Claudia Durastanti: On the fictitiousness of the stories we tell ourselves

For the Brooklyn-born Italian writer, Claudia Durastanti, identity never seems fixed. We might repeat to ourselves the story of who we are, how we came to be us, and how we fit into this world, but ultimately it remains fiction.

Her most recent book from 2019, La Straniera (Strangers I Know), opens with two versions of how her parents meet each other: While her mother claimed she saved her father from jumping into Tiber River in Rome, her father insists it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery at the train station.

From this point of departure the book takes on many shapes, themes, stories and formats: Talking with her before her participation in Louisiana Literature, Durastanti speak about why her deaf parents don't like fiction; on the “failed” chapters that were not included in the book; why autobiographies are not always to be trusted; of geography as destiny and translation as the story of poetic mistakes — All in all a wild and beautiful meditation on storytelling, irony, mythologies, family history, language and identity.