Race in Post-Fascist Italy
'War Children' and the Color of the Nation

Explores the untold stories of biracial children born to Italian women and Black Allied soldiers in the aftermath of World War Two.

Silvana Patriarca (Author)

9781108845908, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 February 2022

300 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.6 cm, 0.5 kg

'Through a close analysis of both documentary records from orphanages, schools, and public and Catholic aid agencies, and of popular culture in the form of novels, films, and songs, a sordid picture emerges of racialized thinking regarding these children's perceived otherness with respect to intelligence, aptitude, biology, and citizenship … Recommended.' R. T. Ingoglia, Choice

Focusing on the experiences and representations of the 'brown babies' born at the end of World War Two from the encounters between Black Allied soldiers and Italian women, this book explores the persistence of racial thinking and racism in post-fascist and postcolonial Italy. Through the use of a large variety of historical sources, including personal testimonies and the cinema, Silvana Patriarca illustrates Italian – and also American – responses to what many considered a 'problem'. She sensitively analyses the perceptions of race/color among different actors, such as state and local authorities, Catholic clerics, filmmakers, geneticists, psychologists, and ordinary people, and her book is rich in detail about their impact on the lives of the children. Uncovering the pervasiveness of anti-Black prejudice in the early democratic republic, as well as the presence and limitations of anti-racist sensibilities, Race in Post-Fascist Italy allows us to better understand Italy's conflicted reaction to its growing diversity.

Introduction
1. 'Undesirables': Foreigners and women in the postwar
2. Little 'Aliens'? Representing the 'Mulattini'
3. 'Not only a question of humanity': Assisting the 'Mulattini'
4. Growing up black in postwar Italy
5. On the American side of the Atlantic
6. Under 'Expert' eyes
7. Black Italians on screen: Two films of the 1960s
Interlude: A story from a Calabrian village
8. Ancestries and identities
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]