Mary Melfi: Essays on Her Works.

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures at Laurentian University.

This instalment in Guernica’s Writers Series features six essays on Melfi’s work, along with an introduction and interview with the author, both by the editor, William Anselmi, who also contributes an essay. Anselmi’s introduction questions the Canadian image of multiculturalism and, wondering who defines the canon in Canadian literature, he asks why Melfi has not been recognized as an accomplished poet, novelist, and playwright, arguing that the prevailing themes of displacement, irony, ethnicity, class, and gender in her writing, coupled with her critical perspective and distinctive style, should place her work within the dominant discourse.

Anselmi’s conversation with Melfi provides valuable insight into her development over the last 30 years and the issues that engage her. She reveals that for her writing is about self-definition, the crucial question of existence, of being within the larger human context; yet, paradoxically, ethnicity, gender, and class are unavoidable themes in her work, within an overarching sense of displacement. Lisa Hogan’s essay, “Acts of Figuration in Displacement,” focuses on this question as she analyzes the issue of subjectivity through ethnicity, identity, cultural representation, and irony in two poetry collections, concluding that Melfi’s writing operates “within accepted discursive forms [while] it manages to remain other to normative discourses.” Anselmi’s essay analyzes Melfi’s characteristic use of parentheses in her poetry, as both a means of intensifying meaning and “a framing of displacement.”

Domenico D’Alessandro contributes an empathetic reader’s analysis of major themes in Melfi’s writing, not as an academic but rather as another artist and displaced Italo-Canadian. Eva Karpinski’s “Bodies/Countries: Mary Melfi’s ‘Flirt’ with Feminism in Infertility Rites” reads the novel from a feminist perspective, analyzing the written text and the process of writing, examining how both protagonist and author navigate female subjectivity.

Mariano Tuzi contextualizes a reading of the adolescent fable Ubi: The Witch Who Would Be Rich within the parameters of contemporary consumerist society. Francesco Loriggio’s essay concludes the collection with an overview of Melfi’s work and the definitive description of her writing: “a condensed, miniaturized human comedy.”

The contributors obviously admire Melfi’s work; their essays invite readers to discover why for themselves.