Clara Sereni lived an extraordinary life in extraordinary times. Born in Rome in 1946, she grew up in a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals whose influential role in Italian politics and in the anti-fascist resistance could not but inform Sereni's own future social and political engagement. Coming of age during the turbulent Sixties, Sereni embraced the struggle for women's rights, social justice, and political reform, championing Eduardo Galeano's notion that utopia always stands at the horizon, and one must keep walking to reach it.
Activist, journalist, writer, translator, but also musician, disability rights champion, home-maker, and wife; her multiple and often conflicting roles emerge in a rich and multifaceted writing, increasingly balanced between the public and the private, history with a capital "H", and personal memoir.
Her first major success, 'Casalinghitudine (Keeping House)', explores the juncture of the public and the personal as important historical moments merge with her workaday memories of cooking. Her remarkable historical novel 'Il Gioco dei Regni (The Game of Kingdoms)' traces her family history from the early 20th century through the post-war period, chronicling their personal lives and their involvement in Italian politics and Jewish intellectual life. Subsequent works such as 'Taccuino di un'ultimista' ('Notebook of a Meek Woman') and 'Passami il sale' ('Pass me the Salt') tackle the difficulties of negotiating life as a political figure, wife, and mother of a disabled son. In works such as 'Eppure' ('And Yet'), 'Le Merendanze' ('Afternoon Snacks') and 'Una storia chiusa' ('A Closed Story'), as well as 'Il lupo mercante' ('The Mongering Wolf') and 'Via Ripetta 155' ('155 Ripetta Street'), she again intertwines private experiences and public circumstances, raising questions related to gender, class, disability, the elderly, and sustainability.
This is the first volume that brings together the critical aspects of Clara Sereni's work, providing a comprehensive view of the writer, the intellectual, the politician, and the woman.
As we reflect on the 20th century, Sereni's long-spanning writing career stands as an important document of its struggles, its conflicts, and, like Sereni herself, its enduring idealism.
Industry Reviews
This extraordinary collection dedicated to internationally famed Clara Sereni promises to become the essential reference for understanding the rich breadth of this author's creative works in Italian literature, society, and politics, as well as how they speak to issues of strong concern today. While drawing out the varied aspects of her legacy, the spectrum of readings by acclaimed experts includes personal essays, English translations of short stories, and acute studies on such formative elements in Sereni's arts of writing and daily life as Jewish identity, mothering children with disabilities, music, generational foodways, memory, and ecology, which are examined in their microspatial and global dimensions. This singular volume will surely engage general readers and scholars interested in literature, gender studies, disability studies, anti-Fascism, social justice, and Jewish studies.
Robin Pickering-Iazzi
Professor Emerita of Italian and Comparative Literature
Department of Global Studies
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
This is a welcome and important contribution to the wide-ranging work of writer, intellectual and activist Clara Sereni. The multifaceted volume is an invaluable addition to the growing scholarship on Sereni and highlights the impact her work has had on global feminisms and practices.
Eugenia Paulicelli
Professor of Italian Studies
Queens College and The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
