This paper examines the narration of diasporic experiences by writers of
Italian descent. It investigates the ways in which relationships between
‘home’ and ‘destination’ cultures are negotiated across the generations.
Narratives by three women writers, Rosa Cappiello, Anna Maria Dell’oso and
Melina Marchetta are analysed to show how negotiating the tensions between
nostalgia for the past and the needs of the present transforms and translates
notions of ‘home’ for writers who are living ‘in between’ cultures. Through a
reading of the narratives of these three authors, each representative of a
different generation, the paper considers the ways in which space, place and
identity interact in determining the politics of belonging. It is argued that the
role of the hyphenate writer has changed over the decades and across
generations, from that of a raconteur of what took place, a role that may lean
more toward nostalgia than analysis, to that of cultural mediator and, more
recently, cultural examiner. Further, the texts chosen for analysis reveal a
distinctive strategy of representation – a rhetoric of location – in which
spatiality functions as a symbolic conduit between the plotting of identity
constructions and Italian/Australian realities. [Author's abstract]