Page 11 - November 2020

11
Litterateur
November 2020

Doue'e

Each of my parents, my siblings, and now even
my daughter, have different sets of histories
in their relation to social class, language, Italy
and the US, different experiences of trying to
move back and forth between them, different
degrees of attachment to the languages and
cultures. This has helped me shape a non-
monolithic view of nations, something useful
these days of nationalisms and excess
identitarianisms. But all this moving around,
between Italy and the US also entailed
estrangement and forced me to develop the
ability to withstand solitude. Reading and
writing became some of the coping
mechanisms, nothing glamorous about that.
Being in between, comparing experiences in
the two countries promoted a critical sense in A mural relating
to the struggle for
me, and, frankly, an antipathy towards People's Park in Berkeley,
monolithic systems of authority. in the early 1970's

For my part, I am lucky because my background always exposed me to multiple
languages, forced me to deal with people from different parts of the world, and
in the mid 1970’s, at the tail end of the movement against the Vietnam war, I
was fortunate to have an older sister who encouraged me to enroll at UC
Berkeley and thus be in a cosmopolitan environment. At the end of the years
concentrated on anti-Vietnam War activities, students in Berkeley were
focused on solidarity with the liberation struggles in Africa, the international
student movement against the Shah of Iran, the struggle against apartheid and
for divestment of US universities from stocks that supported the South African
apartheid regime. It was a time for the creation consolidation of African
American studies, Native American Studies, Chicano Studies and various
antiracism activities. On campus we still had the Black Panthers and the

Vietnam Veterans against the war, as well as representatives from ZAPU,
ZANU, MPLA, ANC, ELF, EPLF, all the competing Iranian student organizations,
students from Africa who represented all the anticolonial movements (a few
years later much of the activity would shift to solidarity with the resistance
movements in Central and Latin America).