Jessica Kluthe, author of Rosina, the Midwife, shows us how "elsewhere stories" inform the Canadian experience, and shares her list of Italian-Canadian writing.

June is Italian Heritage Month, which is a great time to grab a steaming cappuccino and a plateful of crumbly biscotti and read the works of some Italian-Canadian authors, or listen to them read at literary events happening across the country.

While researching for Rosina, The Midwife, I took a trip to Calabria, Italy with my nonno (who, you may be interested to know, packed along his own jar of Superstore-brand instant coffee). It was the summer of 2010, and I felt like I was making a counter-journey—a return to a place known to me mostly for its exits. Rosina, my great-great grandmother, had stayed behind in Calabria, Italy while the rest of her family left for Edmonton decades ago; while she died long before I was born, I wanted to see where she lived, and talk to those who knew her at the end of her life.

Before I left, while working on early chapters based on family stories I had wanted to know where these stories fit in to history: I had learned that mass village-based migrations out of southern Italy—the Mezzogiorno—were common. The height of this movement was in the 1950s, when booming post-war economies in North America looked particularly attractive to those living in Italy’s agrarian south, suffering under the weight of too many people and too little land. And the place certainly felt empty when we arrived that summer afternoon during the village siesta; it seemed as if we were visiting a forgotten historic site.

But while standing at the top of a knotty hillside village and gazing out at the deep green, postcard-like vista of farms, rivers, and snaking roadways, I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could leave such a beautiful place. While my nanni back home had thought it important my nonno travel with me to Italy since I didn’t know the language, she’d told me that while on the two-week voyage to Canada on the Andrea Doria years ago, she’d vowed herself never to return to Italy. As I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with my nonno and looked across the village at its fields to spot his childhood home, and listened to him speak his first language, Calabrese, with ease, I wanted to know more about why she didn’t return, and more about this place, my nonno’s hometown, and my heritage. 

Up until this point, my engagements with this history had been shallow. But I left Calabria with souvenirs unlike those I’d brought home from any other trip before—no tiny flags, no specialty chocolate, no rocks or shells or trinkets, but instead, I brought home notes from interviews, photocopies of birth and death certificates, and stories. When I arrived home, I began devouring the works of Italian-Canadian writers (even faster than I can devour a bowl of limone gelato).

These works span genres and speak to the Italian Canadian experience—from within Canadian borders and beyond. These works together helped me situate my family’s story within a historical and political context that explained why, for instance, my grandmother vowed to never return to Italy, and why my grandparents, who desired to be fully Canadian, decided not to teach their children to speak Italian.

A lot of us in Canada have parents or grandparents who came here from somewhere across the globe and, like me, many have probably sat at the kitchen table listening to the stories that have made their way across borders. Even if your history is not rooted in Italy, you may find some lines connected to your own heritage in the works rooted in Italian-Canadian places and lives: perhaps it’s the weight of a permanent goodbye, or the way a foreign city feels heavy on the tongue. Before I formally started writing my book, I read Janice Kulyk-Keefer’s Ukrainian-Canadian family memoir Honey and Ashes and I recognized that same pull to the past, and the connection to a place that existed in imagination and family story. We have such a rich body of literature that preserves, speaks to, and helps us engage with these elsewhere places and stories that inform the Canadian identity. These works can connect us to the stories of how we got here and tell us something about ourselves.

I’ll be celebrating Italian Heritage Month by reading some of the diverse works of Italian-Canadian writers, poets, and historians, and I hope you’ll join me! I’m going to start by re-reading Nino Ricci’s In a Glass House, a story of a young boy’s arrival and struggle on his estranged father’s farm in Ontario after the loss of his mother and, in some ways, to the place she had raised him in Italy. And then I will be reading Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth, in which an Italian-Canadian woman named Bianca tells the story of her dear cousin Marco, whose life is disintegrating along with his city of Venice, Italy.

I’ve compiled an ever-growing list of Italian-Canadian books and works with an Italian focus. While you’re reading, consider a food pairing: enjoy a bowl or two of gelato (easier to eat with a book in hand than if served in a cone), or a too-large square of Tiramisu.

Jessica Kluthe's Rosina, The Midwife was released in March, 2013 with Brindle & Glass Publishers. Some of her shorter work has appeared in Canadian literary journals and online publications (most recently in the fabulous Little Fiction). She holds a B. A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta (2009), and an MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria (2011).