Ascolta Women Inc. is a creative collective of multi-generation Italian Australian women across Australia, Britain and Canada. We meet online every two weeks to listen – ascoltare, write creatively and record our diverse and multiple stories of Italian heritages and migrant legacies.

Women’s bodies have been sites of political struggle for centuries, with sexualities, fertility, body image and women’s health contested areas of autonomy and control. The writings and visuals in this anthology reinforce the inextricable connections between our bodies, emotions, thinking, our sense of selves, and interactions with the world.

“The body leaks what it stores”, warns Josephine Gregoire in her story “My Body”, a portent that the body, ourselves and our connections to the world cannot be separated or ignored.

In “I Miei Pedi / My Feet” Pina Tomay writes from Malta at the start of her fourth European Camino. After more than 2000 kilometres of walking she concludes: “These feet are pretty special”.

“Trauma is not the only thing that gets passed on”, declares Claudia Grinzi in “The Body Knows”, reflecting on birthing experiences and her Italian heritages.

The anthology cover features the collage Sotto La Pelle / Under the Skin by Elena Callipari, an evocative female image drawing attention to the metaphoric, as well as literal, cutting and disembodying of women as experienced through media representations, medical definitions and procedures, restrictive gender roles and societal expectations. Elena Callipari invites us to look beyond the superficiality of a Westernised female trope, to look sotto la pelle / under the skin. Here, as in all the anthology contributions, we find an integrated woman, with mind, body, heart and soul all connected through and to the world.

Image: Stories from Il Corpo book cover: Sotto La Pelle (Under the Skin), collage, by Elena Callipari.