Premio Internazionale Flaiano d’Italianistica “Luca Attanasio” 2025
“Patrizia Sambuco’s new book is a timely, insightful investigation of a century of Italian women’s writing in genres as diverse as cookbooks, memoirs, letters, journalism, and fiction, but it is much more than literary criticism. A truly interdisciplinary enterprise, this book will be required reading for students of culture, philosophy, history, economics, art, science, food, women, gender, and war.” Paula Schwartz, Lois B. Watson Professor Emerita of French Studies, Middlebury College
“Exploring the relationship between food and emotions in Italian women writers, Patrizia Sambuco presents an innovative and stimulating approach to a relatively neglected field.” Diego Zancani, Emeritus Professor of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford
“This intriguing book performs a sophisticated historical and literary analysis of how diverse Italian female writers from the 1920s to the present have used food to express emotions, define transgressive identities, and challenge political hierarchies. Focusing on Italian women’s memoirs, poetry, fiction, and cookbooks during Fascism, World War II, the 1970s, and the contemporary postcolonial migration context, the book shows how food is a subversive and historically specific channel for Italian women’s personal and political expression.” Carole Counihan, author of Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence and Editor-in-Chief, Food and Foodways
Food and Emotions in Italian Women’s Writing discusses the relevance of food imagery in the writing of Italian women over a period of one hundred years, from the 1920s to the present day, while offering new ways to narrate women’s history and creativity. In this groundbreaking work, Patrizia Sambuco shows how food imagery in different historical periods challenge established political discourses by conveying unexpressed, alternative, or transgressive emotions.