WOMEN WRITING ON THE MARGINS: Life and Works of Grazia Deledda and Magdalena Jalandoni

On the occasion of the 150th Birth Anniversary of the Italian Writer and Nobel Prize Winner, Grazia Deledda, the Philippine Italian Association is happy to copresent, together with the Embassy of Italy Manila, the National Library of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University an original literature conference that will focus on the Life and Works of Grazia Deledda and Magdalena Jalandoni, two women writers, from Italy and the Philippines, that extensively wrote on their home-islands.

These two women writers will be presented by two brilliant speakers from Italy and the Philippines, with a particular attention to the peculiar topics of their respective works: a sense of self and country, identity and traditions, women and society, language and history.

Dr. Stefania Lucamante, Professor of Italian Contemporary Literature at the University of Cagliari (Italy) and long time researcher in the representation of history and memory in Women’s contemporary literature and the role of passion in literature, will discuss “From Marianna Sirca to Cosima: Transformation within Tradition in the Novelistic and Short-Story Works of Sardinian Writer and Nobel Prize Winner Grazia Deledda”

Dr. Alice Gonzalez, award-winning fictionist and faculty member of the University of the Philippine Visayas, will discuss three of Magdalena Jalandoni’s novels to show the processes by which women carve out their identities within and against the gender codes of a society in her paper "Magdalena Jalandoni: Negotiating the Woman’s Subject-Position in Fiction and in Life."

The webinar, which will be hosted by the National Library of the Philippines, will be an opportunity to re-introduce to the readers the life and works of Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda and re-discover Ilonggo writer Magdalena Jalandoni.

The two presentations will be followed by an open forum moderated by the Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices.

Following the well-received conference “Dante in the Philippines. Teaching and Translating Dante today”, this literature conference is the second symposium on Italian literature and the Philippines hosted by the National Library of the Philippines in 2021. It’s financially supported by the Embassy of Italy as part of its program for the XXI Week of the Italian Language 2021.