Non si coltiva mai un fiore senza provocare nel contempo un sogno’. Genealogie matrilineari di scrittrici italo americane

This piece was initially prompted by a desire to participate in the direct and candid presentation of intimate female relationships which transcend ethnicity to become archetypal. It tries to offer a key to understand the ambiguity and often contradictory feelings of attachment and separation within Italian American female writing on migration by exploring how most women authors deeply internalize in their works major themes of finding roots, relating to others, connecting to ethnic heritage via mothers and grandmothers. By demonstrating the persistence of a mother's – and a female ancestor’s – presence in a daughter's life, these immigrant writers’ resulting identity, therefore, becomes intriguingly complex – fluid rather than fixed.