Calvary or limbo?
Articulating identity and citizenship in two Italian Australian autobiographical narratives of World War II internment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2016.4Keywords:
Osvaldo Bonutto, 'A Migrant’s Story', Peter Dalseno, 'Sugar, Tears and Eyeties', Italian internment in Australia, cultural and civic belonging, settlement ideologyAbstract
Almost 5,000 Italians were interned in Australia during World War II, a high proportion of them Queensland residents. Internment was a pivotal experience for the Italian community, both locally and nationally, complicating Italian Australians’ sense of belonging to their adopted country. Through an examination of two migrant autobiographical narratives of internment, Osvaldo Bonutto’s A Migrant’s Story and Peter Dalseno’s Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, this article explores the impact of internment on the experience and articulation of cultural and civic belonging to Australian society. It finds that internment was a ‘trial’ or ‘transitional’ phase for these internees’ personal and civic identities, and that the articulation of these identities and sense of belonging is historically contingent, influenced by the shift from assimilation to multiculturalism in settlement ideology, as well as Italian Australians’ changing place in Australian society throughout the twentieth century.
References
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See Claudio Alcorso, The wind you say (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1993); Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, The internment diaries of Mario Sardi (Alphington, Vic.: Lucerne Press, 2013).
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For more on Australian citizenship and its history, see Alastair Davidson, From subject to citizen: Australian citizenship in the twentieth century (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Brian Galligan and Winsome Roberts, Australian citizenship (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004); Ann-Mari Jordens, Redefining Australians: Immigration, citizenship, and national identity (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1995).
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Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, p. 139. For further detail on the impact of internment in Queensland, see Don Dignan, ‘The Internment of Italians in Queensland’, in Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (eds), War, internment and mass migration: The Italo-Australian Experience 1940–1990 (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 2003), pp. 61–73.
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All biographical information has been taken from Osvaldo Bonutto, A migrant’s story (Brisbane: H. Pole, 1963) and Osvaldo Bonutto, A migrant’s story: The struggle and success of an Italian-Australian, 1920s–1960s (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1994).
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See Pascoe, Buongiorno Australia, pp. 201–7; Randazzo and Cigler, The Italians in Australia, pp. 170–1.
Bonutto, A migrant’s story (1963), p. 139. Quotation marks in original.
Bonutto, A migrant’s story (1963).
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Gaetano Rando, ‘From great works to Alcheringa: A socio-historical survey of Italian writers in Australia’, in Gaetano Rando (ed.), Italian writers in Australia: Essays and texts (Wollongong: Department of European Languages, University of Wollongong, 1983), p. 55.
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Rosa R. Cappiello’s acerbic autobiographical novel exemplifies this form among Italian Australian writers, although the fictionalisation appears to be an artistic choice rather than an act of protection. See Rosa R. Cappiello, Oh lucky country (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1984); Jessica Carniel, ‘“Either feed your belly or nourish your soul”: Work, artistic aspiration and autobiography in Rosa R. Cappiello’s Oh lucky country’, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 18:1 (2016), 130–49.
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