Gesti di madri, parole di figlie: scritture della diaspora italiana in Québec

Ferraro and Ravera examine writing by women of Italian origin in Quebec, arguing that it forms a coherent and important body of migrant literature. They show how these authors write from a position of “double marginality”: as women and as members of a migrant community within a linguistically and culturally divided Quebec. In their view, these texts do not present migration only as loss or exile, but also as a creative space where identity can be renegotiated through memory, language, and family history. The article first maps a broader cultural field by discussing Italian-Canadian women intellectuals and artists active in Quebec, including writers, translators, scholars, and filmmakers. It then focuses on Italo-Quebec women writers more specifically, stressing the diversity of their linguistic choices and literary forms. Some write in French, others in English, but all explore hybrid identities shaped by diaspora, multilingualism, and intergenerational memory. The core of the essay is a comparison between two emblematic writers, Bianca Zagolin and Carole David, through the mother-daughter relationship. In Zagolin’s "Une femme à la fenêtre", migration is represented as painful but also potentially liberating. The mother, Aurore, emigrates from Friuli to Quebec and gradually rebuilds her sense of self. Her bond with her daughter Adalie becomes a space of affection, language-sharing, and renewal. Even after Aurore’s tragic death, Adalie carries forward her emotional and symbolic legacy, so migration remains tied to continuity and survival. By contrast, in Carole David’s"Impala", the mother-daughter relationship is fractured. The mother, Connie, rejects the traditional maternal role associated with Italian diasporic culture: she does not transmit language, food practices, or emotional care. As a result, the daughter Louisa grows up in silence, loss, and disorientation. In this novel, genealogy is broken rather than sustained, and migration appears as a source of trauma and symbolic disconnection rather than belonging. The article concludes that these two novels represent opposite but complementary visions of Italian migrant experience in Quebec. Zagolin imagines motherhood as a fragile but real vehicle of transmission, rootedness, and hope. David, instead, portrays the collapse of transmission and the pain of an identity built around absence. Together, these works show how Italo-Quebec women’s writing has helped redefine contemporary Quebec literature by turning family memory, multilingualism, and female experience into central literary themes.