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Rooms as Home Spaces: The Bathroom and the Bedroom as Memory Containers

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Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature

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Abstract

This chapter considers two rooms as home spaces: the bathroom in Lakhous’s Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio and the bedroom in Scego’s Rhoda. The seclusion provided by these two rooms enables the characters to deal with a traumatic experience and possibly overcome it. While the bathroom in Lahous’s novel is the space where Ahmed/Amedeo can reminiscing his past (and his lost fiancé), thus where his real identity comes forth, the bedroom in Rhoda is where Aisha can deal with the loss of her sister by commemorating her. Both places trigger processes of remembering that, even when painful, help the characters envisage life without their loved ones. Both rooms are safe spaces of belonging, safe home spaces.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Chiara Giuliani

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  1. Chiara Giuliani
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Correspondence to Chiara Giuliani .

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Giuliani, C. (2021). Rooms as Home Spaces: The Bathroom and the Bedroom as Memory Containers. In: Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75063-3_5

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