“Lent Voices”: The Politics of Romanian Migrant Life Writing

Abstract

This study explores the way Romanian literature written by authors who directly participated in the Romanian emigration to Italy is positioned in the world-literary system, by employing Sarah Brouillette’s concept of “global literary marketplace” and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek’s idea of “in-between peripherality”. My main argument is that these authors’ marginal position in the literary market is doubled by a reactionary understanding of the function of the literary institution: not as an emancipatory endeavor, but as a site for self-legitimation to the Italian public. Consequently, (semi)autobiographical novels by Romanian badanti in Italy – Lilia Bicec-Zanardelli, Liliana Nechita, and Ingrid Beatrice Coman-Prodan – emphasize migrant exceptionality over solidarity. Their strategies aim to persuade Italian readers by presenting a “special” subset of educated, conformist migrants, while downplaying class consciousness and structural racism. However, these ideological and aesthetic choices cannot be properly understood without a systemic view of this type of literature.