Born in Brooklyn to Italian parents, author and translator Claudia Durastanti knows well how it feels to be a stranger. Her family has a long history of migration – her great-great-grandfather first moved from the south of Italy to the States, and her grandparents followed him later. However, when Durastanti was six years old, her mother decided to move back to the Basilicata region in the south of Italy. She then lived in Rome for a few years, where she majored in literature and anthropology and worked in the publishing industry before moving to London, which became her home for nine years. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Durastanti was planning to move back to her native city. Instead, as the world went into lockdown, she was forced to live in four houses in three different countries. Actually, moving between countries and languages is in her blood, and the feeling of being a stranger is natural to her.
MOTHER
Last year, Durastanti’s latest work La straniera was shortlisted for the Strega, the biggest Italian literary prize. The writer conceived of this autobiographical novel as an act of love towards her mother, describing their bond as “physical tiredness.” In her book, Durastanti also describes her parents’ bohemian lifestyle, which came into conflict with her own struggle to fit into Italian society and feel accepted by the community.
DISABILITY AND LANGUAGE
Through the recollection of childhood memories – she vividly describes the neighbourhood in Brooklyn in which she grew up – and all the places where she has settled down, Durastanti shapes a deeper understanding of her identity.
Disability and language are two pivotal subjects in La Straniera – both Durastanti’s parents are deaf, a fact that has had a huge impact on her use of language. Making physical disability visible in her work allows her to reflect on language phenomena such as inherited expressions, the use of irony or metaphors.
TWO LANGUAGES
Being bilingual, Durastanti can write both in English and Italian, using English for nonfictional texts and Italian for fiction. In a conversation with Speak Up, the author explained the reason for this.
Claudia Durastanti (American accent):Italianness – this is a cliche, but it’s true– to me, it’s inherently a very lyrical and very Baroque and very poetic language. And also, since for me the sense of time and action is so important... the tenses in Italian – there are many tenses... I always felt there were more possibilities to express where you are in time, you have multiple choices. It feels like a garden of forking paths.
Instead, I write in English, I do, but I write non-fiction in English. And I think it’s more crystal-clear – it helps me understand more when I’m thinking.
TRANSLATION
Translation and writing are interwoven in Durastanti’s work to the extent that, she argues, one wouldn’t exist without the other.
Claudia Durastanti: I cannot write anymore if I don’t translate books. If translation is not a part of my process I think my writing would be at a dead end by now. So translation for me is constantly nurturing my own thoughts about language. Every translation, of course, is a personal journey, and to detect some good vibrant translations, somehow you end up putting... even if you’re very respectful of the words, but you end up putting [in] certain ideas.
MISTAKES
In La straniera Durastanti reflects widely on language, even defending the right to make mistakes, which she believes have great creative power.
Claudia Durastanti: I’m a big supporter of mistakes and faux pas and language. I worked for a cultural magazine, a music magazine, years ago. And when I submitted my pieces and people revising the articles were like, “We don’t say this in Italian. This syntax is so wrong.” And someone would say, “Oh, she’s American.” That was not the right answer. I lived in the States till I was six. I was educated, fully educated in Italy. My weird syntax, alien syntax, was because of my mother, essentially, who gave me the Italian language by speaking it to me and then I went to school. But I had this family lexicon that was deeply broken and was very fragmented, which is typical of migrant families. And if you consider deafness, which is a specific disability that affects speech and language and hearing and how we phrase sentences...
LITERARY FESTIVAL
In 2016, Durastanti co-founded the Festival of Italian Literature in London. She told us a bit more about the project.
Claudia Durastanti: The topic that, of course, interested us was [the] clash of languages, feeling displacement, the new political project of Brexit, and what was going to come out of that and the city of London, really. What is interesting about [it] is also that every year there’s a team specific to it. And right now, as I sense it, it’s getting more and more sensitive to climate change issues and space issues in sustainability. And it’s interesting to work with this idea of what is Italian culture abroad and what is Italian culture at home. And so unavoidably, you have different answers. You have different forces. And to me, speaking to Italian migrants around the world, of course, you speak the same language, but is there already another language? You have ideas of home that somehow freeze in time, and you actually rebuild a sense of Italianness, if that means anything. So for me, it’s interesting right now to deal with this idea of Italy out of Italy and how you bring it back home.
LONDON
After nine years in London, Durastanti felt she couldn’t continue living there because of an accumulation of motives.
Claudia Durastanti: More than Brexit for me, what was really shocking [was] when the Grenfell Tower burned up. And that’s when I realized about the costs to live [of living ] in the city. You can be different from everyone else if you can afford it, really. Right now it’s becoming mostly class war, I would say. It’s very hard to get access to place. And I felt that I didn’t want to be in a place like that. And then also I think it was a mismatch because London was running very fast into [in] a precise direction. So actually for me, it was interesting as a writer because it radicalized my political opinions in so many ways… my ideas about society, about culture, about welfare, about accessibility to a city. So it was a great observing point, but all the time I kept wondering about the cost.