Transnational Perspectives, Gender and Storytelling. Elena Ferrante, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood

This paper articulates the link between transnationalism, gender and the contemporary «primordialism» (Appdurai), a historical-political category of our global context. This link will be then used to examine texts by Ferrante, Adichie and Atwood. The main focus will be on their «posture» (Meizoz) in relation to storytelling, feminism and national and transnational reception. These three «postures» will also be analyzed from the perspective of their official websites. In the final part of the essay, I will go back on the contemporary issue of global primordialism against women’s and lgbtqi+’s rights, and on the urgency to face this primordialist «backlash» (Faludi) with anti-relativist and unifying links of gender and transnationalism. These connections will be identified in three different aspects shared by Ferrante, Adichie and Atwood: the dynamic balance between storytelling and feminism; their diversified (yet in any case relevant) transmedia use of personal websites; the dynamics of rooting, circumventing and transforming the national context through the transnational dimension.