The Italian American Family between Past and Present: 'The Place I Call Home' (2012) by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, and 'Mystics in the Family' (2013) by Maria Famà

The creative output of prominent Italian American writers such as Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Maria Famà has long been characterized by the persistent presence of parents, forebears, and relatives, as well as by the seemingly unsolvable tensions between past and present, between the cherished memories of one’s land of origin and the American way of life. Contrary to what has been illustrated so far and is conventionally assumed by most scholars, this paper sets out to demonstrate that the notion of family in the most recent works of Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Maria Famà has undergone a subtle but noteworthy transformation, shifting from being a cluster of blood ties, a tightly knit network of mutually protective relations, to a much broader concept, that stretches to embrace humankind