Latin American Testimonies in Italy: a Living Library Between the Mediterranean and the Andes

2026-07-22

"The aim of the project ""Latin American Testimonies in Italy: a Living Library Between the Mediterranean and the Andes"" is the collection, analysis, and dissemination of testimonies of Latin American migration to Italy during the last thirty years. The study will be carried out from a gender perspective, focusing on the migration of women and LGBTQ people, to underline cultural and literary aspects related to migration and determined by migrants' intersectional conditions. In addition, particular attention will be paid to testimonies by people from the Andean area, given their importance in Italy. The collection of ""migrant memories"" from a gender perspective will take place both in Italy and in the area of ​​origin of the Andean migrant communities, thus wanting to reconstruct the narrative of a to-and-fro migration. The project wishes to underline the creation of an image of the migratory experience that also involves places of departure, families and that, in this way, tells the cultural impact of migration both on the places of origin and on those of arrival, overcoming a vision of migration as a linear and one-way process, on the one hand, and also overcoming old concepts such as those of “center” and “periphery” at a cultural level. In the second part of the project, the collected testimonies will be published as an online, multimedia, and open access anthology. It will include an introduction written by the Researcher and by two authors selected from among those who created the included works, to recognize the subjectivity and authorship of the protagonists of the testimonies. The multimedia anthology will be made available, among others, to Language and Translation students of the European, American, and Intercultural Studies of the Sapienza University of Rome, so that they can create translation laboratories starting from it, thus completing this testimonial, choral and shared work."

Italy

2026-02-15