“Lent Voices”: The Politics of Romanian Migrant Life Writing
“Lent Voices”: The Politics of Romanian Migrant Life Writing

Summary/Abstract: This study explores the way Romanian literature written by authors who directly participated in the Romanian emigration to Italy is positioned in the world-literary system, by employing Sarah Brouillette’s concept of “global literary marketplace” and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek’s idea of “in-between peripherality”. My main argument is that these authors’ marginal position in the literary market is doubled by a reactionary understanding of the function of the literary institution: not as an emancipatory endeavor, but as a site for self-legitimation to the Italian public. Consequently, (semi)autobiographical novels by Romanian badanti in Italy – Lilia Bicec-Zanardelli, Liliana Nechita, and Ingrid Beatrice Coman-Prodan – emphasize migrant exceptionality over solidarity. Their strategies aim to persuade Italian readers by presenting a “special” subset of educated, conformist migrants, while downplaying class consciousness and structural racism. However, these ideological and aesthetic choices cannot be properly understood without a systemic view of this type of literature.

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