A century after Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize in Literature — becoming the only Italian woman to receive the honor — the world is talking about her again. Anniversaries have a way of turning people into readers and re-readers. But some scholars have continued to study her long after the commemorations ended, and far from Sardinia and Italy, because they recognize that the “works of universal interest” for which she was honored by the Swedish Academy remain relevant today.

Reading Reeds in the Wind in Minnesota, for instance, led to a new understanding of Deledda, one that goes beyond the image of an island writer depicting a small, old-fashioned and supposedly peripheral world. Instead, it reveals a woman who used her position on the margins to explore the relationship between identity, gender, landscape, language and dominant narratives.

This perspective comes from Sonita Sarker, a professor of literature, feminist studies and postcolonial studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She will soon visit Sardinia as part of the “Grazia Ritrovata” project.

Professor Sarker, when and how did you discover Grazia Deledda?

“I first read her almost 20 years ago, through her letters to Angelo de Gubernatis, a prominent Sanskrit scholar from Turin. Although she was young, she wrote with unusual clarity and was concerned with both Sardinia and the wider world. These words of hers were the first to touch my heart:

‘Although I retain something wild and distinctive, perhaps a reflection of the environment in which I live, I am nothing like other Sardinian girls. Beyond the circle of deserted, legendary mountains that enclose my horizon, I sense the full force of modern life, new times and new ideals.’”

Did you read Deledda in the original Italian?

“Yes. I feel an affinity with her experience of learning and loving a language, although our circumstances are different. Dominant cultures define what constitutes the center and the periphery, just as they determine which meanings are accepted and which are marginalized.

“This has been the struggle, and the basis of resistance, in many cultures that have experienced colonization, marginalization and oppression. They share the struggle to speak in their own words, which have been suppressed politically and culturally through the use of force. They also share a resistance to that force, continuing to survive and thrive.”

How does Deledda’s writing, which retains elements of dialect, transcend geographical and linguistic boundaries?

“Through translations that preserve the texture and spirit of her writing, and through the recognition conferred by the Nobel Prize in Literature. But these are external factors. Deledda crosses geographical and linguistic boundaries through her writing because she focuses on two elements — the local and the universal — which I call the ‘double gaze’ in a new essay I am writing about her.

“She connects the world with Sardinia, and Sardinia with the world. As she writes, ‘Ultimately, the whole world is one village, and Nuoro is like everywhere else.’”

She remains the only Italian woman to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, yet her reputation in Italy has fluctuated over the years. Interest is reviving for the centenary, but perhaps not to the extent she deserves. Why?

“Deledda secured a unique place in literary history thanks to the Nobel Prize. Yet she has suffered the same fate as many others: interest in her work has risen and fallen in waves, and she is not widely recognized as a Nobel laureate.

“I believe the choices made by literary magazine editors, general-interest journalists, and school and university curricula all play a role.”

In your essay Grazia Deledda: From Island to Continent and Never Back Again, you explore the writer’s distinctive perspective on migration and memory. Sardinia, viewed from mainland Italy as a peripheral place, almost outside modernity, becomes a privileged vantage point from which to observe and recount history. How?

“In my view, Sardinia is not inherently peripheral. It is made peripheral by the dominant nation-state — Italy — which then monitors and controls it. This is a paradoxical position: marginalized, yet strategically important. The Nobel Prize describes Deledda as the ‘voice of Sardinia,’ but the award is given to Italy.”

You have drawn parallels between Deledda and Gramsci, two modern Sardinians rooted on an island yet oriented toward the wider world. Deledda, however, is seen as a regional writer, while Gramsci is considered an international figure. Does gender play a role?

“Gender plays a role, as does the focus of their work. Deledda wrote literary works centered almost exclusively on Sardinia, even though she lived in Rome for most of her career. Gramsci entered international politics as a socialist, traveling to Russia and building national and international connections for a global movement. It is the literary marketplace and established commentators who have created these categories and confined individuals within them.”

Gramsci had a severe physical deformity caused by bone tuberculosis. Deledda described herself as ‘small, pale, dark-haired, a little Spanish, a little Arab,’ much as she described her grandmother as ‘almost a dwarf.’ Did their physical appearance contribute to their marginalization?

“I rely on Gramsci’s and Deledda’s own words to describe their identities. What they actually emphasize is their hybridity — Gramsci referred to the possibility of Albanian ancestors. In their own accounts, their physical selves challenge the norm of homogeneity and assert their hybridity. This was something a nation-state seeking to promote a single, supposedly pure Italian identity in their time felt compelled to manage and control, even denigrating and repressing it.”

Deledda was no traditional wife. Luigi Pirandello, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature after her, wrote a novel that satirized her husband, Palmiro Madesani.

Once again, what stands out is how modern the story is: a marriage in which the husband is not threatened by his wife’s success but actually helps to advance it. Deledda also refused to let the matter pass quietly, opposing the publication of Pirandello’s novel and later his Nobel candidacy. “What could the great playwright himself, an islander by birth, find it in himself not to forgive her?”

“Deledda lived an unusual life for a woman of her time, and her novels portray both ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ women. To me, the issue is more complex: the writer herself, along with her characters, explores the subtle negotiations between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity.’”

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