Life Narratives of Queer Motherhood in Contemporary Italy
摘要
This chapter examines two autobiographical accounts of queer motherhood in contemporary Italy. The first is the memoir Nata con noi: storia di Barbara e delle sue mamme (Born with Us: The Story of Barbara and her Mothers) (2023) by writer Eugenia Romanelli and journalist Rory Cappelli. The second is the series of Instagram posts “Queering the Family” published by the late writer and activist Michela Murgia between May 12 and July 22, 2023. Frigeni’s analysis synthesizes insights from queer motherhood studies, matricentric feminism, and life narrative studies to argue that these texts challenge traditional notions of motherhood by disrupting monomaternalism and adopting a matricentric approach. Frigeni details how, by employing a strategy of queer disidentification, selected authors utilize the life narrative genre as a radical political act. In so doing, these authors demonstrate that queer realities and practices exist and resist within the contemporary Italian context, which is characterized by significant socio-political inequalities surrounding non-normative intimate relationships.