My Language Is a Jealous Lover

ADRIÁN N. BRAVI was born in Buenos Aires, has lived in Italy since the late 1980s, and is a librarian. He published his first novel in Spanish in 1999 and after a few years started writing in Italian. He has written a number of books, including L’idioma di Casilda Moreira and Quattro novelle sui rattristamenti. His books have been translated into several languages. VICTORIA OFFREDI POLETTO (Senior Lecturer Emerita) and GIOVANNA BELLESIA CONTUZZI (Professor and Chair) have taught and collaborated together in the Department of Italian Studies at Smith College since 1990. They are committed to bringing the voices of migrant and second-generation writers-in particular women writers-to the English-speaking world. Their many translations include Genevieve Makaping’s Reversing the Gaze:What if the Other Were You?, Gabriella Ghermandi’s Queen of Flowers and Pearls, and Cristina Ali Farah’s Little Mother. SHIRIN RAMZANALI FAZEL is a novelist and poet. She was born in Mogadishu to a Somali mother and Pakistani father in 1953, and moved to Novara, Italy, in 1971. Among the first voices of so-called "migration literature" in Italy, Fazel writes in different languages and across different genres, gracefully narrating the benefits and challenges of our transnational reality. She is the author of Far From Mogadishu and Clouds over the Equator. The Forgotten Italians.  

Translators’ Note

Preface

Introduction

Childhood
Displacements
My Aunt’s Languages
The Maternity of Language I
The Language of Love
The Hospitality of Language
The Enemy Language
The Possessiveness of Languages
The Fluidity of Language
Without Style
The Scent of the Panther
Prisoners of Our Own Language
Two Short Stories: Landolfi and Kosztolányi
Two Old Children
Poetics of Chaos
Exile
Writing in Another Language
False Friends
Interference
Every Foreigner Is in Their Own Way a Translator
Some Cases of Self-Translation
Identity and National Language
The Language of Death
Language as Property
The Abandonment of Language
The Difficulty of Abandoning One’s Own Language
Language as a Line of Defense
The Maternity of Language II

Notes

Bibliography

Notes on Contributors