Keeping collective memory alive

Tufo di Minturno, 136 kilometres south-east of Rome, at the end of the 19th century: malaria is rife in the surrounding swamps. Local farmers are battling with dire poverty and nil prospects. Many of them pack a few bare essentials and flee to the USA, driven by the hope of a plot of land, livelihood and a better life. The mass migration out of Europe in the 19th century was a momentous event with profound effects in both America and Europe. “Despite this, the story has almost vanished from Europe’s collective consciousness,” says Melania G. Mazzucco.

Shedding light on the plight of refugees

Refugees and migration are key topics for the Rome-based author, who is currently lecturing at ETH Zurich as the De Sanctis Visiting Professor (see box). “I carry the story of a migrant in my heart,” she says. In her novel Vita – which won the Strega Prize, one of Italy’s most prestigious literature prizes, in 2003 – she reconstructs the migration story of her own family.

Back in 1903 her grandfather, at the tender age of 12, fled Tufo di Minturno to start a new life in New York. Based on her own family story and historical documents, Mazzucco blends fact and fiction to recount the life of Italian immigrants living in one of New York’s working-class neighbourhoods: the experiences of hostility and solidarity, and the temptations of petty crime to try and keep their heads above water in their new homeland.

Although the material is historical, Mazzucco sees many parallels with the current migrant crisis: “Just around the corner from me in Rome lives Mohammed, a young Moroccan, desperate for a better life in Italy. His hopes and frustrations as a foreigner in our society are similar to those my grandfather experienced back then in the USA.” But with a major difference, as Mazzucco stresses: “My grandfather was able to return to his home town. Many modern migrants can’t go back. If they are not granted permission to stay in Italy, they go underground and become invisible.”

The forgotten story of Europe’s mass migration, along with the recurring motifs and experiences, are the subject of a course that Mazzucco is giving at ETH Zurich this autumn. “I want to work with students to examine how migration stories have been told across the decades,” she says. To this end she is looking at poetry, literature, photography and painting ranging from the mid-19th century up to the present. “In the stories it is clear that the wish for a better life, and especially for greater freedom, is often like a fever,” Mazzucco explains. “My grandfather was afflicted by it, as are all the refugees that I spoke to in Lampedusa.”

She wants to make students aware of why Italy’s migration story is so underrepresented in the collective consciousness. “For a long time, the process of mass migration was felt to be a national disgrace,” she explains. “Italy had only just achieved national unification. The flight of hundreds of thousands of farmers and workers abroad certainly did not sit well the young country’s self-image.”

Giving invisible people a voice

During the course, the author also wants to make a connection to the current refugee situation in the Mediterranean. Here she incorporates many experiences from the research she did for her latest book, Io sono con te (I am with you). As part of her research, Mazzucco spent several months with Brigitte Zébé, a nurse from the Democratic Republic of Congo who was forced to flee the country when she refused to poison patients from the political opposition. Mazzucco witnessed first-hand as Zébé struggled to survive in Rome without work, money or accommodation.

Tens of thousands of immigrants currently live in Rome, with the majority ignored by the city’s residents. The author wants her book to give these “invisible people” a voice: “We have a responsibility to encourage and support these people as they find their feet in our community.”

Her calls for solidarity are not always welcome: after the publication of Io sono con te and joint TV appearances with Brigitte Zébé, she became the target of hateful comments from the political right through the internet, social media and phone calls.

During her research, however, the author encountered not only fear and ignorance, but also solidarity and a willingness to help others: from church organisations, and also from doctors and psychologists who give their services for free to tend to refugees’ physical and emotional wounds. Mazzucco hopes that her book will raise readers’ awareness of the precarious situation of refugees in Europe. “If I read a good book, there is always a little change inside of me,” says Mazzucco. “That’s the power of literature.”

Author, revolutionary and refugee

The author was delighted to be asked to give this course as part of a visiting professorship named after Francesco De Sanctis: “De Sanctis has written the most important history of Italian literature to date. He was not only an author, but also a politician, a revolutionary and in the end a refugee as well.” After reactionary forces took power in Italy, De Sanctis was placed under surveillance and eventually arrested in 1850. He spent three years in jail in Naples before fleeing to Switzerland via Malta. The story of the De Sanctis visiting professorship is thus also a refugee’s story. Mazzucco will certainly make sure that her students do not forget this.