Place and transmemory in California Italian American literary narratives: Dorothy Bryant's Miss Giardino

Abstract

In this article, I propose to think of spaces as sites of production and manifestation of memory, which, in turn, constitutes a transnational formation, one that can hardly be discursively fixed. In particular, my analysis of Dorothy Bryant's 1978 novel Miss Giardino uncovers how transmemory, or the intergenerational transmission of memory from diasporic to ethnic subjects, complicates ideas of Italian belonging. I turn to the study of space, with an emphasis on the multiethnic neighborhood of The Mission, in the east-central part of San Francisco, to address the mediation between Italian diasporic past and interethnic present. While acknowledging that forms of inherited memory (or postmemory), such as class memory, affect the social practice of place intergenerationally, I also aim to show that in transmemory spaces are made differently meaningful. Ultimately, reframing spaces of Italian migrations through the lens of transmemory offers a way to move us forward from impasses in Transnational Italian Studies and diaspora debates that assign to memory an overly static and national paradigm.