Title:: [[Unspeakable Women]] Authors:: [[Robin Pickering-Iazzi]] Tags:: #fiction #shortstories #translatedfiction Read:: [[2025-01-27]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFX9m1XOslh/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[The Feminist Press]], 1993 - Original Copyright:: 1993 - Pages:: 118 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9781558610637 ## Annotations A collection of very short stories written by women culled from Italian dailies during the 1920s/30s (in this sense they’re fictional reminiscences of the Brazilian crônica). I was not familiar with any of them, despite one Nobel laureate (Grazia Deledda), and I don’t think there are many English translations of their works outside this volume.  The reasons for this are ironic. As Pickering-Iazzi notes in the Afterword, as evidenced by their work, these women writers contributed greatly to Italian life and culture during the Mussolini years. It wasn’t until after the war that the critical establishment dismissed or ignored their writings, thinking they were “merely ‘reproduced’ conservative ideology.” Writes Pickering-Iazzi, “Thus, scholars are faced with the irony that postwar literary criticism managed to accomplish the work of Fascist ideologues.”  Yikes.  To be honest, few of the stories jumped out at me, except for Ada Negri’s The Movies, which is beautiful. But appreciating what these writers were able to do, and how they navigated the politics and cultural pressures to do it, is worthwhile.