Queer in Italian-North American Women Writers

This article seeks to investigate the meaning of the term queer in the post-migratory setting of Italian-Canadian and Italian-North American women writers, and constitutes thus a contribution to recent studies which project the notion of queer within a diasporic framework. Specifically, it aims at analysing the ways in which the term has been recontextualised in this transnational context with reference to issues of ethnicity. Within cultural theory the concepts of ‘queer’ and ‘diaspora’ have been informed by post-modern and post-colonial theory and have intervened on theories of time, space and identity infusing them with notions of transgression, contingency, power and conflict. This study is based on the analysis of excerpts taken from short stories and poems in Curraggia: Writings by Women of Italian Descent, an anthology edited by three second generation Italian/Canadian lesbian and feminist writers (as they define themselves), published in 1998 by Women Press, a publishing house based in Toronto. Through these and other literary excerpts written by the same writers I would like to implement some previous studies (Fortier 1999, 2001, 2003; Gopinath 2003, 2005; Ahmed 2003, 2006) on the concept of queer in diasporic contexts.