy marriage as tragic, found that little research had been undertaken into the phenomenon because of the stigma attached to proxy marriage, even many years later, fostered largely by sensationalist publicity in Italian-language newspapers of the 1950s and 1960s.112 By seeking an Italian bride, Angelo seeks cultural maintenance but it is Gino, as the brother most determined to assimilate to Australian
109 Iuliano, "Donne E Buoi Dai Paesi Tuoi," p. 320, 22-24. 110 Susi Bella Wardrop makes no solid conclusions about proxy brides and their experiences but many of the women in her study did remain with their husbands, regardless of the outcome. They communicated a sense of dislocation, loneliness, nostalgia and sometimes even regret far beyond that portrayed in the character of Rosetta. Rosetta is also rescued from the shame that may have awaited her in her home village, had she returned without her new fiancé, Gino, in tow. See Bella Wardrop, By Proxy, pp. 54-55. In reality, many proxy brides did not have such an ending, and the film (unintentionally) trivialises the experiences of proxy brides. Rosetta cannot represent proxy brides and migrant women of the past, nor can her experiences be seen as representative of their experiences. She is merely a means of creating and building Italian Australian identity and community, and in fulfilling this symbolic function within the film, which is itself a nostalgic recreation of how we wish to remember Italian Australian migration and community. Furthermore, as Rosetta has the good fortune of being a character in a romantic comedy, she is therefore guaranteed a happy ending with the man she loves. 111 Sardi, "Growing up Italian and Making Movies," pp. 35-36. In the most common form of deception, the prospective husbands would send photographs of themselves many years younger than they actually were, leading their prospective brides to believe they were to marry a much younger man. Bella Wardrop, By Proxy, pp. 40-41. The deception motif recurs throughout Italian Australian narratives featuring or mentioning proxy brides. Marchetta mentions deceived proxy brides in passing as Josie learns more about Italian experiences in Australia from Nonna Katia, while Anna Maria Dell’Oso has written a tragic opera about these experiences. Other Italian Australian narratives that mention or feature proxy brides without the deception motif include Matilda Waltzing and Emma: A Translated Life. See Ciccotosto and Bosworth, Emma: A Translated Life; Dell'Oso, Bride of Fortune: Opera in Prologue and Three Acts; Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 201; Valmorbida, Matilde Waltzing. Also of note is Luigi Zampa’s Bello onesto emigrato Australia sposerebbe compaesana illibata (1971), starring Alberto Sordi and Claudia Cardinale. This is Love’s Brother’s satirical precursor made by Italian filmmakers for an Italian audience. For more on this film, see Nicholls, "Gen.Italia: Class, Sexuality and the Melodrama of Migration in Italian-Australian Cinema."; Rando, "Migrant Images in Italian Australian Movies and Documentaries." 112 Iuliano, "Donne E Buoi Dai Paesi Tuoi," p. 320. See also Bella Wardrop, By Proxy, pp. 41-42.
226 culture, who needs the Italian bride in order to reinforce his faltering sense of Italianness. Similarly, Angelo needs to marry Connie for her Australianness. In marrying Connie and Rosetta, each brother ultimately finds a balance between their Italianness and their Australianness, as well as acceptance of their responsibilities as adults – Angelo learns to be more Australian and Gino learns to be more Italian, and between the two couples, they create a commercially palatable form of Italian Australianness that promotes family, culture and community. This ending also reinforces a view of Australia as a land of opportunity, as Gino and Rosetta return to Australia after their marriage with their child. Just as Moving Out’s negative and unsympathetic portrayal of Anglo Australians made it difficult to understand Gino Condello’s desire to assimilate, the absence of Anglo Australian representation in Love’s Brother makes Connie and Gino’s own initial desire to assimilate equally as inexplicable. The Italian Australian community in Love’s Brother appears isolated from any Anglo Australian influences and the narrative itself is free from any significant conflict between Italians and Anglo Australians in all but two brief scenarios: Connie’s recollections of growing up Italian in Australia, and Angelo’s and Gino’s attendance at an Australian dance. In this latter scene, Gino dances with an Australian woman and eyes off a trio of suspicious Australian men before both brothers leave. There is no verbal interaction heard between the brothers and any members of the Anglo Australian community, allowing the filmmakers to evade the difficulty of switching languages. The scene is played for comic effect rather than social commentary. While Connie’s recollection of her experiences of racism, difference and rebellion recall themes common to the experiences of the second generation, her problems and cultural negotiations appear to be easily resolved through her relationship with Angelo and signified by changing her hair colour. Hair colour in Love’s Brother, as in Looking for Alibrandi, is a visual signifier for ethnicity. All of the Italian characters in Love’s Brother, unless older and greying, are brunette while the Australians at the dance are predominantly fair-haired. Connie’s bottle-blonde hair stands out amongst the other Italian Australian characters and indicates her desire to be Australian. Connie’s acceptance of her Italian heritage is inspired by Angelo, who urges her to be proud of her cultural background, and her successful development of an Italian Australian identity is indicated by her decision to return to her natural dark hair colour. Overall, Love’s Brother presents a highly romanticised view of Italian migration to and settlement in Australia. Cushioned also by the generic conventions of the romantic comedy, Love’s Brother as a nostalgic memory film depicts a migrant past
227 that is relatively free from experiences of racism, hardship and failure. Although Anglo Australians are absent from the film, largely for practical reasons pertaining to language shifts, it is a film about the success and contribution of Italians as a migrant group to Australian society and culture. In order to construct a myth of beginnings for Italian Australian communities and identities it creates a nostalgic fantasy about a time when the café was about community and not commercial enterprise, and creates romance out of marriages often forged out of cultural and economic necessity.
Conclusion The film narratives examined in this chapter exhibit the same characteristics as the fictional literary narratives of the second stage of the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities. They are thus best aligned with that stage in reading these coming of age films within the revised conceptual parameters of the ethnic bildungsroman (which, in its application within this thesis, has necessarily expanded beyond the traditional generic limitations of the novel to include autobiographical writing and now feature films). In these film narratives, Italian Australian identities emerge with the successive generations and the protagonists’ identity formations are most often (excluding only Love’s Brother) played out through intergenerational conflict. Interestingly, however, each of the films examined here have portrayed Australian culture as either absent or unsympathetic. While on the one hand this calls into question the power relationship between Anglo Australia and its ethnic subcultures, it also reinforces the idea of ethnicity as a commodity in multicultural Australia. While Aquilia argues that this commoditised relationship between Anglo Australian cultures and ethnic subcultures opens up avenues for ethnic self- representation for mainstream audiences,113 the trajectory of Italian Australian film narratives demonstrates that such commercial representations become complicit with dominant master narratives of white multiculturalism. The future, however, is not entirely bleak. Recent films by Italian Australian filmmaker Jan Cattoni and screenwriter Anna Maria Monticelli point towards new modes of Australian filmmaking, suggested also in Pellizzari’s work. Both Cattoni’s short film Hey Sista! and Monticelli’s La Spagnola (directed by Steve Jacobs) were produced in conjunction with SBS Independent Television (SBSi), a film production initiative by SBS that, Collins and Davis argue, “entail[s] a rethinking of nationhood in terms of Indigenous, white settler
113 Aquilia, "Wog Drama and 'White Multiculturalists'," p. 104.
228 and migrant experiences which cannot be assimilated into a unified national identity or be contained within multicultural identity politics.”114 Hey Sista!, for example, aligns a second generation Italian Australian girl’s feeling of dislocation and difference within her own Italian Australian community with the disenfranchisement of indigenous Australians, who provide her with a sense of identity and acceptance. La Spagnola is an ambitious multilingual production about the domestic dramas of a Spanish family within a predominantly Italian migrant community located in rural Australia. Both films challenge the notion that the greatest tensions in multicultural Australia exist between Anglo Australia and the ethnic community in question by illuminating intra-group tensions and calling into question the relationship of migration to Australia’s colonial past (and present). The production of film narratives by and about Italian Australians was marked in 2005 with the first Italian Australian film festival, entitled The Weird Mob: A Retrospective of Italo-Australian Cinema: Three Generations of Film Makers 1962-2004.115 Promotional material for the festival foregrounded ideas of journey, development and transformation over the generations, and of cinema as a means of capturing and communicating the experiences of Italians in Australia.116 This journey, however, is also depicted as one that began as “an extreme act of resistance to the assimilation process, but emerges in every respect [as] the proof of integration.”117 As this chapter has shown, the journey made by Italian Australian film narratives is also signalled by a generic shift from melodrama to romantic comedy, which depicts the acceptance into the mainstream Australian imagination of those Italian Australian characters and narratives that comply with positive and optimistic images of (white) ethnicity and migration that this mainstream Australian imagination encourages.
114 Collins and Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo, p. 42. For more on SBSi, see SBS Independent [Website] ([cited 4 April 2005]); available from http://www.sbs.com.au/sbsi/; A. L. Urban and M. Scott, "SBS Independent," Cinema Papers 125, no. June (1998). 115 The festival ran in Sydney only, 24-29 May 2005, and was organized by FILEF. Interestingly, Love’s Brother was not included in the festival program. 116 See The Weird Mob: 1st Italian/Australian Film Festival ([cited). 117 Ibid.([cited).
229
230 Conclusion: Who Josie Becomes Next
I’ve figured out that it doesn’t matter whether I’m Josephine Andretti who was never an Alibrandi, who should have been a Sandford and who may never be a Coote. It matters who I feel like I am … Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi1
Through the implementation of the ethnic bildungsroman as a conceptual tool, this thesis has shown how literary and film narratives by and about Italian Australians represent Italian Australian identities. The ethnic bildungsroman is an invaluable tool for reading Australian narratives that grapple with protagonists’ problematic identity formation in a culturally diverse society. Altered from the original German literary genre by renovated paradigms that allow for the importance of collectivity and community in diasporic communities and spaces, the ethnic bildungsroman narrates and evaluates ways of becoming and belonging. Reading these Italian Australian narratives as ethnic bildungsromane has illuminated the processes of becoming Italian Australian in various socio-historical contexts. Such readings have shown ethnicity, and narrative representations of ethnicity to be, to recall Sollors as quoted in Chapter 1, “not a thing but a process.”2 This thesis was also divided along the lines of genre and generation. Drawing upon the various developmental models devised by Aaron, Sollors, Gardaphe and Tamburri, it charted a gradual shift from autobiography into fiction, via autobiographical fiction and creative autobiography. It correlated this to the movement from the first generation Italian Australian narratives and identities of migrants to the narratives and identities of the second and third generations. The developmental model for Italian Australian narratives differed from those American models of ethnic literature, which chart a movement from the margins to the mainstream, in that this thesis focused predominantly upon shifts in thematic content and approach. This necessitated the insertion of an intermediary stage that straddled the divide of the first and second stages of Italian Australian narrative development without completely adhering to the forms of either. The intermediary stage bridged the generic and generational gap between the first and second stages. This created a greater sense of Italian Australian development as a journey, indicating movement and change without imposing a hierarchy upon the stages.
1 Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi, p. 261. 2 Sollors, "Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity," p. xv.
231 Each of the chapters charted this movement while also exploring the various nuances of each individual narrative. In Chapter 2, the autobiographical narratives by Osvaldo Bonutto and Emma Ciccotosto were explored as examples of the first stage in the Italian Australian model of narrative and identity development. The quest of these narratives as ethnic bildungsromane was to negotiate the pressure to assimilate and the desire for cultural maintenance. Bonutto articulates this through his understanding of his civic identity as an Australian citizen and his cultural identity as an Italian-born migrant. In Ciccotosto’s narrative, her thoughts and feelings upon returning to Italy evoke an understanding of her Italian identity as belonging to her Australian place. Both narratives showed how the protagonists’ complex understandings of citizenship, identity and place allowed them to forge a sense of belonging in Australia while maintaining a sense of being Italian. In Chapter 3, the autobiographical fiction and creative autobiography of Rosa Cappiello, Peter Dalseno and Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli formed an intermediary stage that bridged the generational gap between the first and second stages, and the generic gap between autobiography and fiction. These narratives approached autobiographical material in various ways that diverged from traditional notions of autobiography, such as the use of fictional narrative techniques and blurring the relationship between author, narrator and protagonist. Here multiculturalism was also introduced as a bridging concept that both enabled and problematised Italian Australian identities. In these narratives, multiculturalism by turns exploits, assimilates and enriches. While Cappiello’s protagonist in Oh Lucky Country finds that multicultural Australia seeks to exploit her Italian ethnicity and her literary ambitions as commodities, Dalseno and Pallotta-Chiarolli applaud it as a place that nurtures their Italian Australian identities. However, the definitions of multiculturalism and Italian Australianness found in Dalseno’s Sugar, Tears and Eyeties and Pallotta-Chiarolli’s Tapestry differ significantly: one is still centred on a concept of a hegemonic Anglo Australia, and the other is premised upon intersecting and multiplying diversities without hierarchy. Furthermore, this chapter introduced approaches to identity and ethnicity that were expanded upon in the second stage of Italian Australian narratives and identities. Chapters 4 to 6 comprised fictional narratives produced by second and third generation Italian Australians, signalling a shift from autobiographical genres to fiction novels. Rather than focusing on the representation of actual experiences, these fictional narratives began to imagine new ways of becoming and being Italian Australian. Most
232 importantly, this shift heralded the beginning of the second stage in the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities. In each of these second stage narratives, there was a thematic preoccupation with the reconciliation of the Italian past with the Australian present that was central to the protagonists’ ethnic maturation and catharsis. This was most frequently played out in the troubled relationships between migrant characters and successive generation protagonists. As ethnic bildungsromane, the narratives showed the protagonists’ identities as sites of conflict and negotiation. Italian Australian identities emerged from constant negotiation between Italianness and Australianness, the past and the present, the individual and the community. Chapter 4 argued that the approach to these themes differed significantly depending on the age of the intended readership, and focused exclusively upon narratives written for young adults. These young adult narratives were most overt in their treatment of the protagonists’ ethnic identity formation, and thus are most easily read within the parameters of the ethnic bildungsroman. Ethnic maturation was aligned with personal maturation and the protagonists’ entrance into adulthood, and was signified by the protagonists’ acceptance of responsibility in their own lives and relationships. Italian culture and community were depicted as something against which the protagonists struggled and from which they desired freedom. This was articulated through the protagonists’ relationships with their Italian families. Australian society, represented by Anglo Australian peers, was depicted as something free from the confining past and traditions protagonists encountered in their Italian communities. These relationships began troubled, but the protagonist’s personal catharsis with their family and peers coincided with and signified their ethnic catharsis, and their negotiation of an Italian Australian identity. Each of the narratives explored various ways of growing up Italian in Australian society throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi specifically addressed the experience of growing up with multicultural ideology and policy, yet the narrative depicted Josie’s struggles as occurring between her homogenous Italian and Anglo Australian societies. Fusillo’s Sparring with Shadows and Montano’s Wogaluccis also maintained this particular relationship between the two cultures. This chapter argued that there is, however, a movement in more recent young adult fiction toward the depiction of a more culturally diverse Australian society. This more recent fiction, such as Marchetta’s Saving Francesca and Fusillo’s Bruises and An Earful of Static, acknowledges the various tensions and relationships between various ethnic groups, and
233 challenges the notion that the ‘Australian’ society against which protagonists struggle is homogenously Anglo Australian. Most importantly, this more recent fiction heralds the emergence of third stage narratives. In Italian Australian narratives written for an adult readership, the development of the protagonists is a prolonged process that often does not culminate until after they have reached adulthood. These narratives approach the themes of the second stage with greater complexity and often employ more sophisticated literary techniques. Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographical metafiction, while particularly useful in my reading of Elise Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing, illuminates the important and problematic relationship between the past and the present in these narratives. Stories of migration were re-told and re-imagined through the critical perspective of the successive generation writers and their protagonists. While these migration and settlement stories are central to the protagonists’ search for origins, identity and place, as they were in the young adult narratives examined in Chapter 4, Julie Capaldo, Elise Valmorbida and Venero Armanno use these stories to highlight experiences of racism, dislocation and conflict. Focussing on this argument, Chapter 5 demonstrated how Capaldo and Valmorbida use stories of migration to highlight the heritage of conflict inherited by the successive generations from their migrant parents and grandparents. Critiques of post war assimilation policies and their lingering effects throughout three generations of an Italian Australian family are, for example, embedded within the motif of food and eating disorders found in Capaldo’s Love Takes You Home. The third generation protagonist articulates her negotiation of Italianness and Australianness through her problematic relationship with food, and resolves this through an examination of her family’s migration and settlement that is juxtaposed with her own journey to Italy. Valmorbida’s Matilde Waltzing, on the other hand, focuses almost exclusively upon the migration and settlement experiences of an Italian woman. While the migrant protagonist does not succeed in forging an Italian Australian identity, her children do. Both these narratives illustrate that identity formation is an intergenerational process fraught with conflict. The complex relationship between the past and the present was also one of the three key themes identified in Venero Armanno’s works examined in Chapter 6. The protagonists’ ethnic identities were found to be shaped not only by this relationship, but also by gender relationships and place. These themes are also interdependent and intersecting. The importance of resolving the past in order to live through the present and to create a positive future resonates through Armanno’s use of Brisbane as a symbolic
234 space for ethnic development and his examination of Italian Australian masculinities and femininities. By understanding and resolving their Italian Australian past, which was connected to idealised memories of Italian Australian women and Italian Australian space, the protagonists were finally able to understand and accept their adult Italian Australian selves. Finally, Chapter 7 explored the distinct journey of Italian Australian identities and narratives in Italian Australian film. This chapter argued that Italian Australian feature film narratives do, in fact, journey from the margins to the mainstream and that this is reflected in the generic shift from melodrama, to black comedy to romantic comedy. More recent Italian Australian films, such as Kate Woods’ Looking for Alibrandi and Jan Sardi’s Love’s Brother, have received greater mainstream attention and commercial success. This movement into the mainstream signified the movement of Italian Australian identities into the mainstream but, I argued, primarily as commodities. In terms of each individual narrative, this chapter adapted the coming of age or rite de passage film genre into the parameters of the ethnic bildungsroman. The film narratives exhibited similar characteristics to the second stage in Italian Australian literary narratives. Michael Pattinson’s Moving Out, Monica Pellizzari’s Fistful of Flies and Woods’ Looking for Alibrandi privileged the identity formation of successive generation protagonists, whose ethnic dilemma was frequently played out through intergenerational conflict. Love’s Brother, on the other hand, returned to the past to create a romantic myth of origins for Italian Australian identities and communities. Viewed collectively, these narratives reveal how the formation of Italian Australian identities have been and continue to be influenced by various policies and ideologies surrounding migration to Australia, such as assimilation, integration and multiculturalism. As pre-WWII migrants, Bonutto and Ciccotosto, for example, reflect on the differences between the first and second waves of Italian migrants to Australia, and the changes that occurred within the community because of the new influx. In terms of ethnic identification, Bonutto and Ciccotosto witness the shift from assimilationist to integrationist ideas that occurred over the course of these two waves of Italian migration. While Dalseno writes about the same era as Bonutto, he attempts to evaluate his past experiences, and the past experiences of his northern Queensland community, through his retrospective, multiculturalist perspective. Pallotta-Chiarolli, on the other hand, compares the experiences of her parents, who belong to the second, postwar wave of Italian migration to Australia, with her own second generation experiences of negotiating
235 Italianness and Australianness in the 1970s and 1980s. Pallotta-Chiarolli finds personal and cultural empowerment and possibility for social change through an engagement with ideas of multiculturalism and cultural diversity, but uses this as a critical lens for reading Italian Australianness, as opposed to Dalseno’s revisionist approach. Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi also spans three generations, demonstrating not only how each generation has impacted upon the next but revealing Italian Australian ethnicity to be an intergenerational process. The views of Pallotta-Chiarolli’s daughter provides an intriguing counterpoint to her mother, Marchetta and other first and second generation voices I have examined, as she points towards new and even more fluid conceptions of Italian Australian identities in the future. The three stage model of the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities implemented in this thesis was drawn roughly along generational and generic lines. The first stage comprised autobiographical and biographical narratives by migrants and the second stage corresponded to fictional narratives written by the second generation. These generations interact within the narratives, looking forward and backward at one another. Bonutto, for example, looked toward the next generation, believing that their sense of Australian identity would be uncomplicated by the experiences of migration and cultural difference. This view is later challenged not only by the prevailing themes of cultural conflict and negotiation found in second generation narratives, but by the way in which writers such as Armanno, Capaldo and Valmorbida and screenwriters such as Sardi revise, challenge and re-imagine migrant experiences through their critical perspectives; migrant experiences thus resonate throughout the successive generations, and in the contemporary Italian Australian imagination. Rather than disproving the usefulness of developmental models, the intermediary stage inserted between the first and second stages shows how these stages are not clear-cut but, rather, intersect, overlap and even merge at their edges. Many of the writers whose works have been examined here as part of the second stage have produced or are producing works that, in theme, form and content, belong to the third stage, such as Marchetta’s Saving Francesca or Armanno’s My Beautiful Friend. While Sollors’ three stage developmental model for ethnic literature – and the models formulated by Gardaphé and Tamburri also drawn upon in this thesis – implemented a similar generic shift from autobiography to fiction, these models chart the dissipation (or disguising) of ethnic representation and identification within narratives by marginalised writers. The model for Italian Australian narratives conceptualised here has
236 not correlated a movement of Italian Australian literature into the mainstream as a dwindling of ethnic self-representation. Rather, the movement from autobiography, to autobiographical fiction, to fiction demonstrates different generic trends in Italian Australian narratives as they have roughly correlated to generational and socio-historical positionings. This generic shift illustrates the gradual acceptance of Italian Australian experiences into the Australian social and cultural imagination. This is exemplified by Italian Australian film narratives which, as an arguably more readily accessible and commercial viable medium, show the journey Italian Australians have made from the margins to the mainstream. Italian Australian stories, particularly since the release of Looking for Alibrandi as a book and film in 1992 and 2000 respectively, have become familiar and, more importantly, have become culturally and commercially acceptable narratives for ethnicity and multiculturalism in Australia. Whilst this thesis has remained focused upon the development of Italian Australian identities across the generations, it has necessarily explored various other themes which would benefit from further in-depth studies, such as representations of food and of sexuality. It has touched upon various other areas of interest, such as issues of authenticity, representation and Australian multiculturalism, and has demonstrated how sociological and historical studies can be used to enhance readings of literary and film narratives, and vice versa. Most importantly, it has opened up the possibility of developing the ethnic bildungsroman as a conceptual tool in Australian narratives and of applying similar developmental models to other bodies of ethnic narratives, such as Greek Australian or Asian Australian literature and film, which would allow for further exploration of the suitability of the model for charting the representation of identity formation and development. Despite the exclusive focus here upon narratives by and about Italian Australians, it remains an important task to examine how Italian Australians have been portrayed in narratives by non-Italian Australians and vice versa. This thesis has contributed to the identification and examination of key themes and patterns in Italian Australian self-representation, but it has explored and opened up further questions regarding issues of narrative representation and authenticity. These remain to be explored in future studies, specifically further critical analysis of how Italian Australians have been represented in the literatures and films of other Australian groups and communities. Gaining control of self-representation is an important stage in the settlement of ethnic groups and the development of their identities, but it is equally as important a stage in
237 multicultural development that individuals gain such knowledge and understanding of various cultures that it is possible for them to depict accurately a specific ethnic experience that is not their own. This is but one possibility of the third stage. Another, arguably more important possibility of the third stage, and an important site for future study, is the narrative interaction between various ethnicities. With very few exceptions, the cross-cultural interactions uncovered in these Italian Australian narratives have limited themselves to encounters between Anglo Australians and Italian Australians, depicting these as the only cultural forces with which the protagonists must contend. It is only in the more recent examples that their depictions of Australia have broadened and have begun to reflect lived experiences of the country’s growing cultural diversity, and of globalised and transnational relationships. These conversations and interactions between different ethnic Australian groups belong within the third stage of the development of Italian Australian narratives and identities which, I contend, is also the third stage of other ethnic Australian narrative trajectories: it is, indeed, the ‘third scenario’ of Australian literature and film as a whole. This third stage or third scenario possibly answers Gunew’s question: “what might ‘Australia’ look like when these other motherlands are acknowledged as positions of origin?”3 The third scenario imagined by Hall is a non- binary space of reflection that challenges, or moves beyond the Anglo Australian – Italian Australian binary which prevails in Italian Australian narratives of the first and second stages. In creating dialogue between various ethnic groups, third stage narratives create new ways of becoming or being Australian wherein Italian Australian and other ethnic Australian identities are a point of departure, rather than the point of arrival that they are in first and second stage Italian Australian bildungsromane. Recently in the United States, much debate in Italian American literary and cultural studies circles has surrounded such an example of third stage ethnic literature. The depiction of a fictional Italian American suburban family in Chang-rae Lee’s novel, Aloft (2004), has ignited such debates because of Lee’s Korean American background. The novel has received great critical praise, particularly for its depiction of an Italian American suburban middle class, as opposed to the more common and, indeed, stereotypical urban, working-class characters and environment.4 More conservative critics and members of the
3 Gunew, "Home and Away: Nostalgia in Australian (Migrant) Writing," p. 40. 4 See, for example, S. Churchwell, "Battle of a Simple Man: A Solo Flyer in Search of Himself," review of Aloft by Chang-rae Lee, Times Literary Supplement, June 25 2004; L. Grossman, "Survival in the Suburbs: Chang-Rae Lee's Aloft Is a Meditation on Love and Death among the Lush Lawns of Long Island," review of
238 Italian American community, however, are incensed not necessarily by the actual representation of Italian Americans in the novel, but because it is not a self-representation. This novel, however, is not actually about representing Italian Americans at all. Lee uses the Italian American characters of Aloft as representative of white migrant groups who have been present in America for several generations, long enough to have distanced themselves significantly from their migrant past and to see other, relatively newer migrant groups as other.5 The way in which Lee subtly explores race and ethnicity in Aloft through interactions of Italian, Korean and American identities is an example of a third stage narrative, albeit not an Australian example. Given that Australia is very much a nation built upon migration, experiences of migration, difference and ethnicity are more common than studies of specific ethnic experiences might depict. These specific studies are invaluable and are slowly emerging as various ethnic communities amass bodies of literature and film that they can call their own. As a further stage in the development of multiculturalism and notions of multicultural literature and multicultural cinema, it is important not only to continue these specific studies, but to begin to examine interactions amongst these various literatures and cinemas. Not only will this allow us to explore how various groups represent each other, but also allow explorations into the differences and similarities in experiences, comparisons of style and genre. Putting these literatures and cinemas into dialogue with one another will be a significant contribution to the debates surrounding the categories of multicultural writing and film. Italian Australian identities, as represented in literary and film narratives written by and about Italian Australians, are produced through ongoing conversations between Italianness and Australianness, the individual and the community, the past and the present, but also the future. While these Italian Australian ethnic bildungsromane end with the protagonists’ arrivals at various forms of Italian Australian identities, it is important to
Aloft by Chang-rae Lee, Time, March 22 2004. For critical analysis of Lee’s other works, which have focused upon Korean American experiences, see, for example, Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging; R. C. Lee, "Reading Contests and Contesting Reading: Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker and Ethnic New York," MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 29, no. 3-4 (2004). 5 M. Standaert, "Flying High," Far Eastern Economic Review 167, no. 14 (2004): p. 52. As Jennifer Guglielmo observes in her introduction to a collection of essays on Italian Americans and whiteness, “Italians were not always white, and the loss of this memory is one of the tragedies of racism in America.” See J. Guglielmo, "Introduction: White Lies, Dark Truths," in Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, ed. Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 1.
239 remember that such identities are constantly shifting, that the above tensions constantly change, develop and interact, and are subject also to the changes in the surrounding social, historical, cultural and even physical environments. Even the story of Josie Alibrandi does not simply end with her acceptance of her family’s past and her successful negotiation of her Italian and Australian identities, but points towards the future possibilities that are enabled through her arrival at her particular Italian Australian identity. Who Josie becomes next will develop from these future interactions with non-Anglo and non-Italian Australians, and depart from the representations of Italian Australian identities that the journey has thus far produced.
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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne
Author/s: CARNIEL, JESSICA RITA
Title: Who Josie became next: developing narratives of ethnic identity formation in Italian Australian literature and film
Date: 2006-02
Citation: Carniel, J. R. (2006). Who Josie became next: developing narratives of ethnic identity formation in Italian Australian literature and film, PhD thesis, The Australian Centre and the Department of History (Gender Studies Program), The University of Melbourne.
Publication Status: Unpublished
Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/39226
File Description: Who Josie became next: developing narratives of ethnic identity formation in Italian Australian literature and film
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