Una tragedia di linguaggio non corrisposto: language between family crisis and transnationalism in Viola Di Grado’s Settanta Acrilico Trenta Lana

This article investigates Di Grado’s description of coming-of-age as an Italian girl living abroad in Settanta acrilico trenta lana. In her novel, she explores language as a context where cultures and identities encounter each other and at times become closer and more distant within the multicultural neighbourhoods of cities like Leeds. Di Grado’s representation of the transnational dimension of language is analysed in this context as intertwined with the evolution of the relationship between Camelia and her mother through Lacanian theory. The article also focuses on how the overlap between Camelia’s diasporic displacement and her family crisis determines a substantial failure of language as a means of communication within the family and outside. Ultimately, Di Grado’s analysis of language and family is compared to that carried out by Pier Paolo Pasolini in the late 1960s and 1970s in his theatre, one which resonates with Di Grado’s discourse on the impossibility of language building connections