Motherlands: In Search of Our Inherited Cities

by Amaryllis Gacioppo

In a blend of memoir and cultural history Austrialian writer Amaryllis Gacioppo explores notions of citizenship, statelessness and identity as she traces her family’s roots in Turin, Benghazi, Rome and Palermo and reflects on how we create an understanding of the past.

Genres: Italy, Memoir, Nonfiction, Australia

336 pages, Hardcover

Published August 4, 2022

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many things I loved about this book: it is a page-turner but also full of research and new facts and ideas and emotion; it is one of few books to go into depth about the legacy of Italian colonialism; it explains the idea of home and inheritance -- these ghost connections between people and places, especially after immigration -- that captures a very 21st century feeling that I haven't seen written about very much. It's the story of reckoning with the past as the child of immigrants, but also what the word "home" means -- where it is, when a place has been transformed or changed beyond recognition, when a person recognizes something in a place that they have no other connection to.

PLUS: maps, photos, objects, badass women.

[Łukasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strengths of this book are also it's weaknesses. Each chapter is very distinct, which paragraphs inspired by turn by turn walks through the city, photographs (with reproductions of these photos), maps (oh I missed reproductions of maps!). There's lots of erudition in how it tells the story of cities, but also discusses questions of belonging, roots, family. It definitely helps the reader to know the cities it's about, having read it while in Palermo, Palermo chapter was so much more meaningful than the Turin chapter. On the other hand, it sometimes feels a little disorganized, random maybe?

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of really interesting stuff about Italian history and its intersections with family history and memory. Not sure what it was exactly but the style somehow dragged and neither the history nor the family memory ever fully came alive for me.