Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Publisher
Northeast Modern Language Association - Department of English -University at Buffalo
Abstract
This essay considers the question of how “coming to writing” describes the creative process, how mourning becomes language, and how the emptiness of silence turns into word, in relation to the life and literary work of Italian Jewish writer Ebe Cagli Seidenberg. In other words, how did Cagli’s exile to the U.S. facilitate her voice? And how did language become, for her, nothing less than a form of “country”? In examining her journey to testimonial writing, I contend that visual imagery—a combination of visual artifacts and visual memories—plays a major role in getting past the wall of silence, overcoming the impasse of oral communication, and fashioning powerful narratives of displacement and sense of foreignness abroad, but also discrimination and disengagement within Italy.
Recommended Citation
Ferraro, E. (2015). Drawing Testimony, Coming to Writing: Ebe Cagli Seidenberg’s Le sabbie del silenzio and Il Tempo dei Dioscuri. NeMLA Italian Studies. Special Issue: The Jewish Experience in Contemporary Italy. 37, 140-64.
Included in
American Studies Commons, Italian Language and Literature Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
