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Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian
Postcolonial Literature 1st Edition

Chiara Giuliani
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Home, Memory and
Belonging in Italian
Postcolonial Literature
Chiara Giuliani
Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian
“This lucid and finely crafted book explores how migration has made ‘home’
a constantly evolving concept and how practices of home-making can extend
through memory and imagination to include spaces as diverse as the call centre
and the train station. Providing detailed new readings of a range of postcolonial
texts in Italian, this book will be essential reading for all scholars and students
who engage with cultural representations of migration.”
—Emma Bond, Reader, University of St Andrews, Scotland
“Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature is an inspira-

tional book that provides a compelling analysis of how migration literature has
negotiated and reconceived notions of home. Giuliani brilliantly explores how
domestic and public spaces are reconfigured in postcolonial literature, allowing us
to grasp the complexity of the lived experiences of migrants. Giuliani’s engaging
work offers an innovative perspective on migration culture, and it is an essential
reading for anyone interested in Postcolonial Studies, Memory Studies and Space
Studies.”
—Simone Brioni, Associate Professor, Stony Brook University, USA
Chiara Giuliani
Home, Memory
and Belonging
in Italian Postcolonial
Literature
Chiara Giuliani
University College Cork
Cork, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-030-75062-6 ISBN 978-3-030-75063-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75063-3
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Acknowledgments
This book is the product of years of research during which time I met
wonderful people who helped and inspired me and to whom I am greatly
indebted. First and foremost, I would like to thank my former Ph.D.
supervisor Derek Duncan, who has always been enlightening, honest and
generous with his time and expertise. His constant guidance, support and
encouragement is really appreciated. My sincere thanks to Emma Bond
and Jennifer Burns, for their careful reading of the dissertation, and their
meticulous and in-depth feedback that informed the writing of this book.
My gratitude goes also to the School of Modern Languages at the Univer-
sity of St Andrews for their generous support in funding my Ph.D., the
colleagues, especially in the Italian Department, and to all the friends I
met there. A special thanks to all the people in the Department of Italian
at the University of Bristol where I started my Ph.D.
My heartfelt thanks goes also to all my stellar colleagues in the
Department of Italian at University College Cork, always welcoming
and supportive. Grazie di cuore. I am also indebted to the Centre for
Advanced Studies in Literatures and Cultures (CASiLaC), for allowing
me to attend and organise conferences and events. I feel extremely lucky
to work in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at UCC,
where I am surrounded by fantastic people willing to share their time
and interests. A special word of gratitude goes to my generous colleagues
and friends Céire Broderick, Kevin Cawley, Dónal Hassett and Ailbhe Ní
Ghearbhuigh for reading various parts of this book and providing such
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
useful feedback, stimulating comments and incessant words of encour-

agement. Thanks in particular to Kevin for his relentless support, patience
and irony. Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.
Writing a book on home implied an endless reflection on my own
understanding of home, even more so during a global pandemic that
imposed long periods of isolation. Thanks to all my friends in Corinaldo,
here in Cork, and to those in other parts of the world that I have not
seen for so long, but that I always feel close. Thanks for being present in
person and virtually when the circumstances would not allow otherwise.
Finally, thanks to my family, my parents, my brother Riccardo and
Giorgia, you trusted and supported all my choices without question but
always with grace, kindness and a good amount of humour. This book is
dedicated to you, to Elia, and to my grandparents, thanks for showing me
what home means. Grazie.
Contents
1 Spaces of Memory, Spaces of Belonging: Home

in Postcolonial Italy 1
1.1 Home and Home Spaces 1
1.2 Home Spaces in Italian Society 6
1.3 Home Spaces in Italian Postcolonial Literature 11
1.4 Outline of the Book 15
References 20
2 Termini Train Station: A Place to Arrive, a Place
to Leave and to Live 27
2.1 Introduction 27
2.2 Termini Train Station and its Uses 30
2.3 Termini Railway Station: A Motionless Journey
Through Space and Time 38
2.4 Conclusion 50
References 55
3 The Phone Centre, a Place to Call Home 63
3.1 Introduction 63
3.2 Phone Centres and Terrorism 66
3.3 The Phone Centre and the “Almost Home” Role 78
3.4 Conclusion 86
References 91
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 Spaces of Residence and Transnational Microcosms

in Italy 97
4.1 Introduction 97
4.2 Housing, Squatting and Mobile Homes 100
4.3 The Palazzo: A Failed Home Space 106
4.4 The Palazzina: A Transnational Microcosm 111
4.5 Conclusion 123
References 129
5 Rooms as Home Spaces: The Bathroom
and the Bedroom as Memory Containers 137
5.1 Introduction 137
5.2 The Kitchen, an Absent Place 139
5.3 “I Hate Confined Spaces. Except This Bathroom”.
Ahmed, Amedeo and the Bathroom 141
5.4 Smelling the Absence: “Usually She Would Shut Herself
up in the Bedroom”. The Bedroom in Rhoda 152
5.5 Conclusion 159
References 164
6 Conclusion—At Home, Everywhere 169
References 178
Index 181
CHAPTER 1
Spaces of Memory, Spaces of Belonging:

Home in Postcolonial Italy
1.1 Home and Home Spaces

On the night of 8 March 2020, the then Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe
Conte, addressed the nation live in relation to the alarming reproduction
rate of the Covid-19 virus that has to date cost so many lives. After a brief
report on the situation, Conte announced that he was about to sign an
order that “could be summarised with the expression ‘io resto a casa’ [I
stay home]” (my translation), and that it would entail a significant change
in Italians’ lives and habits.1 Rainbows and colourful drawings started to
populate windows to show support in this uncertain situation that would
reshape everyone’s existence from that moment onwards. The expression
“io resto a casa” was soon turned into a trending hashtag on all social
media and other platforms. Italy was the first European country to impose
a national lockdown, but it was soon followed by other nations whose
governments also asked their citizens to stay at home to curb the spread of
the virus. In 2020, people had to renegotiate new ways of feeling at home
with new ways of inhabiting it, while also turning it into a classroom, a
workplace, an entertainment venue and anything else they reimagined it
to be.
Although it created many challenges, like working from home or being
unable to work at all, isolating from friends and families, renouncing to
any form of social activities outside the household, to name but a few,
the request seemed a pretty clear and straightforward one: stay in to
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
C. Giuliani, Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial
Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75063-3_1
2 C. GIULIANI
prevent the spread of Covid-19. One of the “unforeseeable” gaps of the

law, however, materialised a couple of days later when a Ukrainian home-
less man—with a regular residency permit—was fined in Milan for “being
outside” and thus having broken the law. When the police stopped him,
he was on the street, unable to provide a rightful justification for his pres-
ence there. He was not on his way to work, he was not going to receive
medical care, therefore, according to the police, there was no need for
him not to have “stayed at home” (Dazzi 2020).
A couple of weeks later, an Italian man living in a campervan in
Rome was fined by the Carabinieri, while parked next to a public
garden. According to a local newspaper, the man had been living in that
campervan, donated to him by local charities, for approximately three
years. Just as for the previous example in Milan, when questioned, the
man could not provide any evidence to justify his presence there as, again,
he had not left the house to go to work nor to seek medical attention,
thus his being in the van was against the law (Sina 2020). Furthermore,
in this case, the man was not fined just because he was outside the home,
but because he was found inside a vehicle, thus he was seen as “on the
move” (Sina 2020).
These are only two among many similar examples that took place in
the months following the first lockdown, but the problem is still ongoing.
According to the law signed by Conte in March 2020, not abiding by the
rule of remaining at home entails a penal charge and the payment of a
fee, which is extremely problematic in certain situations of destitution.
Thanks to the interventions of different social rights activist groups and
of the association Avvocato di strada [Street lawyer] that works to defend
the rights of people “senza fissa dimora” [without a fixed abode], many
of the charges were either voluntarily retracted or dismissed by a judge
(an example is provided here: Comunicato Stampa 2020). The issue,
however, is not about the fine itself, rather is about the material impos-
sibility of complying with the law, because, to put it simply, a homeless
person does not have a home, at least not in the conventional sense.
The two examples provided, beyond offering a more multifaceted
understanding of the difficulties experienced by people during lock-
down, they also question the initial slogan #iorestoacasa [#Istayhome] in
compelling and problematic ways. The multiplicity of meanings associated
with the word casa, which in Italian is both home, as the place of resi-
dence, but also the wide array of feelings associated with it, made the “io
resto a casa” enforcement more complex and difficult to interpret than
1 SPACES OF MEMORY, SPACES OF BELONGING … 3
what it might have seemed. While the slogan was obviously conveying
a clear message, the different situations in which it had to be enforced
challenged some of the conventional meanings associated with the idea
of home.
The main problem in these particular cases was the impossibility of
staying at home when there is no home, but the two examples also
conjures an unquestionable interpretation of home as a clear, circum-
scribed, fixed, and private place. In the first example, by being in the
publicness of the urban space, the man is not inside the private walls
of a house, thus he is seen as not at home. In the second example,
the campervan is viewed only as a vehicle: for its ability to move and
move the people inside it, rather than its potential to house people, to
provide stability and refuge. Even though the van was parked, the man
was considered to be on the move, which in itself seems to be diametri-
cally opposed to the idea of home. The inclusion of these examples here
is not to question whether the two men “felt at home” in these specific
circumstances, but rather to draw attention towards a common defini-
tion of home, which often does not include more nuanced and particular
experiences. The idea of home that grounds this book manifests itself
as a plurality, deeply rooted in space while constantly changing to adapt
to the evolving circumstances within and outside the subjects. An idea
of home that enables a sense of belonging attached to a multiplicity of
spaces. In the following chapters, I investigate a selection of places and
how they are inhabited by migrant characters in Italian postcolonial liter-
ature. By establishing a series of relations and putting in place different
kinds of home-making practices, characters are able to experience these
places, either public or private, as home spaces .
Home spaces rely on an idea of home that is modifiable, personal and
spatial, that allows for the establishment of roots, multiple roots (Weil
1987, 41) and multiple feelings of belonging. Edward Relph remarked
that “to have roots in a place is to have a secure point from which
to look out on the world, a firm grasp of one’s own position in the
order of things” (1976, 41). He also specified that the “secure point”
he refers to is the home, which is not the house where you live, but it
is the place with which you establish strong connections, with which you
develop an attachment, making it an “irreplaceable centre of significance”
(Relph 1976, 41). The analysis carried out in this book considers different
irreplaceable centres of significance, different home spaces .
4 C. GIULIANI
Home spaces is plural to suggest the possibility of feeling at home in

different spaces while marking a detachment from the idea of a fixed
and clearly identifiable home. Analysing home in a context of migration,
Sarah Ahmed suggests that “the narrative of leaving home produces too
many homes and hence no Home, too many places in which memories
attach themselves through the carving out of inhabitable space” (1999,
330). I use home spaces rather than homes because, while “home” is often
used to refer to the space of residence, of domesticity, the house, as
well as to the local and national community, the inclusion of the word
“spaces” highlights how these are not necessarily linked to a housing
space nor a country, rather to a variety of environments. Furthermore, the
equal emphasis on both terms—on home and space—is a way of taking
some distance from the idea of home, as the original and only place of
belonging. Using home spaces instead offers the opportunity of experi-
encing different places of familiarity, of belonging, where the characters
feel “as almost […] at home” (Ahmed 1999, 331).
According to Blunt and Dowling, home can be seen as “a spatial
imaginary […] a place/site, a set of feelings/cultural meanings, and the
relations between the two” (2006, 2–3). Home is indeed also used to
refer to a series of feelings triggered and embodied by specific spaces.
Depending on the nature of these feelings the idea of home can be related
to happiness and safety, as well as to pain, hatred and fear, and it can also
become “a site of resistance” (hooks 1990, 43–44). If we consider the
previously mentioned slogan #iorestoacasa, the implicit suggestion was
that people “are safe(r) at home”, because, by staying in, they would have
less exposure to the virus. Nonetheless, the number of domestic violence
cases has increased exponentially during the recent lockdowns (Refugees
2020; Da Rold 2020), challenging the assumption of home, as the space
of domesticity and privacy, as a safe environment. The home spaces anal-
ysed here, on the other hand, are all experienced as safe environments
because they allow the characters to establish a feeling of belonging with
the place and with the other people inhabiting that place. By drawing on
different theoretical approaches that address different ways of appropri-
ating space, this book interrogates which specific public and private places
are turned into home spaces by different characters. It also investigates the
processes put in place—voluntarily or not—by the characters, as well as
the specific features of the selected places that enable those home-making
processes.
The many meanings associated with home make it a challenging and

yet fascinating concept that attracts the attention of a wide range of
disciplines and perspective as evidenced also by the steadily increasing
number of studies that by providing flexible descriptions of what home
could or should be, as well as what home is not, apply home as a crit-
ical lens in different socio-geographical contexts.2 While many studies
exploring home and migration focus on broader ideas of homes (the
homeland, diasporic communities, practices of border crossings, etc.) this
study focuses on specific places. The places considered here are public
(the train station and the phone centre), semi-private (the palazzo [apart-
ment block]), and private (the bathroom and the bedroom).3 These are
turned into home spaces by migrant characters through a series of home-
making practices. Migration, either experienced directly by the characters
or by the characters’ parents, makes home a constantly evolving concept
that needs to be redefined and apprehended in relation to specific, often
evolving, situations.
In a context of migration home is also a process. A lens which was
suggested to read these complex dynamics as constantly ongoing is that
of “homing” as articulated by Sara Ahmed and others in the “Introduc-
tion” to the edited volume Uprootings/Regroundings, where “homing”
was described as an inseparable process from the one of migrating (Ahmed
et al. 2003, 8). Paolo Boccagni interprets “homing” as “people’s evolving
potential to attach a sense of home to their life circumstances” and,
through home-making practices, “migrants – as exemplary of people
who went through extended detachment from their earlier homes –
try to reproduce, reconstruct and possibly rebuild meaningful home-like
settings, feelings and relationships” (Boccagni 2017, 23–26). “Homing”,
understood as a constant process of establishing and renewing feelings of
belonging, is intrinsic in my articulation of home spaces .
The home spaces investigated here recur in Italian postcolonial narra-
tives as meaningful places for the characters that inhabit them, because
they have the power to modify those places, to make them their own.
Mary Douglas affirms that home is “located in space, but it is not neces-
sarily a fixed space. […] It need not be a large space, but space there must
be, for home starts by bringing some space under control” (1991, 289).
In the case of migration, this does not necessarily happen in a house, or
more generally in a place of dwelling, but rather in any place capable
of triggering meaningful processes of remembering. The characters at
the centre of this book are almost exclusively first-generation migrants
6 C. GIULIANI
whose processes of remembering often become a way to connect a specific

location in Italy to a moment, a person or a situation, in their past.
Accordingly, home spaces are transnational, as they bridge past and present
locations as irreplaceable parts of one new space, of one home space.
Thanks to different home-making practices and the work of memory,
a place in Italy conjures up a past place that was experienced as home,
or—as I will point out in Chapter 5—a beloved person, whose absence
was preventing the characters from feeling at home.4 They are transna-
tional also from a collective perspective—as is the case of the public places
investigated in Chapter 2 and 3—because by gathering people that share
a similar experience of migration, but also a language and a culture, they
are perceived as collective home spaces by different diasporic communities.
Home spaces are forward looking; the kinds of relationships that the
characters establish with those places, the attachments to those places,
bring about a sense of belonging. They create a sense of community while
also providing the characters with a sense of security and familiarity that
guide them towards the negotiation of their own sense of self, between
who they were in the past location and who they are now, as “identity is a
question of memory, and memories of ‘home’ in particular” (Morley and
Robins 2002, 90). It is the “sense of self, of one’s ‘identity’, which corre-
sponds to various conceptualizations of home” (Al-Ali and Koser 2001,
3), and which is retrieved in these particular places, that helps characters
to find ways to belong, not necessarily to Italy, but rather to find home
in themselves and in their own story.
1.2 Home Spaces in Italian Society

In her book Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009), bell hooks reflects on
her own experience of the search for home, what home means to her
now and what it meant when she left the place of her childhood. She
affirms: “all my life I have searched for a place of belonging, a place that
would become home. […] It was the place where wounds were attended
to. Home was the place where the me of me mattered. Home was the
place I longed for, it was not where I lived” (hooks 2009, 215). This
way of describing home as the place where “the me of me mattered”,
reiterates the role of belonging mentioned above, but it also complicates
it further. It suggests that the place “where the me of me mattered” is not
just the place with which a subject establishes a feeling of belonging, it is
the place where that belonging is acknowledged and reciprocated, where
“the me of me mattered” also to someone else. The places selected in this

book, especially the train station, the phone centre and the palazzo, whose
relevance is provided by their scope for sociality, allow the characters to
belong, to matter, in very personal and specific ways. At the same time,
they suggest Italian society’s failure in supplying that same sense of mutual
belonging. This lack of an acknowledged belonging is emphasised firstly
by the difficulties experienced by migrants in receiving (and/or renewing)
a residency permit, as well as the problematic citizenship law that does
not recognise them as officially, and legally, belonging to Italian society.5
The lack of regular documentation prevents migrants from participating
in every aspect of society, from being able to access proper housing, or
fully availing of the health system, finding a regular job with a regular
contract and thus applying for any social benefit. Even with a residency
permit, which is often temporary, there are no certainties that it will be
renewed nor for how long, an element that contributes to a constant
situation of instability.6 This is even more unsettling when it comes to
children of migrants, who despite being born and raised in Italy have to
wait until legal age to start their citizenship acquisition process, due to
the ius sanguinis law effective in Italy.7
Secondly, even when they are centrally located, the places included in
this book are marginalised; it is a marginality “produced as a set of spatial
and power relations” (Forgacs 2014, 5). In readdressing her definition of
“margin”, hooks expands it by including the possibility for the margin to
become a “radical creative space which affirms and sustains our subjec-
tivity, which gives us a new location from which to articulate our sense of
the world” (hooks 1989, 23). As the analysis of Termini train station and
phone centres will emphasise, the presence of migrants in the urban space,
especially when visible, is frequently portrayed as dangerous by the media.
On the other hand, when they are turned into home spaces , they enable
the characters’ articulation of their “sense of the world” (hooks 1989,
23). Jaqueline Andall and Derek Duncan pointed out that migrants’
act of settlement involves an encounter and interaction with an established

environment. […] Conceptualized as contact zones in the colonial litera-
ture and diasporic space in postcolonial discourse, these interactions tend
not to be neutrally received and accepted but rather have been and are
frequently contested and contentious spaces of mediation and interaction.
(2005, 3)
8 C. GIULIANI
The settlement of migrants in Italy, their visibility in the urban space, the
sharing of dwellings such as flats, buildings and, in a wider perspective,
cities with Italian non-migrants, along with the launching of commer-
cial enterprises, has been frequently depicted by the press as a dangerous
consequence of the failed enforcement of security laws and Italy’s lack of
means to welcome them.
The lack of an inclusive law on citizenship, and the representation of
migrants as a threat, are all elements that challenge the materialisation of
that mutual belonging mentioned above. Amara Lakhous, whose work
features prominently in this book, answering the question of why space
is so important in his novels, affirms that space is crucial because it is
in space “that the contradictions of Italian society emerge […]. Space is
the protagonist of the novel […] because everything happens there: the
encounter, the clash, the communication, the love” (in Brogi 2011, 2–
3, my translation). These spaces of encounter, love but also clash and
conflict, these contact zones allow for the creation of new spaces of
belonging, that I interpret as home spaces .
One of the elements that connects all the different practices that trans-
form an ordinary – at times unexpected – place into a home space is the
agency that characters are able to exercise over it. From the decision to
have traditional food at the train station to the choice of locking oneself
in the bathroom and deal with personal trauma, that agency makes those
places different from any other place in Italy. According to Michel De
Certeau “a place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with
which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. […] In
short, space is a practiced place” (2011, 117). Therefore, the characters
analysed here transform lieu into a specific kind of space and some places
which are not conventionally linked to the image of the home are prac-
ticed so as to transform them into home spaces . Emma Bond expands De
Certeau’s distinction between place and space locating it in a transnational
context, she argues that “the trans-national thus offers the possibility
to connect place […], with a more fluid idea of space which is akin to
Bauman’s flexible notion of a habitat of meaning, […] it is the text itself
that becomes trans-national in the very practice of its construction” (Bond
2014, 423). The text is transnational and so are the spaces it represents,
insomuch as they manage to accommodate the characters’ abilities to turn
them into home spaces . The ways in which characters turn these contact
zones into home spaces , recall what De Certeau referred to as a “tactic”, as
“a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. […] The
space of a tactic is the space of the other” (2011, 36–37). Regardless of

the space, however, memory, as the process of remembering, is the essen-
tial tactic to turn a place into a home space, as suggested above. However,
when these tactics, which I here refer to as home-making practices, occur
in public spaces, especially at the train station and in the phone centres,
they are perceived as problematic, as a dangerous transgression.
While relying on different kinds of theoretical approaches to unpack
different home-making practices, my analysis is also informed, especially
in the first half of the book, by geocriticism, which allows me to provide
a more comprehensive investigation of these spaces and their multiple
representations. In particular, I interpret multifocalisation, one of the
tenets of geocriticism, as a crucial element for my analysis of public places
as it enables the combination of a variety of points of view on the places
selected. Bertrand Westphal defines these perspectives as representative
of three different points of view. The endogenous, as the “autochthonic
vision of space”, exogenous which “reflects the vision of the traveler” and
finally the allogeneous point of view (Westphal 2011, 128). The latter
is for my argument particularly valuable, as it “lies somewhere between
the other two. It is characteristic of those who have settled into a place,
becoming familiar with it, but still remaining foreigners in the eyes of
the indigenous population” (Westphal 2011, 129). Furthermore, “from
a postcolonial perspective, the allogeneous point of view embraces a
stereophonic focalization, which promotes the emergence of third space”
(Westphal 2011, 129). In order to acknowledge the emergence of a third
space, which is here specifically considered as a home space, I will provide
a multifocal reading of the train station and phone centres by expanding
the corpus to also include journalistic representations.
Thus, for Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, I will examine two kinds of
sources, (i) a selection of Italian postcolonial novels and short stories and,
(ii) a collection of newspaper articles. The literary texts included were
all written in Italian by authors who have experienced migration, either
directly or through their families.8 More significantly, however, the choice
was linked to the content of the texts. In all the novels and short stories
selected, the characters share a journey of migration to Italy, either under-
took by themselves or by their parents and, in all the texts, a key role is
played by space. They are examples of postcolonial literature in which
“place plays a significant role in how one defines one’s own identity and,
equally, how that identity is defined by others” (Teverson and Upstone
2011, 2).
10 C. GIULIANI
In relation to the journalistic sources, articles were selected primarily

from the two Italian newspapers with the widest circulation, the Corriere
della sera and La Repubblica (with particular attention to the local
editions of Rome when I discuss Termini train station). I have also
consulted the online archives of La Stampa and Il Giornale, from which
I have included a few articles when relevant for the discussion.9 For all
these, I have consulted the timespan comprised between January 1990
and December 2020. The starting date is linked to a more regular media
attention towards issues relating to migration. According to Alessandro
Dal Lago, the early 1990s mark the beginning of the consideration and
representation of migrants “as the causes of the social crisis and of collec-
tive fears that marked the end of the so-called First Republic” (2004, 25,
my translation).10 However, the majority of the articles quoted are from
the two decades, 1990–2010, as during that time both Termini and the
phone centres were particularly visible and important places for reasons
that I will discuss in the respective chapters.
The literary and journalistic sources provide me with a wide variety of
representations of the same space. The different—explicit or implicit—
political stances of the selected papers, which inevitably determine the
editorial style of the articles, are considered as equally relevant contri-
butions to the portrayal of these places. Additionally, the presence of
different voices in the novels and in the articles contributes with an equally
wide multiplicity of viewpoints that include the exogenous, endogenous
and allogenous perspectives advocated in the geocritical approach. There-
fore the spaces are not analysed by comparing and contrasting journalistic
sources to the literary ones. Rather, by juxtaposing a variety of perspec-
tives, and by bringing together different points of view, comments and
opinions, the analysis can facilitate a broader understanding of these
spaces. Both sources are employed as complementary representations of
the same shared postcolonial context. The spatial analysis is thus enhanced
by the inclusion of a wide array of voices that describes the ways in which
these spaces are inhabited. By doing so, the discussion can provide a more
extensive investigation of these spaces while emphasising their relevance
as home spaces .
1.3 Home Spaces in Italian

We carry our home with us, our home can travel. It’s not fixed walls that
make a home out of the place where we live. In our home, Domenica Axad,
little Taariikh, and I find comfort and protection, we lay down foundations
in order to have the strength to fight every day. It’s no longer possible to
remain isolated; we seek to adapt and to rebuild our path. (Ali Farah 2011,
226)
With these words, one of the protagonists of Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s
Madre piccola [Little Mother] (2007, 2011) describes the meaning of
home for her and her family. This description encapsulates the idea of
home grounding the understanding of home spaces in this book. It is an
idea of home not necessarily linked to a house, a home that can move, and
that provides familiarity and a sense of community, a point of reference
from which to engage with the rest of the world. A similar description
is provided in La mia casa è dove sono [My home is where I am] by
Igiaba Scego (2010). As already suggested by the title, home is again
interpreted as a mobile element, as the mother tells the protagonist about
her nomadic past “we used to carry our home on our shoulders” (Scego
2010, 9, my translation). The whole text is a spatial autobiography in
which the description of the city of Rome overlaps with events of the
author’s life and with memories of her closest relatives, in a successful
attempt to map her own personal geography through her emotions and
through the places capable of generating and retrieving such emotions.
In both these texts, two public places appear quite frequently and both
of them become, in my analysis, home spaces : Termini train station and
the phone centre. These same spaces are present in several other texts of
Italian postcolonial literature, for instance, the phone centre is also one
of the most important places in Lakhous’s Divorzio all’islamica a viale
Marconi [Divorce Islamic Style] (2010, 2012), while Termini train station
occurs in many texts as a place of gathering for members of different
communities.11
The texts mentioned so far, along with others that I will refer to below,
constitute the main corpus of this book, a corpus that I look at as Italian
postcolonial literature, in which a major feature is “the concern with place
12 C. GIULIANI
and displacement. It is here that the special post-colonial crisis of iden-

tity comes into being; the concern with the development or recovery of
an effective identifying relationship between self and place” (Ashcroft,
Griffiths, and Tiffin 1989, 8; see also Blunt and McEwan 2003).
The literary sources included here belong to different phases of Italian
postcolonial literature and are written by authors with different back-
grounds. The use of postcolonial in relation to texts whose authors might
come also from countries not directly part of the Italian colonial empire,
or who are part of the so-called “second generations”, as the previ-
ously mentioned Scego, is a way, on the one hand, to emphasise the
content and the work itself. On the other hand, it is a way to recog-
nise that “in the postcolonial era, all locations, all writers, all subjects
are postcolonial, in that history of colonialism is shared by the globe
albeit with different impact on different locations and peoples” (George
1996, 172). Furthermore, the use of postcolonial entails a focus on the
temporal and geographical links between past and present homes that
make home spaces so distinctive. This use is also connected to the aware-
ness of a present condition that keeps re-instating and creating differences
and hierarchies; a condition that is shared by migrants and non-migrants,
by people belonging to former colonies and former coloniser countries.
The analysis aligns with the definition posited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop
and Caterina Romeo whose “notion of the ‘postcolonial’ is grounded in
the assumption that the economic and cultural effects of colonialism are
still present in many countries, including Italy” (2012, 2).12 One of these
effects is for instance visible in the exclusionary citizenship laws in force in
Italy and by the unfair entry system not just in Italy but more broadly in
the European Union (see also Lombardi-Diop and Romeo 2012; Romeo
2017; Ambrosini 2014 and Schuster 2003, 2018).
Among the Italian postcolonial texts published between 1990 and
2020, I selected those in which space played a dominant role. The origin
of the authors is varied and not determining for the inclusion of their
work in the corpus. All the places considered are located in Italy and the
stories narrated are contemporary to the publication of the texts. Each
chapter will be devoted to a particular space, consequently, I investigate
the novels transversely in order to identify different connections between
the texts on the basis of the space in question. In selecting the places, I
followed two main criteria, the first was linked to its significance in the
narration. I included novels and short stories where specific places repre-
sent an essential component, either because they are frequently mentioned
as recurrent places visited or inhabited by one of the characters, or because

they are indispensable for certain events to happen. I selected public places
that recurred in more than one text and possibly more than once in the
same narration. Secondly, the places included are predominantly inhabited
by characters in different ways from their original purpose. Accordingly,
the train station is not used as a place of travel, rather as a place where
migrants can gather, speak languages other than Italian and exchange
information. The same happens in the phone centre, where the phone call
can at times become only a pretext to hang out with fellow compatriots
or to watch international channels on TV. The private and semi-private
places, on the other hand, are all relevant either for the development of
the plot, as in the case of the palazzo, or for specific characters, such as
for the bathroom or the bedroom. The palazzo is investigated for its role
of constructing a sense of community and for becoming a transnational
space of identity negotiation in Laila Wadia’s Amiche per la pelle [Best
friends] (2007), or for failing to do so in Amara Lakhous’s Scontro di
civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio [Clash of Civilizations Over an
Elevator in Piazza Vittorio] (2006, 2008). Even though I will draw a
couple of connections with other texts which feature the same place, the
rooms in the final chapter are not analysed for their functions as bathroom
and bedroom either, but as places of safety, spaces used to relive and to try
to work through a trauma. The bathroom is crucial for Ahmed/Amedeo
in Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà, while the bedroom plays a pivotal role for
Aisha, one of the main characters in Igiaba Scego’s Rhoda (2004).
In “The Migrant’s Time”, Ranajit Guha looks at the contemporary
postcolonial condition as experienced within a diasporic context arguing
that
What is within is here - a place the migrant will not be entitled to call
his own. The displacement is made all the more poignant by the paradox
that it corresponds to no distantiation in time. For it is stapled firmly to
an accentuated and immediate present cut off from a shared past by the
adverbial force of “no longer”. (1998, 156)
According to Guha, migrants’ displacement compresses time while

abruptly severing it between the now and the “no longer”. This paradox
underpins the characters’ experience of these places as home spaces . One
of the main characteristics of Termini train station, of the phone centre,
as well as the condominium and even more crucially of the bathroom and
14 C. GIULIANI
the bedroom, is their potential to trigger memories that would create

a meaningful connection to the past. Termini, for instance, by being a
place of regular encounter among members of the same community allow
the characters to establish forms of belonging that might be difficult to
experience in Italy or in the space of inhabitancy. This is for instance
the case of Maria Cristina in Scontro di civiltà, who is an undocumented
migrant, living in the constant fear of expulsion. Furthermore, working
as a carer for an elderly lady, her place of residence is more precisely her
workplace and her employer’s home. Her regular visits to Termini are
a way to connect with members of the Peruvian community, to speak
her mother tongue and to eat Peruvian dishes. When at Termini, even if
only temporarily, she feels she belongs, she matters (hooks 2009, 215).
However, when she has to leave Termini and go back to the elderly
lady’s house, the feeling goes away leaving her to the solitude of her
daily life. A similar pattern takes place in the phone centre where the
services provided, such as the possibility of making international calls or
to send money, as well as the relationships—often of solidarity—estab-
lished there, enable the characters to experience this place as a familiar
environment and to literally connect it to the country left behind and
to the loved ones in other parts of the world. In a similar manner, the
private places, even though in less sociable and yet more specific ways,
trigger these processes of remembering.
Each place is experienced by the characters in a variety of ways but the
role of memory is key in all of them. As Burns contends, when analysing
literary texts on migration, “memory is represented as being not simply
a recollection, indeed re-collection, in the present of images, thoughts
and feelings from a past clearly demarcated in space and time […]. It is a
condition of experiencing past-ness in every context” (Burns 2013, 71).
The places selected here all embody a past home or a past familiar experi-
ence that, to various extents, the subject is trying to recreate. This specific
point is, for instance, manifested in the different attitudes shown towards
the possibility of a return. As Burns continues, it “is the experience of
leaving or returning, and the tensions towards and against, which animate
that experience and which construct an imaginary of home” (Burns 1998,
130).
The theme of return appears frequently in the texts selected (as in many
other postcolonial texts) and in some of the places discussed in this book,
even if not necessarily as an actual or feasible plan. As briefly mentioned
above, the majority of the characters included in this analysis are first-
generation migrants and they all show different attitudes towards the
possibility—or impossibility—of a return to the country they left. La mia
casa è dove sono is the text that perhaps presents a sharper difference with
regard to attitudes toward the idea of return. While the mother’s experi-
ence of Italy is affected by the initial plan to go back to Somalia (and the
later disappointment for its failure), Scego, born and raised in Rome, does
not entirely share this idea. Nonetheless, and the novel itself (in its juxta-
position of Italy and Somalia) stands as a demonstration of this, Scego’s
idea of home, as expressed in the book, is informed by a constant dialogue
between the two countries. Therefore, the theme of return is not—or not
exclusively—about the wish to go back to a previous home, but rather it
is about the incorporation of that past in the current experience of place
which only through the establishment of this encounter becomes a home
space.
I draw on different theoretical approaches to tackle the variety of
home-making practices enacted by the characters to turn these locations
into home spaces . While studies on home and transnational homes form
the backbone of the entire book, Chapter 2 and 3, focusing on public
spaces, rely more decisively on a geocritical approach and their corpus
also includes journalistic sources. In these chapters, I position the discus-
sion across critical works on cultural geography and mobility studies. The
chapter on the phone centre pays also attention to a selection of works
on the role of digital media in transnational contexts. In the second part
of the book, the close textual analysis is supported with research on the
fields of trauma studies and affect theory.
1.4 Outline of the Book

The following five chapters are each dedicated to a specific space and they
can be seen as constituting two parts. The first one, comprising Chapter 2
and Chapter 3, analyses public spaces, while the second part, Chapter 4
and 5, looks at the representation of the semi-private space of the apart-
ment building, the palazzo, and the two private spaces of the bathroom
and the bedroom.
Chapter 2, “Termini Train Station: a Place to Arrive, to Leave and
to Live”, interrogates the space of Termini train station. By looking at
a selection of literary and journalistic sources, it outlines different ways
in which the station has been used by migrant characters as a space of
16 C. GIULIANI
sociality. As frequently described by the sources used in this analysis,

migrants gather at Termini to meet people (often with a similar back-
ground of migration), to eat traditional food, either around the premises
of the station or in the restaurants right outside it. This way of inhab-
iting a space of transition, of travel, like the station, is often represented
as creating a situation of decay around the station (see for instance Bian-
coni 1996, Peronaci 2010 and Rinaldi 2019). However, the familiarity
and safety produced by those specific practices are what makes the station
a home space. The main literary texts included in this chapter are Scego’s
La mia casa è dove sono, Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a
piazza Vittorio, especially through the character of Maria Cristina, and
Ali Farah’s Madre piccola. All these texts emphasise the key role played
by Termini not only in the characters’ lives but in the life of the charac-
ters’ communities. As one of the protagonists of Madre piccola explains “I
don’t think one can write about the Somali community in Rome without
starting from the Roma Termini train station, the crossroads, the scene of
our longings” (Ali Farah 2011, 25).
In Chapter 3, “The Phone Centre, a Place to Call Home”, I inves-
tigate the role played by the phone centre. Drawing again on a wide
range of newspaper articles and literary texts, the analysis focuses on how
the phone centre is described as a place of familiarity and conflicts. I
argue that the phone centre, which falls into the group of those shops
frequently defined as negozi etnici [ethnic shops], is represented as prob-
lematic because it is the actual proof of migrants’ settlement in Italy. The
phone centre—unlike Termini and the places examined in the following
chapters—was created precisely to supply a service, that of making inter-
national phone calls at a cheap rate, to migrants. Furthermore, very
often, phone centres are managed by owners who have themselves a
past of migration and that, at times, try to unite members of their own
community, as suggested by the phone centre “Little Cairo” in Lakhous’s
Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi. In Lakhous’s novel, the phone
centre is one of the main settings because it is also suspected (even if only
for training purposes as the protagonist will find out) to be the meeting
hub for a terrorist cell. This suspicion was inspired by a series of investi-
gations part of George Bush’s war on terror that targeted phone centres
as branches of money transfer companies. In this discussion, I examine
the role played by each of the services offered by phone centres (phone
calls, money transfer services, TVs with international channels) and how
characters’ engagement with each one of these creates a transnational
connection, a “virtual co-presence” (Baldassar 2008, 252), with members

of their family and friends in the country of origin and other destination
countries. This is the power of the phone centre as home space, as a jour-
nalist from La Repubblica describes “inside a phone centre, I see a man
that laughs and cries with joy, clinging on to the receiver. He screams
mysterious words, but his emotions are universal, like the love for his wife,
at the other end of the line, on another side of the world” (Gucci 2008,
my translation). The main texts which are analysed along with Lakhous’s
Divorzio all’islamica are again Ali Farah’s Madre piccola and Scego’s La
mia casa è dove sono.
Chapter 4, “Spaces of Residence and Transnational Microcosms in
Italy”, starts with a brief analysis of two unusual places of residence, the
former Somali embassy, as described in Ali Farah’s Madre piccola and
the car in Pap Khouma’s Io venditore di elefanti [I Was an Elephant
Salesman] (1990, 2010). The inclusion of these two case studies in which
uncommon places become places of actual residence paves the way to
the main topic of the chapter: the palazzo. This chapter investigates the
ways in which characters from Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà and Wadia’s
Amiche per la pelle inhabit the space of the condominium. This part
focuses in particular on how the common areas are used, on the rela-
tionships established among the residents and on the potential (or lack
thereof) of both buildings to enable feelings of belonging. The residents
of the two buildings are very different and while the one in via Ungaretti
25, thanks to the efforts of the four female friends, becomes a space of
solidarity and personal development, the building in piazza Vittorio reit-
erates the social divisions present in the outside society. I thus examine to
what extent these two buildings can be considered representations of the
country in which they are located and how this manages or fails to make
the characters feel at home.
In Chapter 5, “Rooms as Home Spaces: the Bathroom and the
Bedroom as Memory Containers”, I consider two specific places: the
bathroom and the bedroom. The bathroom is examined for its signifi-
cance for the character of Ahmed/Amedeo in Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà.
The sections of the novels narrated from Ahmed/Amedeo’s perspective,
the ululati [wailings], are all journal entries recorded from inside the
bathroom. As Ahmed/Amedeo points out “I hate confined spaces, except
this bathroom. It’s my nest” (Lakhous 2012, 48). The discussion investi-
gates how the privacy provided by the restroom enables the protagonist to
initiate a process of remembering. On the one hand, this process allows
18 C. GIULIANI
the shield provided by Amedeo’s fake identity to come down; on the

other, it protects Ahmed so that he can deal with his traumatic past and
the loss of his fiancé Bágia. The analysis then reflects on the role of the
door, the bathroom’s door, and the possibility of it being locked. The
power that Ahmed/Amedeo has over the door, the possibility of isolating
himself in and, at the same time, of keeping everyone else out, contributes
to the transformation of that place into a home space. The final part of
the chapter takes into consideration another space that, similarly to the
bathroom for Ahmed/Amedeo, allows the character to deal with personal
trauma, that of the loss of a sister. The bedroom plays this role in Igiaba
Scego’s Rhoda (2004), where Aisha can still feel the presence of her sister
Rhoda. I focus on different elements that make the bedroom a unique
space, from Rhoda’s smell still detectable, to Rhoda’s possessions.13 In
order to preserve the memory of Rhoda, the bedroom has been left as
it was when she was still living there; this almost sacred preservation of
Rhoda’s belongings is combined with Aisha’s performance of her sister’s
movements because “by repeating her sister’s gestures, Aisha hoped she
could bring her back to life” (Scego 2004, 50, my translation).
The final chapter, “At Home, Everywhere”, comprises one final case
study which paves the way to some concluding remarks. The final home
space included in the book is the one of the suitcase. By drawing primarily
on the short story “Dismatria” [“Exmatriates”] by Igiaba Scego (2005,
2012), I analyse the valigia as a metaphor for the evolving meaning of
home. The suitcase, as a “cipher of memory” (Rogoff 2000, 38), allows
the protagonist’s mother to keep her wish to return to Somalia alive while
living in Italy, providing that connection between the past and present
home mentioned above. The suitcase, a symbol of mobility, is also a
physical and metaphysical container that allows the characters to move, as
well as to preserve, mementoes and memories, a multifunctional “space”
where the past, present and future intersect. I then wave together the
common threads that have surfaced in all chapters to eventually argue that
the idea of home as stability, as roots, as the place from which articulating
one’s understanding of the world, is not lost in migration. By appreci-
ating the possibility of experiencing home in different places, of looking
at home as a constant process of negotiation that ties together the past
and the present, rather than a fixed point in time and space, it becomes
possible to find different places of belonging, which are different from
the idealised home, but that are nonetheless meaningful home spaces .
Notes
1. The full text of this law can be found on the Gazzetta Ufficiale website
(see Decreto Legge 9 Marzo 2020, n.14 2021). For this specific passage
of the press conference see La Repubblica (2020).
2. See, for instance, Agnew (2005), Altman and Werner (1985); George
(1996); Hurdley (2013); Morley (2000) and Naficy (1999).
3. By phone centres [internet cafés] I mean spaces that started to appear in
Italy at the beginning of the 2000s which offered different services like
international phone calls, internet access and money transfer services. In
the texts analysed here, they are at times defined as “call centres”. For
consistency, I will use phone centres throughout.
4. To some extent, these are also heterotopic spaces as they are “capable
of juxtaposing in a single real place, several spaces” (Foucault 1986, 25).
Simone Brioni (2017) used this particular lens to analyse Termini train
station.
5. Citizenship in Italy can be obtained through ius sanguinis (born or
adopted by Italian parents), through marriage with an Italian citizen or
after ten years of legal, uninterrupted residence if meeting the economic
and legal requirements. See the webpage for the Ministry of Home Affairs
(Cittadinanza 2021).
6. Furthermore, the processes of renewal are often long and costly bureau-
cratic journeys. For more information on the residency permits see the
dedicated webpage for the Ministry of Home Affairs (Visto e permesso di
soggiorno 2021).
7. The laborious and nerve-wracking process second generations have to go
through to obtain Italian citizenship produces what Marianna Boero and
Cristina Greco have defined “suspended identities […] temporally ‘sus-
pended’ between a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ that remain uncertain” (2018,
17). Different associations and groups were created throughout the years;
see in particular Rete G2 – Seconde Generazioni (2005) and Associna:
Associazione di seconde generazioni Italo-Cinesi (2005). For more infor-
mation on second generations and the ius soli/ius sanguinis debate see
Andall (2002, 2010); Bianchi (2011); Bulli (2018) and Tintori (2018).
8. The literary sources included in my corpus were all originally written
in Italian; many of those were then translated into English. In those
instances, I will use the translated text, for all the others I will provide my
own translation.
9. I have applied the same frame to the online research tool of all the news-
paper mentioned. The Corriere della sera and La Repubblica provided
more material thanks also to their local editions.
10. Another reason for selecting 1990 as the starting date for the newspaper
articles is connected to the fact that the oldest literary text included in
20 C. GIULIANI
the analysis was published in 1990, namely Pap Khouma’s Io venditore di

elefanti [I was an Elephant Salesman] (1990, 2010). This date, according
to Caterina Romeo, also marks the beginning of Italian postcolonial liter-
ature, “a category that includes all of the literature produced by migrant
and second-generation writers since 1990” (2017, 4).
11. Beyond the already mentioned Scego (2010) and Ali Farah (2007),
Termini train station appears in the majority of texts written about the
Somali community and beyond. For some examples see: Ali Farah (2004,
2014); Fazel (1994, 2010, 2016); Fortunato and Methnani (2009);
Lakhous (2006); Scego (2004, 2008). This place was consequently inves-
tigated in different academic works that will be discussed in Chapter 2.
See for instance Brioni (2017); Comberiati (2017); Parati (2010, 2017)
and Ponzanesi (2004).
12. See also Brunetti and Derobertis (2014); De Donno and Srivastava
(2006); Derobertis (2008); Fiore (2011); Lombardi-Diop (2012); Romeo
(2011, 2018).
13. The sensorial experience of these home spaces will be emphasised
throughout the analysis. Furthermore, a polysensorial experience of space
is another key element of Geocriticism (Westphal 2011, 132–133).
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CHAPTER 2
Termini Train Station: A Place to Arrive, a

Place to Leave and to Live
2.1 Introduction
British author Edward Forster published Howards End in 1910, and even
if train stations are only briefly mentioned, they are described, not for
their modern nature as we would expect given the chronological prox-
imity to the Futurist movement, but rather as “gates to the glorious and
the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine,
to them, alas! we return” (Forster 1973, 9; also in Ceserani 2002, 184).
This point is immediately supported by a reference to the train station in
Berlin and what it represents for Italian emigrants in Germany, “Italians
realise this, as is natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve
as waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d’Italia, because
by it they must return to their homes” (Forster 1973, 9).
Since its creation, the space of the train station—as many places of
transit—has always represented a source of fascination. In Treni di carta
[Paper Trains] (2002), Remo Ceserani, investigating the role of trains
and train stations in literature, reflects on Pirandello’s work arguing that
all the usual spaces constituting a train station—the waiting room, the
gallery, the cafés—are all places that invite anonymous encounters. They
are no man’s land, where time is suspended in long waits and empty
conversations (Ceserani 2002, 291). Such a description, however, can
accommodate different attitudes towards the railway station. Ideas of
“suspended time” and “long wait”, have a straightforward meaning in
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Switzerland AG 2021
C. Giuliani, Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial
Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75063-3_2
28 C. GIULIANI
our understanding of the train station as the place where travellers wait
for a connection or for someone to arrive. On the other hand, these two
features acquire a new meaning if considered in a context of migration,
as we see from Forster’s passage mentioned before. In that quote, Italian
migrants had established such a familiar connection with the space to call
it “Stazione d’Italia” [Station of Italy] (Forster 1973, 9). Approximately
a century later, stations seem to still play an analogous role.
This chapter will look at the role played by a specific train station in
Italy, Roma Termini, which has come to represent a key pole of attrac-
tion for newly arrived migrants as well as established migrant communities
often in search of a public space that could fulfil needs for sociality.
Even though railway stations (and the neighbourhoods in which they
are located) perform a similar function in many Italian cities, the chapter
will focus on Roma Termini, the capital’s main train station due to its
constant presence in the literary texts considered.1 Termini—like Berlin’s
Anhalter Bahnhof in Foster’s quote—is a meeting point for several
migrant communities who have turned it into a space to congregate with
fellow compatriots, to speak one’s own language, to eat traditional food
and to, metaphorically, go back home. In the last few decades, Termini
has become a suspended space, temporally balanced between past and
present, and geographically connecting Italy and the country left behind.
This new purpose of the station, which sees migrants regularly spending
time there, is often perceived by locals as a source of fear and anxiety.
Graziella Parati, looking at the use of space in Lakhous’s work, high-
lights this by emphasising how the arrival of immigrants in Rome led to
the redefinition of urban spaces creating “new urban proximities” (Parati
2010, 433). She posits: “the urban space of Rome is thus filled with the
anxieties and the tensions inherent in acts of appropriation between the
native and the non-native. What is at stake is the construction of new
urban proximities” (Parati 2010, 433). According to Parati the city is a
“fluid entity”, porous and prone to modifications (Parati 2010, 433), in
this sense, the train station and the changes produced by the different
ways in which migrants use it, became a source of concern.
Migrants’ various uses of Termini are, in fact, frequently portrayed as
dangerous and unhealthy, as overall inappropriate, because a place of tran-
sition, of passage, of movement, is instead used as a place of stability, a
place in which to pause and engage with fellow countrymen. However,
this is not entirely surprising, as Pierpaolo Mudu highlighted “Termini
station has always been a pole of attraction for the most marginalised
2 TERMINI TRAIN STATION … 29
Italian population occupied in underpaid and occasional jobs, in illegal

activities or even homeless people” (Mudu 2002, 657, my translation).
Yet, with the arrival of international migrants, that situation seemed to
be perceived as even more problematic. As Adriano Cancellieri and Elena
Ostanel, in their analysis of railway stations in Padua, argue:
the level of visibility of their different bodies as well as of their unconven-

tional uses of the urban space challenge a “spatial order” which is essentially
taken for granted as the “right way”. Migrants have entered into a realm
of hypervisibility in which any action they undertake is overly visible as it
is excessively noted. (2015, 500)
To consider its multiple uses and functions, and using Teresa Fiore’s crit-
ical lens, the station can be interpreted, as both a “pre-occupied” and
a “preoccupied” space (Fiore 2017). According to Fiore, pre-occupied
spaces are those spaces that, at the arrival of immigrants, are already
“occupied by others” and with which migrants engage “by borrowing
fragments of past traditions and leaving new signs” (Fiore 2017, 12).
The presence of migrants in urban spaces, however, especially when they
inhabit them in ways that are not the traditional ones, as in the case of
Termini, creates apprehension in the natives. Those spaces are thus also
preoccupied, “in the sense that they host worries among both newcomers
and locals, who perceive each other respectively as defensive occupants of
and illegitimate intruders into natural, urban, and domestic spaces” (Fiore
2017, 12).
The station will thus be discussed through the unpacking of the
different dynamics that on the one hand, underpin such preoccupation
while, on the other, turn the station into a home space. A further caveat
is necessary. I will consider the ways in which Termini comes to represent
home to people who, even if precarious, do have a place to stay, a place of
residence and therefore do not use the station for that purpose. Indeed,
one of the main preoccupations when it comes to Termini train station
is the presence of people without housing that do resort to Termini
as a physical refuge.2 This instance, however, falls beyond the scope of
this study. Thus, the chapter will look at the other side of the coin
where Termini becomes a home space when it is not used as a phys-
ical dwelling. After an exploration of different uses and representations of
the station, the chapter will examine the ways in which the connections
created between the Roman train station and the place of origin, located
30 C. GIULIANI
in a distant space and time, work in creating a sense of community and

a “sense of self” (Al-Ali and Koser 2001, 3). By drawing on a selection
of literary texts and on a wide range of newspapers articles (from 1990
to 2020) in which Termini train station is recurrently mentioned as a
space of migrants’ sociality, the chapter offers a multifocal reading of the
space, in the sense suggested by geocriticism (Westphal 2011, 122) and
introduced in the previous chapter. The combination of different sources
provides a variety of points of view and representations of the same place
with the aim of illustrating the complexity of this space. The emotional
charge of all the different home-making practices enacted by the char-
acters turns the station into a home space that eventually allows for the
redefinition of the characters’ identities. As Scego reiterates, “Termini was
always there” (Scego 2010, 102, my translation).
2.2 Termini Train Station and its Uses

Traditionally, as seen in Ceserani’s reading of Pirandello, literary texts
have described the station from the travellers’ perspective. Railway stations
fascinated readers’ imaginary for their transient nature, for the possibility
of sharing conversations with strangers, and the flâneuristic opportunity
of merging in the crowd. Ceserani describes it as a place of “noise and
smoke, of vast empty spaces or traversed by anonymous crowds, of plat-
forms where to perform the ritual […] of waiting, arriving, separating,
bidding farewell” (Ceserani 2002, 189, my translation). Thus Termini
has often been depicted as a non-place that, as articulated by Marc
Augé, combines two “complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed
in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and
the relations that individuals have with these spaces” (2009, 76). Augé
describes the non-place as possessing a specific purpose and the visitors
of the station know how to behave, from buying tickets to waiting on
the platform or boarding/disembarking the train (Augé 2009, 83). As
Brioni, referring to Augé, argues, “the representation of Termini as the
hub of the migrants’ togetherness contests its depiction as a space of
alleged anonymity, which is how the station is frequently perceived by its
most privileged users” (Brioni 2017, 453; see also Ponzanesi 2004, 158).
Termini becomes a place “where marginalised subjects are ghettoised, as
well as a place of cultural hybridisation and resistance to assimilation”
(Brioni 2017, 454). Therefore, behaviours such as eating, meeting for a
chat with people from the same country, and more generally the habit
of hanging out at Termini, while paving the way to the transformation

of the station into a home space, they also trigger a series of complaints
against the presence of immigrants in the train station, and by extension
in Italy.
As I will emphasise in this section, those who look at Termini as a non-
place, perceive all migrants’ behaviour as inappropriate, as “out of place”
(Cresswell 1996, 10). In an article published by the Corriere della sera
in 1995, the journalist surveyed the Esquilino area, where the station is
located, at night-time, to assess the situation of decay that characterised
the area. The article, entitled “Una notte tra i neri” [A night among
blacks], portrays different kinds of illegal activities and describes locally
renowned criminals. Local businesses are also mentioned, in particular, a
café close to Termini is described as follows: “here everything is mixed,
even the music, […] everyone looks for his own sounds and tastes. It
is also for this reason that all immigrants in the world wander around
train stations. They arrived there; the station is the closest place to home”
(Merlo 1995, my translation).
According to the journalist, migrants meet at Termini because it is
the first contact they had with Italy, the place where they arrived and
therefore “the closest place to home”. Even if the article dates back to
1995, migrants’ presence in this area was, and is, perceived as problematic
because by spending their time here, they dwell in a place that is supposed
to be used as a passage, as a transition from one point to another or as
pointed out by Cancellieri and Ostanel above, they are “overly visible”
(2015, 500). In the time span and in the journalistic sources selected
for this research, articles describing the situation at Termini as at risk
appear quite regularly, even though the peak is to be found in the years
between the 1990s and 2010, both in terms of frequency and in terms of
attention towards the impact of migrants’ presence at the station.3 Sandra
Ponzanesi argues that migrants “are present as outsiders, as appendages
in the public spaces of transit through which ‘full’ Italian citizens pass
on their way between home and work” (2004, 160). She also adds that
“for them the stations even act as makeshift homes” (Ponzanesi 2004,
160). In the station, unlike tourists or commuters, migrants might find
stability, a reference point around which other migrants, as well as news
and goods, gravitate. For those who see the station as a place of transit, as
the non-place mentioned above, this stasis represents a transgression and
thus a threat. The Roman edition of the Corriere della sera, for instance,
used to host a column entitled La città ne parla [The city talks about it],
32 C. GIULIANI
managed by the journalist Maria Latella, to whom citizens could write to

discuss daily issues in Rome. In September 2003, the following letter was
published:
Dear Mrs Latella, I was thinking: considering that the situation at Termini
is already in itself an autonomous pole of attraction, that guarantees the
inflow and the welcoming of thieves, pickpockets, rapists, prostitutes and
pimps, illegal immigrants, rascals and so on and so forth that can comfort-
ably and freely take advantage of shops, supermarkets, bars, restaurants,
phone centres […], wouldn’t it be possible to consider also the needs of
the poor travellers? Shouldn’t they be able to reach their trains without
having to plough through multi-ethnic and multi-colour crowds? (Latella
2003, my translation)
Noteworthy here is the clear belief that the “poor travellers” are those
who have every right to use the station, because they know how to use it,
and thus should be prioritised in their use of the space. Conversely, the
other category of people is initially described as a composite group made
of migrants (with and without documents), thieves, prostitutes, criminals
of different kinds, while towards the end they are all united in the expres-
sion “multi-ethnic and varicoloured crowds” (Latella 2003). This group
is not using the station “properly” while also representing an obstruction
to those who try to do so. The combination of the different categories
of people in one single group, seen as causing the decay of the area, is a
common tendency which brings to the depiction of all the different kinds
of people included in this group as equally dangerous. Other perhaps less
explicit remarks manage to convey the same message.
An article entitled “Italiani vi abbiamo stancato?” [Italians, have we
tired you?], published by the Corriere della sera in 1993 describes the
area around Termini station as “the small Roman Soweto […] where
the curfew is in force from 9 pm. Black faces at the bar, no palefaces
around” (Ruggeri 1992, my translation). The article, which carries on
with an interview with a Tunisian man criticising the Martelli law for
being “too inclusive”, starts with a clear distinction between Italians as
a white homogenous group, and not Italians as a black equally homoge-
nous group.4 This is reminiscent of Nirmal Puwar’s words on the visibility
of minorities in positions of power. According to her “for those for whom
the whiteness of these spaces provides a comforting familiarity the arrival
of racialized members can represent the monstrous” (Puwar 2004, 50).
If “facce nere” [black faces] in contrast to “visi pallidi” [palefaces] are

quite explicit remarks effective in building up a sentiment of anxiety and
danger, other expressions are slightly vaguer but equally effective. The
reference to Soweto, for instance, contributes to the representation of
Termini as an area in a state of decay, a foreign space characterised by
social apartheid and criminality, also corroborated by the reference to
the coprifuoco (curfew). The use of foreign words and geographical loca-
tions also contributes to the representation of Termini as an alien space in
which migrants’ presence is perceived as a form of transgression from the
supposed normality. According to Tim Cresswell, media representations
of space are in fact “the discursive attempt to create and maintain norma-
tive geographies (where everything is in place)” (Cresswell 1996, 9). As
Mudu, commenting on the use of terms like casbah and Bronx in relation
to the Esquilino area in which the station is located, argues: “the decay is
combined with the use of terms that are born in a geographical context
different from the one in which they are used […] The many references
to ‘Bronx’, ‘casbah’, and Chinatown are used to comment an alien space.
In newspapers, immigrants, criminality and decay are synonyms” (Mudu
2002, 662–673, my translation).
This demarcation of the area as an alien space and its association with
criminal activities also brought to the use of Termini as a geographical
reference point. See for instance the following example from Il Giornale
in 2007, where beyond the use of the word Chinatown, Termini is also
referred to as a geographical pin to identify the area “integration? A word
that rhymes with ‘inclusion’, a term often used by mayor Veltroni to talk
about immigration, but which is difficult to carry out, especially in some
areas. Starting from the Esquilino, the neighbourhood close to Termini
and, at this point, considered as the real Roman Chinatown” (Il Giornale
2007, my translation). When accidents or crimes involving migrants take
place in the area, articles also provide information on distance between
the place of the event and Termini. The use of expressions such as “nei
pressi” [close to], “nelle vicinanze” [in the vicinity], “nei dintorni” [in the
surroundings], “vicino” [near] or “a due passi” [a stone’s throw away],
depicts the entire area around Termini as dangerous and “Termini” comes
to signify not only the actual train station but the entire area: “Raped on
Christmas night. […] The crime seems to have taken place in via Giolitti,
right next to the Capital’s railway station” (Corriere della sera 2009,
my translation). The reference to the proximity of the station seems to
34 C. GIULIANI
provide a sort of explanation, even justification as to why these criminal

events are taking place there.
In the years around the turn of the century, the attention moved to
the renovation works that were carried out, especially in preparation for
the Great Jubilee of the Catholic Church in the year 2000, to either
criticise or praise them (see for instance Corriere della sera 1999). The
expressions opere di riqualificazione [requalification works], or di recu-
pero [recovery works], are used to convey the idea that these works could
bring back the station to how it was before, meaning before “the arrival of
foreign immigration” (Mudu 2002, 659, my translation; see for instance
La Repubblica 1999).5 Commenting on the renovation works, in La mia
casa è dove sono [My home is where I am] (2010), Scego points out
how the area has positively changed: “the station has really improved,
in these last few years. Thanks, on the one hand, to the renovation
works carried out by the city council, and on the other, to the different
migrant communities who put a lot of work into it. There are shops for
all tastes” (2010, 103, my translation). Migrants’ gathering at the station
and its surroundings brought to the opening of shops targeting specific
requests, that are also managed by migrants as well as restaurants with
different cuisines. This consequently led to the redefinition of the urban
space and the Romans’ geographies, as this article from the Corriere della
sera describes: “when the Roman housewives enter the grocery shops
or wander among the local market stalls, Muslim women head towards
Termini station. Indeed, only there, in some specialised butcher shops,
signalled by an Arabic sign, they are sure to find the ‘purified’ meat,
butchered with specific techniques” (Guerzoni 1994, my translation).
The presence of other members of one’s own community, but also
these specific shops, increase the value of a place like Termini. According
to Mudu, before the arrival of international migrants, the Esquilino “was
an urban slum deserted by its traditional residents” (Mudu 2013, 433).
The change into a multi-ethnic neighbourhood brought to the opening of
a series of immigrant-run firms and shops. Moreover, the majority of the
shops in the area around the station were established by African immi-
grants (Mudu 2013, 433; see also Mudu 2002; Caputo 2015). This is
also portrayed in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Madre piccola [Little Mother]
(2007, 2011) where Barni describes the area of the train station with these
words: “and often at Termini train station amazing things happen, worth
noting. Our places, old and new, rotate around that axis: Qamar’s store,
Xassan’s Phone Center, the draddorio and the area around it” (Ali Farah
2011, 26–27). Migrant communities who moved to the Esquilino area,

but more generally to Rome, could find in the surroundings of Termini
a selection of shops and services that would satisfy different requests,
from sending money to make international phone calls (as discussed in
Chapter 3), to buy specific food and goods that would be otherwise diffi-
cult to source in Italy. Also, unofficial shops started to appear, as some
of the articles selected mention that at times people would illegally sell
food, furtively, and in hidden corners around Termini.6 These practices,
while providing opportunities for moments of sociality, are perceived as
crossing again the border between the appropriate and the inappropriate.
In this regard, eating is a habit that is often referenced in the press.
The journalist Fabrizio Peronaci, for instance, in an article for the
Corriere della sera published in 2010, describes the station and how it
changed since the arrival of immigration. He draws attention to some of
the habitual gatherings taking place there: “every Thursday and Sunday
dozens of South Americans camp out there cooking rice, meat and onion-
based dips” (Peronaci 2010, my translation). The same habit is described
in Lakhous’s novel Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio
[Clash of Civilization over an Elevator at Piazza Vittorio] (Lakhous 2006,
2008), where Maria Cristina, the Peruvian carer, plans her days off around
her regular visits to Termini station where she spends time with other
Peruvians: “I greet them all with a kiss even if I’ve never seen them
before, then I sit on the sidewalk and eat Peruvian food, rice with chicken
and lomo saltado and ceviche” (Lakhous 2008, 78). This specific habit of
eating in a public space is deemed to create filth, regardless of any hygienic
rule, therefore threatening people’s health, as suggested by this example
from La Repubblica: “the station is considered a risky place due to the
immigrants who eat and leave their rubbish but also due to the chaotic
traffic and petty crimes” (Giuliani F. 1997, my translation).
Another article from La Repubblica comments on how Termini was
“ripulita” [cleaned again] and the people hanging out or living there
(referring in particular to the regular homeless population) had been
moved away. The journalist interviews a Peruvian woman who affirms
“police sent us away from the station; they said we were making dirt ”
(Dusi 2000, my translation, my emphasis). It is not clear whether the
woman was living at the station or just spending time there with other
compatriots, but her comments are equally valuable here. The Italian
expression “facevamo sporco” can literally be translated as “we were
making dirt” which, according to the interviewee, was the reason given by
36 C. GIULIANI
the police to justify the decision of making people leave the station. The
verb fare, used in this context, can also be translated with to produce, in
the sense that their behaviour was in some way producing dirt. Yet, in this
case, fare can perhaps, more problematically, be translated with to consti-
tute, to form filth, echoing Douglas’s remark that dirt and uncleanness
are “that which must not be included if a pattern is to be maintained”
(Douglas 1991, 41). According to this interpretation, it is not migrants’
behaviours that are questioned, but rather migrants themselves; it is their
presence that is perceived as transgressing the boundaries of common
sense thus endangering the order.
This transgression is also perceived as a way of threatening the homo-
geneity of a place that, before the arrival of migrants—supposedly—used
to carry out only the function of a train station. Nonetheless, the station
has served a similar function in the past. According to Brioni, who draws
on Levi’s Roma fuggitiva, the station used to be a gathering point also
for internal migrants (Brioni 2017, 449).7 However, the representations
of Termini as inhabited by intranational and international migrants differ
because, “hegemonic narratives that talk about immigrants often crim-
inalise them and represent them in explicitly racialised terms” (Brioni
2017, 449). The construction of migrants’ presence at the station as clan-
destine, as illegal, leads to the perception of migrants as transgressing the
boundaries of legality by simply being there. This transgression produces
feelings of fear and insecurity echoing Puwar’s analysis mentioned above
(Puwar 2004, 50). Termini is also used as a synecdoche for Italy and
migrants in Italy and complaints against the situation at the Roman
station mirror the common complaints voiced against immigrants in Italy.
The following example, which is taken from Il Giornale, which as a news-
paper expresses an explicit anti-immigrant stance, dates to 2009 but it is
similar to earlier ones already mentioned:
Welcome to Termini station. […] Anything can be found here: from

the Romanian petty thief followed by his family, who mingles with the
crowd to go unnoticed, to the part-time pick-pocketer that comes to
the station to top up his wage as a workman. […] They come from
every corner of the world. Especially Romania, Latin America and North
Africa. But there are also some Italians among them. […] The crim-
inal charges? You name them. Pickpocketing, thefts, muggings. Injuries,
scuffles, attempted assaults. Drug dealing and drunken disorder. And,
of course, expulsion notices and orders of commitment to prison being

disrespected. (Il Giornale 2009, my translation)
Termini is thus described as an underworld, a separate world of crimi-

nality, in which anything is allowed and anything could happen. In 1996,
after a Somali girl gave birth in a bathroom in Termini, a journalist for
La Stampa, interviewed Rossella, one of the cleaners, who provided a list
of activities taking place in Termini:
Rossella sees all sort of things: “from the drug addicts that, many times,
we managed to save from overdosing, to the homosexuals that at times
beat each other up. As I was saying, sometimes Somali and other Arab
women, lock themselves in the bathroom for a while, because they fish
out the mat and pray. Or they wash themselves completely, or they write
home. We know about it, and we let them, trying to respect everyone”.
[…] It really is another world, unknown and with its own rules. (Bianconi
1996, my translation)
Noteworthy is the fact that many women use the restroom to pray or
to write a letter. This use, however, is not surprising, as the bathroom
can be locked and therefore the occupants feel protected and they can be
sure they will not be bothered. Significantly, the allusion to the gesture of
washing oneself belongs to a broader set of recurring actions that pertain
to the sphere of cleansing and purifying, and thus the private sphere. Yet,
the journalist is describing Termini, as the other article mentioned above,
as an unknown world with its own rules. This is also portrayed in the
literary texts analysed.
Igiaba Scego in La mia casa è dove sono, which has an entire chapter
dedicated to the role of Termini in the life of her family (as well as in the
life of the Somali community in Rome), explains:
As for any other Somali of the Roman diaspora, the station came into
my life immediately. […] But the most precious goods that you can find
at Termini are chats. […] It is here that you can compile the list of the
newborns and those who recently died. It is here that you can randomly
run into an aunt that you haven’t seen for six years. At the little fountain
in via dei Mille, I often see young men performing ablutions. (Scego 2010,
99–100, 104–105, my translation)
Another random document with
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frequently called at Apia. He was a widower with two young
daughters.
These daughters, Anne and Marjorie, or “the two Ide girls” as they
were then popularly known, displayed no sign of Puritan ancestry or
upbringing. They were just remarkably beautiful and altogether
charming and delightful. A large part of their girlhood had been
spent in Samoa; they were the product of an intermittent, but very
picturesque education, and there was ingrained in them some of that
happy-go-lucky attitude toward life, and that freedom from useless
convention which the Occidental is not unlikely to acquire in the
Orient.
These girls had, in Samoa, been great friends of Robert Louis
Stevenson. Anne, the elder, was the especial favourite of the beauty-
loving invalid and he willed to her his birthday, as can be learned
from his Samoan letters. She was born near Christmas time and had
never known what it was to have her birthday celebrated, a great
deprivation in childhood. But she now celebrates as her own the
birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson and it is, I believe, her most
cherished possession.
Marjorie, whose career, ever since our first trip together, I have
followed with the greatest affection and interest, had even more of
the care-free attitude than Anne. She used to convulse us with cruelly
funny accounts of her adventures with admirers, of whom there were
many, and with descriptions of some of the strange acquaintances
she made during her travels with her father.
Among the passengers on the Hancock was Dr. Kneedler, an army
surgeon, with his wife and two little girls. These little girls were
exceedingly bright and inquisitive. Young ladies and gentlemen had
particular and irresistible attractions for them and the Ide young
ladies kept them very much occupied. The Ide young ladies didn’t
encourage their attentions and this fact engendered their hostility.
They therefore referred to the Misses Ide as “them there Ides.” With
their delightful sense of humour the Ides, of course, rejoiced in the
designation and in all the thirteen years since then they have never
met Mr. Taft or me without presenting themselves as “them there
Ides.”
The Misses Ide were destined to be the unrivalled belles of Manila
society for six years and then to move on to broader social spheres.
Anne was married to Mr. Bourke Cochran shortly after her father left
the Philippines, but Marjorie continued to be her father’s companion
for several years, going with him to Madrid when he was appointed
Minister to Spain and presiding over the American Legation there
until she married Mr. Shane Leslie and went to London to live.
General Wright, Judge Ide and Mr. Taft were the lawyers on the
Commission and it was felt that their familiarity with law and
governmental matters greatly enhanced the strength and
preparedness of the Commission for the work they had to do.
Mr. Worcester was an assistant professor at the University of
Michigan. He too was a Vermonter, with quite as much fortiter in re,
but with somewhat less of the suaviter in modo than Judge Ide
inherently had, or had acquired in his Samoan experience.
Mr. Worcester was the only member of the party who had ever
been to the Philippines before. I think he had been there twice with
scientific expeditions before the Battle of Manila Bay had thrust the
guardianship of the Filipinos upon our country, and in the course of
his trips, with his fluency in Spanish as it is spoken in the
Philippines, he had acquired a very intimate knowledge of the people
and their customs, as well as of the flora and fauna of the islands. He
had written a book on the Philippines which came out at a most
fortunate time, just when Dewey’s victory had turned the eyes of the
country upon that never-before-thought-of corner of the world. This
book led to his appointment on the first Commission and his useful,
loyal, courageous and effective labours with that body led Mr.
McKinley to appoint him on the second.
He is a large, forceful man with rather abrupt manners and very
decided opinions and perhaps no greater contrast could be imagined
than exists between him and Mrs. Worcester, who, in outward
seeming, is the frailest kind of little woman, with a sweet face and
engagingly gentle manners which suggest timidity. Mrs. Worcester
has proved herself to possess the frailty of flexible steel. At that time
we were quite concerned about her, I remember, thinking she would
not be able to endure the Philippine climate even for a short period.
But she has lived there from that day to this. She has been with her
husband through many experiences from which the strongest woman
would shrink, toiling with him over hundreds of miles of mountain
and jungle trail on his frequent expeditions into the countries of the
wild tribes and meeting every difficulty without comment. She is in
excellent health and is a living refutation of the familiar
exaggerations as to the effect of the climate. They had with them two
little white haired children, one of them quite delicate, who have
grown up in the Philippines strong and healthy and have received
most of their education in the schools established there under
American government.
The last member of the Commission was Professor Bernard Moses
of the political and historical department of the University of
California. He was a man of profound learning, a Connecticut
Yankee, combining a very excellent knowledge of business with his
unusual qualifications as an historian, economist and student of
politics. He was especially familiar with all Spanish-American
countries, had travelled extensively in the South American republics
and had written a learned book on the constitution of Colombia. My
husband always says that he thinks Mr. McKinley exercised the
wisest discretion in the selection of all the members of this
Commission since they possessed, among them, qualifications for
every line of work in practical government and original research.
Mrs. Moses, a graduate from the University of California, was a
very attractive woman. She had a gift for vivid description and for
seeing the funny side of every situation. Her book, “Unofficial Letters
of an Official’s Wife,” gives an interesting and accurate picture of
social life in the early days of military rule, which are known in
Manila history as “the days of the Empire” and of that period when
American civil government was in the process of organisation. Her
wit sometimes had a suggestion of the caustic in it, but she never
failed to contribute her quota to the day’s amusement.
There were many other interesting members of the party,
including Mr. Arthur Fergusson, the Spanish secretary, and Mrs.
Fergusson, Mr. Frank A. Branagan, the disbursing officer, and Mrs.
Branagan, and several private secretaries with their families.
The voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu was quite perfect. As
we sailed toward the tropics the weather gradually grew warmer and
the sheltered decks became the most attractive part of the ship. The
promenade deck of the Hancock reaches from bow to stern. I believe
there is a regular term to describe such ship construction,—“decked
over all” is it?—but to me it was just a very long deck which served
unusually well for exercise. The Commission held regular business
sessions in a cabin which had been fitted up for the purpose, but
when work was over they would start on a long march around and
around the deck, covering many miles each day. My husband was
especially industrious and walked one man after another “off his
feet” until, finally, he was obliged to finish his long tramp alone. He
set himself the task of so many miles a day, so many times around
the deck being a mile, and to keep count of laps requires some
concentration. His quiet persistence in this kind of exercise was
calculated to make the lazy onlooker intensely nervous, and when I
had done my modest little turn I was always glad to indulge in a sort
of counter-concentration at a whist table, or at General Wright’s ever
constant pinochle.
Altogether the days passed very pleasantly and we were a very
merry and friendly party by the time we reached Honolulu.
At Honolulu I got my first glimpse of real tropics, and I was
enchanted. It was a glorious sensation for me that April morning
when I saw these mid-Pacific islands, for the first time, rise before
me out of a white-capped sea; clear-cut in an atmosphere which
seems never to be blurred by mist.
American energy, ambition and initiative have wrought great
material changes in the islands and these, which were even then
important, were brought to our admiring attention later on. I shall
always think of Hawaii,—of the island of Oahu, rather,—as it
appeared to me then when our ship steamed past Diamond Head,
skirted the high breakers of Waikiki and made its way up through the
bright waters of the bay into the harbour of Honolulu. Honolulu is a
little, modern city lying, all in sight, against the green of a narrow,
gently-sloping, peak-encircled valley.
The Punchbowl, a spent and emptied volcano, outlined in perfect
form against the higher hills behind it, plainly tells the story of the
spectacular construction of the islands and makes it almost possible
to visualise their sudden rise from the sea. They are not very old,
according to scientific measurements of time, but they are old
enough, at any rate, to have clothed themselves in the most brilliant
luxuriance, which is the first thing to impress the traveller as his ship
sails into the harbour.
The brilliance from the ship’s deck is the brilliance of every
imaginable shade of green, massed against the towering, pointed
hills and picked into contrasts of high-light and shadow by a sun and
atmosphere peculiar to the tropics. Once ashore, the green foliage
becomes the background for a wealth of blooming flowers, flowers
everywhere, of unnumbered different varieties, with the flaming
hibiscus in every garden, striking the high note of colour. Until we
left Honolulu laden with “leis”—long festoons of flower petals which
are thrown upon the shoulders of departing friends and visitors—
there were always flowers.
And with the flowers and the foliage and the tall palm trees and
the warm tropic sunlight, there is music, the music of the native
which greets one in welcome at the dock and contributes constantly
to the spirit of festivity until the departing ship gets too far from
shore to catch the strains of the farewell song “Aloha” whose closing
words: “Until we meet, until we meet again,” linger long in the mind
of the grateful recipient of Hawaiian hospitality.
The first thing we were to learn when our ship came up into the
harbour was that the bubonic plague had been epidemic in Honolulu
for a long time. It was our first encounter with this terror of the East.
There had been seventy-one cases in all, and sixty-one deaths. Six
Europeans had contracted the disease and of these four had died.
When we dropped anchor we were at once boarded by the local
health officer, Dr. Carmichael of the Marine Hospital Service, who
was accompanied by United States Minister Sewell and Consul
General Hayward. They wanted us to land, of course, and we were
very anxious to do so, but as the quarantine was not yet raised they
could not answer for the attitude of the Japanese health officers
when we got to Yokohama. Our going ashore might result in a long
detention in quarantine for ourselves and, aside from the discomfort
of this, we could not afford the delay. There was no particular danger
for us personally, since no new cases had been reported for twenty-
four days, but it was all a question of being able to land later in
Japan. It was really too much of a disappointment; there was not a
dissenting voice on that score, and Honolulu kept getting more and
more attractive as the possibility dawned on us that we might not see
it at all. But it was arranged. We sent for the Japanese vice-Consul
and explained matters to him and he finally agreed to hold himself
responsible for our breaking the quarantine, in so far as it concerned
Japan, if we would keep our ship out in the stream instead of tying
up at the dock, and permit no member of the crew to go ashore
during our stay. This we readily agreed to do and made our plans
accordingly. We, too, were to live on board the Hancock, but there
were any number of harbour launches put at our disposal.
We were received by the Americans in Honolulu with the utmost
cordiality and immediately found ourselves sharing the exhilarating
suspense with which the people were then awaiting the passage of
the bill in Congress which was to make the Hawaiian Islands a part
of the United States. The first thing the Commission did was to call
on President Dole, of the provisional republican government, and
with him they met the Ministers of the Treasury and the Interior, Mr.
Damon and Mr. Young. Indeed, we met all the people who had the
affairs of the islands in hand and were most delightfully entertained
by them. We found them of one mind, just anxiously waiting to be
annexed to the United States. The men, who realised the importance
of our mission to the Philippines, were eager to foregather with the
Commission and discuss with them, long and earnestly, this broad
American venture and its possible effect upon the future prosperity
of the Hawaiian Islands, but in so far as I was concerned, nothing in
the way of state problems was allowed to intrude itself upon their
purely social hospitality. There were dinners and luncheons and teas
and receptions, and, in the intervals, sightseeing.
There are a number of entertaining things to do in Honolulu and
while I do not wish to make this, in any way, a book of travel, I must
record my impressions of the world as they came to me.
The Hawaiian Islands have a background of romantic history
which makes the museums, the public buildings and even the
cemeteries of the capital extremely interesting. Besides all of which
there are some wonderful views which every one must see.
The trip to Nuuani Pali is the first thing to be undertaken in
Honolulu, perhaps because it is the greatest thing on the island of
Oahu. We didn’t know what the Pali was,—had no idea. It was just
the place to go, so we went,—the very first day. We drove up the
valley over a perfect road which wound in and out past beautiful,
palm-shaded country homes, and along the bank of a noisy, crystal-
clear little mountain stream, until we came to a point which looked
to me like the “jumping off place.” And it is; the “jumping off place”
is the Pali. The road turns sharp around the solid rock wall of the cliff
and winds its way on down into the valley on the other side, but it is
a distinct surprise to find that it doesn’t end right there. The Pali is
the Pass of the Winds; the meeting place of all the young hurricanes
of the Pacific. They say the winds in the Pali are never still. We were
flattened out against the wall of the cliff, our hats were torn from our
heads and we had to hold onto our coats for dear life, but before us
lay one of the grandest spectacles in the whole world. Coral-tinted,
purple, rose and bright blue sea; beetling, pointed, terrible cliffs, and
a broad, green plain running down to a surf-washed ribbon of beach;
a panorama as wide as the compass of vision. I have been back since
then thinking that, on first sight, I might have overestimated the
grandeur of the Pali. But I didn’t. It is one of the world’s great views.
And it has its touch of savage history too. It was up these hills and
over the cliffs of the Pali that King Kamehameha drove to certain
death the offending hordes in arms against his sovereignty. There
was no escape for them. Once in this pass they had either to go over
the precipice or back against the spears of the enemy. This being
history, and not myth, it adds much to the thrill of the spectacle.
After a visit to the indescribable “aquarium of the painted fishes”—
painted, I suppose, by the bright sun-rays in the coral shallows of the
tropic seas—we went, as guests of Mr. Carter, a prominent member
of the American colony, who afterward became governor of the
islands, out to Waikiki Beach for surf-bathing,—or, surf-riding, as it
is more aptly called.
Surf-riding at Waikiki Beach is a great game. In the first place the
surf there doesn’t look as if any human being would dare venture
into it; but when you see a beautiful, slim, brown native, naked save
for short swimming trunks, come gliding down a high white breaker,
poised like a Mercury, erect on a single narrow plank—it looks
delightfully exhilarating. It took me some time to make up my mind,
but after sufficient persuasion I finally decided to risk my life with
the others. Dressed in bathing suits, we were taken out beyond the
line of breakers in long canoes with outriggers and, with a native at
prow and stern armed with broad paddles to guide the craft, we rode
in on the crest of the waves. Even this modified version of the
natives’ foolhardy performance is dangerous enough. There is every
likelihood of an upset and not any of us could be said to swim
expertly, so there was great excitement when one member of the
party after another was plunged, out of depth, into the foaming and
seething water. Two members of our party, indeed, had a narrow
escape, though we didn’t know it at the time. General Wright and
Judge Ide were capsized in a particularly vicious breaker and Judge
Ide at once began to make frantic efforts to attract attention and
secure aid, but in the confusion his signs of distress were taken for
indications of vast enjoyment and he would have been left to drown
if he hadn’t been washed ashore by the force of the surf. General
Wright, though much the better swimmer, had no less difficulty, and
they were both quite white and shaken when they crawled up on the
beach.
We stayed four days in this “Paradise of the Pacific,” during which
we made many interesting trips, were introduced to many strange
Hawaiian customs and were regaled with many feasts, not always, I
may say, particularly appetizing. I have had in my time, for
politeness’ sake, to eat various queer messes in all sorts of odd
corners of the earth, but to me “poi” will always be “poi”—in a class
by itself. It is the true Hawaiian dish and is offered to guests by the
natives in the same spirit of compliment with which we offer to
“break bread” with our friends. It is the custom for Americans
residing in Honolulu to introduce visitors to this dish, and the native
viands which go with it, in entertainments which are called “poi
dinners,” and we were treated to as many of these as our time would
permit. “Poi” bears an unpleasant outward resemblance to cockroach
paste and, try as I would, I was never able to cultivate a taste for it.
But foreigners do learn to like it, for I found Americans in Honolulu
eating it with the greatest relish and dipping it up with their fingers
in true Hawaiian style.
On our last evening in Honolulu, after a morning of sightseeing, a
luncheon, an hour in the buffeting surf, and a large tea-party, we
were given a particularly elaborate “poi dinner” where we all sat on
the floor and at which all the guests appeared in native costume with
“leis” around their necks and in their hair. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Mr. Mott Smith, sent the Hawaiian Band, whose leader came
out from old Emperor William to King Kalakaua, and they serenaded
us with most wonderful Hawaiian music, interspersed, for their own
pride’s sake, with well rendered selections from the finest operas.
The girls came in flaming bright “Mother-Hubbard” dresses,
crowned and covered with “leis,” to dance for us the curious folk-lore
dances of the old-time. It was a delightful whirl of music and lights
and colour—added to fish and poi and a cramped position—but I was
tired enough not to be sorry when the time came for the singing of
“Aloha Oe” and our departure for the ship which lay out in the
harbour ready to up-anchor at daybreak and start on its way to
Japan.
On the evening of the tenth of May we reached the estuary near the
head of which is Yokohama and further on is Tokyo. For at least two
hours we steamed past a low-lying shore line before we came in sight
of the sweep of steep cliff to the southward which forms the great
outer harbour.
NIKKO. AN ANCIENT CRYPTOMERIA
AVENUE AND A GLIMPSE OF THE
FAMOUS TEMPLES
There was just one thing that we could really look at; one insistent,
dominant point in the landscape which caught us and held us
fascinated,—Fujiyama. I had seen Fujiyama on screens and fans and
porcelains all my life, but I had no conception of it. For one half hour
this “Queen of Mountains”—rightly called—rising thirteen thousand
feet out of sheer sea-level, perfect in form, snow-capped, majestic,
blazed for us against the western sky. Then a cloud curtain fell,—and
the sun went down.
As we steamed up close to the breakwater in the grey light of late
evening we could see nothing but the dark outlines of many ships
and a long row of substantial looking buildings, under high arc lights,
stretching along a wide, water-front street which I was afterward to
know as The Bund.
We wanted to go ashore, but it was not possible. We had to lie
outside the breakwater and wait for the doctors to come aboard.
“Wait for the doctors to come aboard;” how familiar that proceeding
becomes to the traveller among the ports of the East, and especially,
of Japan. You arrive at Yokohama and are examined there; you go
just around the bend of the coast line and arrive at Kobe and you are
examined there; you go on through the Inland Sea to Nagasaki and
again you are examined. Wherever you arrive in this land of much
caution you must “wait for the doctors to come aboard.”
But our doctors didn’t keep us waiting long. About eight o’clock
half a dozen of them, important little men with much gold lace, came
smiling up the gangway. We worried, rather, about the plague we had
braved,—and we did hope none of our crew would develop
symptoms,—but, having faith in the Japanese Vice-Consul in
Honolulu, we hoped for special leniency. We were not disappointed.
They examined the ship’s company with great care, but our
examination was a mere formality, a sort of apologetic enumeration
as a matter of fact, and after giving us a clean bill of health the
doctors bowed themselves most courteously away. But we had a
narrow escape. Charlie’s nurse developed a suspicious sore throat the
very next afternoon and gave us many days of anxiety for the baby
and the other children. And, as I shall make plain further on, our
anxiety was not without cause.
In reading over my own and my husband’s letters, written on that
trip to various members of the family, I find that Charlie was very
much in evidence at all times. I suppose he was spoiled because,
certainly, everybody took a hand in his misguidance, but the spoiling
process at least kept him in high good humour, unless it happened to
take the form of secret indulgence in prohibited sweets; then I had to
meet the consequences. I find my husband writing to his brother
Charles: “Charlie continues to be as full of spirits and as determined
to have his own way as ever. We call him ‘the tornado’; he creates
such a sensation when he lands in the midst of the children on board
the ship. He is very badly in need of discipline and I long for the time
to come when he will be better able to appreciate it. Maria has
become quite as much a slave to him as Nellie and you may tell his
Aunt Annie that I am still the only hope the boy has of moral
training.” This sounds so much like the average father that I thought
I ought to quote it.
When Bessie, Charlie’s nurse, was taken away from him and
quarantined we got for him a Japanese “amah” who filled him at first
with indignation, not unmixed with fear. But she was so patient, and
followed him around so much like a faithful watchdog, that he grew
to be exceedingly fond of her and straightway proceeded to exchange
his small English vocabulary for, to him, more useful Japanese
words.
The first thing to claim our attention in Yokohama Harbour was
the American cruiser Newark, the Admiral’s flagship of the Asiatic
fleet, with Admiral Kempff aboard. As soon as we came inside the
breakwater she fired a salute of seventeen guns, and we wondered
what it was all about, until suddenly we remembered that the
Commissioners had the rank of ministers plenipotentiary and
decided that it was meant for us. It was the first time in my
husband’s life that he had ever been saluted. In his later career he
reached a point where he would have been almost willing to assume
a disguise in order to escape the thunder of the twenty-one guns that
roared at him whenever he approached a naval vessel of any kind,
but I think he was rather elated by this first tribute to his official
standing.
We found later that an old friend, Captain McCalla, was in
command of the Newark. We had known Captain McCalla in
Washington when my husband was Solicitor General. He had been
court-martialed and suspended from the Navy for a year for striking
an unruly and insubordinate sailor and at his request Mr. Taft read
the record of the court-martial. Mr. Choate had been his counsel, but
the case was given a great deal of unpleasant publicity. He displayed
such bravery at the Battle of Guantanamo, in Cuba, that the files he
had lost were restored to him. He also rendered distinguished service
in the Philippines, taking over the surrender of one of Aguinaldo’s
generals at Caygayan; and later on, in China, he was in the van of the
allied troops that relieved Peking and was severely wounded. Being a
man of broad intelligence and great enterprise he appreciated the
importance of the Philippine Commission and lost no time in
extending to them all the courtesies at his command.
Shortly after we landed and got ourselves comfortably settled at
the Grand Hotel, an ensign from the Newark came to ask when the
Commission would receive the Admiral. The hour was set for this
formality and when it had been duly disposed of, Captain McCalla
called on us unofficially, with much news for our hungry ears from
the big world that we had known nothing about for eleven long days.
That was before the wireless era when going to sea was really going
to sea, and seldom has the world known a more exciting year than
1900. Grim talk about the terrible Boxer insurrection was on every
tongue and Captain McCalla told us that the Newark was lying in
readiness to proceed to China at an instant’s notice. The British were
just then pressing the Boers northward in South Africa, and our own
troubles in the Philippines were by no means over. We had nearly
seventy thousand troops in the field, and we heard of decisive
engagements between the division under General Young and some
religious fanatic insurrectos in northern Luzon. We found ourselves
feeling very much in touch with big events.
The Commission went out to the Newark to return the Admiral’s
call and when they got back to the hotel they were full of valuable
information and advice about sightseeing in Japan, housekeeping in
the Orient and other important things. Among other bits of news
they had to tell their wives was that we would all probably be
received at the Japanese Court,—which was quite exciting.
My experience is that the most formal branch of the government
service is the naval branch. The state department may be as formal,
but I doubt it. The ceremony on board naval vessels is constant, and
the severity of the penalties for any failure to follow the regulations
impresses itself upon every naval officer. Therefore, every naval
officer must have diplomatic training and must be alert in finding
out and in carrying out the duties of polite intercourse which prevail
in every country.
Captain McCalla regarded the Commissioners as pro-consuls going
to an important province, quite equal to the foremost diplomatic
representatives of the United States anywhere, and he thought it was
incumbent upon them to make the fact of their presence in Japan
known at the Imperial Court and to apply for an audience with the
Emperor. It hadn’t occurred to them. Their minds were so full of the
weighty problems confronting them at Manila that they had given no
consideration to any possible intervening formalities, and, anyhow,
Mr. Taft said he thought the Emperor wouldn’t lose much sleep if he
did miss seeing them. But this was not the proper attitude at all, and
Captain McCalla, expostulating with them for their too casual
conduct, finally prevailed upon them to communicate with the
American Minister in Tokyo and ask to have application made for the
audience. They were immediately informed that their arrival had
been expected and that the matter had already been attended to.
ENTRANCE TO THE IMPERIAL PALACE GARDENS IN TOKYO
The Commission had only a week in Japan and, although their

purpose in stopping had been to coal ship and get some clothing
suitable for the tropic heat they were going into, they naturally were
anxious to see something of the country during their stay, so the days
were filled with expeditions around Yokohama and Tokyo and to
points of interest nearby. My sister Maria and I did not accompany
them on many of these trips because we were planning to remain in
Japan for the summer and wanted to view its attractions at our
leisure.
The trip to Nikko was made memorable by Mr. Taft’s most
triumphal progress. On account of his unusual proportions he had
already been an object of tremendous interest to the Japanese.
Nikko is nearly a day’s ride from Tokyo, up in the hills to the north,
and when you get there you find that the railway station is a long way
from the hotel and that much of the distance is a steep incline. The
only kind of conveyance available is a jinricksha, and when my
husband climbed into one of these little perambulators the
unfortunate coolie to whom it belonged began to utter strange
sounds. He rolled his eyes and gesticulated frantically until he
prevailed upon a second man to help him in propelling his
unaccustomed burden. But even then his excitement did not abate.
As they approached the first rise in the road some of the villagers
along the way, attracted, no doubt, by the coolie’s weird cries, came
out to stare and, as usual, remained to laugh. The little ’ricksha man
began chattering and grimacing at all of them and kept it up until he
had enlisted the services of at least half the population of the village
to help him in attaining the crest of the hill.
Two days before the Hancock was to start on her way toward
Manila the great event of our visit to Japan transpired. We had our
audience with the Emperor and Empress.
The first thing the ladies all asked, of course, was, “What shall we
wear?” It was a most important question. I supposed we should have
to wear evening gowns and was congratulating myself that I had a
very nice new one that would do beautifully. But only on the
afternoon before the day appointed, it was decreed that we should
appear in high-necked frocks with trains. That was more difficult,—
especially the trains. I didn’t own an afternoon frock that I
considered good enough. I was going to the tropics and had got a
supply of thin white muslins and linens, but I had nothing that would
do for a cold May day in Japan. Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Worcester and
Mrs. Moses were as greatly concerned as I, but we finally managed. I
solved the problem by having a Chinese dressmaker in Yokohama
make me, overnight, a lace guimpe which I wore with my perfectly
acceptable evening gown.
Judge Ide had been particularly interested in the audience and in
the fact that the ladies would also be received and he was very much
chagrined when he found that “the ladies” meant only the wives of
the Commissioners and that he could not take with him his two
beautiful daughters. He quite lost interest in the whole proceeding,
and we didn’t blame him in the least.
The Palace in Tokyo is not a “Forbidden City” literally, as the old
palace in Peking used to be, but it looks from the outside just as
“forbidden,” or more so. It is surrounded by a wide, deep moat which
is crossed at intervals by curved and gracefully balustraded bridges.
On the other side of the moat is a high stone wall. There is nothing of
the palace to be seen except a few low, tiled roofs which peep out
from the midst of many trees. The Imperial gardens are vastly more
impressive than the palaces,—there are several within the walled
enclosure,—and I would have wanted to linger and really look at
things if I had not been so keenly interested in the experience which
awaited us. Our carriage hurried on over the beautiful drives,
through the most entrancing little artificial landscapes, past lakes full
of little rock islands on which were perched tiny pavilions with
uptilted roofs and the most beautiful polished wood and snow-white
paper windows. It was all most fascinating and much too wonderful
to be merely glanced at, but it was only a few moments before we
approached a low, grey building and drew up before the door. It
didn’t look at all like a palace, but it seemed that we had arrived.
We were ushered into a large reception room which was neither
Japanese nor European, but a curious mixture of both. The walls
were of gold leaf and were decorated with beautiful Japanese
paintings in exquisitely soft colourings, but the furniture was mostly
of the heavy foreign type. It was unexpected to say the least and I
thought what a pity it was that the Japanese had not met the
European invasion in their own original and picturesquely beautiful
style, instead of trying to conform to western customs, or rather, to
engraft western customs upon their own unique orientalism. But so
it is. They either like our ugly heaviness, or think they confer a polite
compliment on us by adopting it.
We were not kept waiting long. We were separated from the men
of our party and were led into another room, much like the first,
where the Empress awaited us attended by three or four ladies of her
court. We curtseyed very low, not without difficulty on the part of
most of us in spite of much practice, and after receiving a gracious
smile and bow from Her Majesty, we were able to stand erect and
observe her at our leisure. Both she and her ladies-in-waiting were
dressed in European costume which made them look much smaller
than they would have looked in their own beautiful kimonos. Her
Majesty’s face was sweet and almost timid looking, and her voice was
peculiarly gentle. Our conversation, carried on through an
interpreter, was commonplace in the extreme, but her manner was
pleasant and cordial. I was tremendously interested because I had
been reading Japanese history and was duly impressed with the
hoary antiquity of this court of the Son of Heaven. The Empress
addressed a few remarks to each of us, after which we curtseyed
again and retired. That was all.
Our husbands were received in a similar manner by the Emperor,
though His Majesty granted a separate interview to each of them. Mr.
Taft entered first with the Minister of the Household in charge of the
ceremony. He bowed when he entered the door, bowed again half
way up the long room, and yet again when he arrived before the
Emperor. The others, also bowing, followed close behind but
remained just outside of the audience chamber while my husband’s
audience was in progress. Mr. Nagasaki, who acted as interpreter,
said that His Majesty was very much pleased to see the Commission
in Japan. Mr. Taft expressed his appreciation of the audience. The
Emperor asked if he had ever been in Japan before. He said he had
not. The Emperor asked when he was going to leave Japan. He
replied, “In two days, Your Majesty.” After which this, his first
audience with the Mikado, was at an end and he left the chamber
while the rest of the Commissioners, each in his turn, went through
the same ceremony.
After our husbands had been received by the Empress also, they
rejoined us and we were conducted through some other rooms in the
palace which interested us greatly. They all showed a curious
mingling of Japanese and European objects of art and nobody could
see them without deciding that, in that particular setting at least, the
Japanese objects were far the more beautiful.
The Japanese Court is much inclined to imitate things European
and the results are sometimes astonishing. Years later, when my
husband was in Japan without me, the Empress presented him with
a tapestry for me which had been copied from a Gobelin piece. It
represented the meeting of Columbus and Isabella, and, it shows the
most exquisite workmanship, but the faces have a curiously Oriental
cast.
There is a story in connection with this tapestry which I think I
must tell. My husband was Secretary of War when it was presented
to me; and I say me with emphasis, because thereby hangs the story.
He brought it home and displayed it with great pride and
satisfaction, but it was so enormous and, from my standpoint, so
useless, that I rather protested and wondered why, as long as he was
getting such a gorgeous present he couldn’t have managed in some
way to make its size correspond with my circumstances.
“Oh, well,” said he, “never mind. I’m going to present it to the
Smithsonian Institute anyway, because you know, my dear, it is
against the Constitution for an official in the United States
government to accept any kind of favours from foreign courts.”
This was not the first time in my life that I had met the
Constitution face to face, but theretofore I had been able to accept its
decrees with what I had hoped was patriotic resignation. But now
that tapestry suddenly became to me a most desirable thing. It had
been sent to me by the Empress of Japan and I wanted to enjoy the
mere possession of it,—at least for awhile. So, as my husband would
say, I took the question up with him. I tried to convince him that I
was not an official of the United States government and that he, as an
official, had nothing whatever to do with my present from the
Empress of Japan. He stood firmly by the Constitution, as usual, and
eventually I had to submit the question for arbitration to President
Roosevelt, who agreed with me that I was a private citizen and had a
perfect right to accept the gift. I afterward hung it in one of the big
wall spaces in the state dining-room of the White House and had the
pleasure of watching many a guest vainly endeavouring to locate its
origin and figure out its meaning.
We concluded our first audience at the court of Japan by signing
our names in the Imperial album, after which we went to the
American Legation to a beautiful luncheon which the Minister had
arranged in our honour. Our Minister in Tokyo then—it was some
years before the Legation was raised to an Embassy—was Mr. Buck
of Georgia, a most affable and agreeable gentleman. He had invited a
number of his diplomatic colleagues to meet us and, among others,
we met for the first time Baron and Baroness Rosen, of the Russian
Legation, who were afterward with us in Washington.
I sat on the right of the Minister and next to Baron Sanomiya, the
Court Chamberlain, who had conducted our audience. I was greatly
interested in Baron Sanomiya’s wife. She was an Englishwoman at
least twice his size.
At Mr. Taft’s request the Minister had invited an old classmate of
his, Baron Tajiri Inajiro. At Yale he was known as Tajiri, and the first
two letters of both their names being “Ta” he and my husband had
been brought together in the classroom, seated alphabetically, and
had enjoyed a pleasant association. So Mr. Taft looked forward with
great pleasure to renewing the acquaintance in Japan. Baron Tajiri,
like most Japanese, was a little man, and his teeth were so formed
that he was never able to master the pronunciation of English in such
a way as to enable one to understand him easily. But he seems to
have acquired at Yale a sound knowledge of business and finance
since he became Assistant Minister of Finance under Yamagata and
had taken an active part in the change of the Japanese currency from
the silver to the gold standard, which was a great step in Japan’s
progress toward a place among the world’s powers. He had been
made a life peer and sat in the Upper House. At the luncheon he
wore a frock coat which Mr. Taft felt confident he recognised as an
old college friend of the ‘seventies. In those days the Japanese wore
their “foreign clothes” only on “foreign occasions” or at court. They
kept them carefully folded up and put away, and they had not yet
come to recognise the desirability of pressing them when they took
them out for use. Also a silk hat once was a silk hat always; vintages
didn’t trouble them, and they didn’t mind in the least which way the
nap was brushed.
© Harris S. Ewing.
THE STATE DINING-ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE,

SHOWING TAPESTRY PRESENTED TO MRS. TAFT BY THE
EMPRESS OF JAPAN
Baron Tajiri wanted to be appointed Minister of Finance when

Yamagata retired, but he was put, instead, at the head of the Board of
Audits, a life position. Marchioness, now Princess Oyama, wife of the
Field Marshal, told my husband this on the occasion of his second
visit to Japan, and said that the disappointment had made Tajiri very
much of a recluse. In any case, Mr. Taft has never seen him again,
although he has tried to seek him out and has made inquiry about
him every time he has been in Japan.
We were very much interested in our Legation at Tokyo. It was the
first one we had ever seen that the American government owned. The
house was not what it ought to have been, but it was surrounded by
spacious and beautifully kept grounds and was so much better than
the nothing that we have in other countries that we liked to dwell
upon it as an honourable exception to the disgraceful and miserly
policy pursued by Congress in dealing with our representatives to
foreign capitals.

Home Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature 1St Edition Chiara Giuliani Full Chapter

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Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian

Postcolonial Literature 1st Edition

“Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature is an inspira-

ISBN 978-3-030-75062-6 ISBN 978-3-030-75063-3 (eBook)

useful feedback, stimulating comments and incessant words of encour-

1 Spaces of Memory, Spaces of Belonging: Home

4 Spaces of Residence and Transnational Microcosms

Spaces of Memory, Spaces of Belonging:

1.1 Home and Home Spaces

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

prevent the spread of Covid-19. One of the “unforeseeable” gaps of the

Home spaces is plural to suggest the possibility of feeling at home in

The many meanings associated with home make it a challenging and

whose processes of remembering often become a way to connect a specific

1.2 Home Spaces in Italian Society

“the me of me mattered” also to someone else. The places selected in this

act of settlement involves an encounter and interaction with an established

space of a tactic is the space of the other” (2011, 36–37). Regardless of

In relation to the journalistic sources, articles were selected primarily

1.3 Home Spaces in Italian

and displacement. It is here that the special post-colonial crisis of iden-

as recurrent places visited or inhabited by one of the characters, or because

According to Guha, migrants’ displacement compresses time while

the bedroom, is their potential to trigger memories that would create

1.4 Outline of the Book

sociality. As frequently described by the sources used in this analysis,

connection, a “virtual co-presence” (Baldassar 2008, 252), with members

the shield provided by Amedeo’s fake identity to come down; on the

the analysis was published in 1990, namely Pap Khouma’s Io venditore di

———. Il comandante del fiume. Rome: 66th and 2nd.

Derobertis, Roberto. 2008. Storie fuori luogo. Migrazioni, traduzioni e riscrit-

———. 2008. Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator at Piazza Vittorio. Trans.

19 February 2021. https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2020/11/5fbd2e

Tuan, Yi.-Fu. 1990. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes,

Termini Train Station: A Place to Arrive, a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Italian population occupied in underpaid and occasional jobs, in illegal

the level of visibility of their different bodies as well as of their unconven-

in a distant space and time, work in creating a sense of community and

2.2 Termini Train Station and its Uses

of hanging out at Termini, while paving the way to the transformation

managed by the journalist Maria Latella, to whom citizens could write to

If “facce nere” [black faces] in contrast to “visi pallidi” [palefaces] are

provide a sort of explanation, even justification as to why these criminal

2011, 26–27). Migrant communities who moved to the Esquilino area,

Welcome to Termini station. […] Anything can be found here: from

of course, expulsion notices and orders of commitment to prison being

Termini is thus described as an underworld, a separate world of crimi-

ENTRANCE TO THE IMPERIAL PALACE GARDENS IN TOKYO

The Commission had only a week in Japan and, although their

THE STATE DINING-ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE,

Baron Tajiri wanted to be appointed Minister of Finance when

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