Identity on the Threshold: The Myth of Persephone in Italian American Women’s Memoirs

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the recurrent theme of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone in third-generation Italian American women’s memoirs. I argue that these women appropriate their Italian ethnic roots through a creative and compelling rereading and reworking of the myth of Demeter and Persephone. To develop my argument, I explore the interlacing of myth and memory in three contemporary Italian American memoirs: No Pictures in my Grave: A Spiritual Journey in Sicily (1992), The Skin between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging (2006), and The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America (2011), respectively written by Susan Caperna Lloyd, Kym Ragusa, and Joanna Clapps Herman. These texts belong to the hybrid genre of memoir; a genre that combines imagination with individual and collective memory. Through the genre of memoir and the practice of self-writing, these authors turn to the myth as a source for female empowerment and ethnic assertion. The myth of Persephone in these Italian American women’s memoirs epitomizes the archetype of origin so it becomes a treasure to be sought and rediscovered. These texts offer insightful perspective on myth while also posing questions of difference, gender, race, ethnicity, self-representation, and post-modern identity. Through an eclectic approach, including literary criticism, cultural studies, and anthropology, I argue that these three memoirs show how the authors’ physical and/or psychological journeys between Italy and America have helped them to overcome the anxieties experienced in relation to their Italian American hybrid identity. This thesis explores the themes of liminality, ethnicity, race, and hybridity to understand how the Persephone myth is used by the authors to articulate their condition as dwellers of the limen, and to help them come to terms with the trauma of loss, separation, and reunion.