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Provides a remapping of Italian and Italian American culture by retracing trans and gender-variant experiences within Italy and along diasporic routes.
How does the mapping of Italian culture change when it is charted from the perspective of gender-variant people? Italian Trans Geographies tackles this question by retracing trans and gender-variant experiences within the Italian peninsula and along diasporic routes. The volume adopts a cross-disciplinary approach that combines scholarly analyses with grassroots engagement and creative work and centers the voices of Italian and Italian American transpeople through autobiographies, memoirs, interviews, poetry, and visual works. The contributions include works by key Italian trans activists, including Romina Cecconi, Porpora Marcasciano, and Helena Velena, as well as critical interpretations of scholars and artists (many of whom self-identify as trans). Ultimately, these voices show how trans people have contributed to shaping Italian places and cultures while, in turn, being shaped by those places and cultures. Through its attention to geospecific sites, the book highlights blind spots in the hegemonic Anglo-American discourse about gender and overlooked intersections between LGBTQIA+ global discourse and local realities.
"To my knowledge, this collection is absolutely unique—and, for that reason, absolutely vital. Over and over again, I was impressed with how smart it is. Besides being accessible to audiences both inside and outside of the academy, the movement across gender studies, anthropology, history, and political activism is also useful. I learned a lot by reading this anthology, and it really challenged me to think about the relationship between my own Sicilian American identity, gender, and sexuality, and the possibilities they might present for future projects and encounters, both scholarly and personal." — John Champagne, author of Queer Ventennio: Italian Fascism, Homoerotic Art, and the Nonmodern in the Modern
"Modeled after Pier Paolo Pasolini's Comizi d'amore, Italian Trans Geographies challenges the concept of 'trans' from a geographical and gender studies lens. This foundational work casts light upon numerous 'othered' voices from diverse generations, the most noteworthy being Porpora Marcasciano's, to demonstrate how space, place, and time impact trans people's lives and how they, in return, frame the spaces they inhabit. The structure of the opus is unique and forces the texts to speak to each other, while the translations shine. Italian Trans Geographies is a 'must have' for those studying gender within the Italian Diaspora." — Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, University of Arkansas
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Timeline of Key Events
Introduction
Italian Trans Geographies: Retracing Trans/Cultural Narratives of People and Places
Danila Cannamela
SOUTH
Part 1. Memories of Transitions
1. From AntoloGaia: Vivere sognando e non sognando di vivere; I miei anni settanta (AntholoGay: Living Dreaming and Not Dreaming of Living; My Seventies)
Porpora Marcasciano
2. From L'aurora delle trans cattive: Storie, sguardi e vissuti della mia generazione transgender (The Dawn of the Bad Trans Women: Stories, Fragments, and Lives of My Transgender Generation)
Porpora Marcasciano
3. From Tra le rose e le viole: La storia e le storie di transessuali e travestiti (Among Roses and Violets: The Story and the Stories of Transsexuals and Transvestites)
Porpora Marcasciano
4. From Dolore minimo (Minimum Pain) and Dove non siamo stati (Where We Haven't Been)
Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto
Part 2. The Femminielli: A Gender-Variant Community between Past and Present
5. "Et io ne viddi uno in Napoli." I femminielli: Ricognizione storica e mitografica; Spunti per una riflessione sull'identità di genere ("And I saw one of them in Naples." Femminielli: Historical and Mythographic Recognition; Starting Points for a Reflection on Gender Identity)
Eugenio Zito, Paolo Valerio, and Nicola Sisci
6. From Altri transiti: Corpi, pratiche, rappresentazioni di femminielli e transessuali (Other Transitions: Bodies, Practices, Representations of Femminielli and Transsexuals)
Maria Carolina Vesce
7. Two Real-Life Perspectives on the Femminielli: A Conversation withLoredana Rossi and Ciro Cascina
Marzia Mauriello
CENTER
Part 3. A Felliniesque Dolce Vita
8. From L'aurora delle trans cattive
Porpora Marcasciano
9. From Io, la "Romanina": Perché sono diventato donna (I, "Romanina": Why I Became a Woman)
Romina Cecconi
Part 4. Narrating Trans History as a Meaningful Experience
10. From Elementi di critica trans (Elements of Trans Critique)
Edited by Laurella Arietti, Christian Ballarin, Giorgio Cuccio, and Porpora Marcasciano
11. Non siamo nat@ ieri (We Weren't Born Yesterday)
Egon Botteghi
NORTH
Part 5. Stories of Trans Identity and Activism
12. From AntoloGaia
Porpora Marcasciano
13. From Favolose narranti: Storie di transessuali (Fabulous Narrators: Stories of Transsexuals)
Porpora Marcasciano
14. From Camminavo rasente i muri: Autobiografia tascabile di un transessuale (I Was Walking Along the Walls: Pocket Autobiography of a Transsexual Man)
Massimo D'Aquino
15. Three Stories of Activism in Italy: Conversations with Christian Ballarin, Giorgio Cuccio, and Mazen Masoud
Marzia Mauriello
Part 6. Testifying to Voices and Images of Transness
16. Perverse Polymorphs Proto T* at the Dawn of 1980s Italian Riflusso
Helena Velena
17. A Trans Revolution and Its Contradictions: An Interview with Simone Cangelosi
Danila Cannamela
18. Lina Pallotta's Portrait of Porpora: "Snapshots of a Moment" and Geographies of Friendship
Danila Cannamela and Stella Gonzalez
TRANSITIONS ACROSS THE OCEAN
Part 7. Italian Migration and Queer Roots
19. Michela Griffo: "Io sono sangue"; I Am Blood, or the Stonewall Story from the Perspective of an Italian American Lesbian
Summer Minerva
20. What Does It Mean for the Italian American Community to be Trans?
Frances Rose Subbiondo, Erin Ferrentino, Liz Mariani, Summer Minerva, and Liana Cusmano
Part 8. New Italian American Migrations: Back to Italy
21. Summer Within: A Journey of Migration and Reconnection
Danila Cannamela
22. A Queer 'Talian Pilgrimage
Summer Minerva
Conclusion: Paths for Future Exploration: Language, Situatedness, and Glocal Paths
Danila Cannamela and Marzia Mauriello
List of Contributors
Index