Da mangiare e immaginare. Il cibo nelle testimonianze di migranti e soldati italiani

Résumé

This contribution aims to highlight how food, the imaginary construct that surrounds it, and hunger recur in personal written testimonies and are particularly effective in allowing for an in-depth understanding of the intimate nature of the experience. Drawing on documents preserved largely in the Archivio Ligure della Scrittura Popolare [Ligurian Archive of Popular Writing], it examines some testimonies produced during the two major divisive events of the contemporary era: the Great Migration between the 19^th and the 20^th centuries, and the First World War. These events fostered a great flow of written material (letters, postcards, diaries and autobiographical memoirs), which was needed to heal the wounds caused by distance: separation and deprivation, for which food represents a sort of unit of measurement.