Abstract
The author takes a close look at a specific performative ritual in which Italian immigrant women engage skilfully around the kitchen table. According to Richard Schechner, one of the pioneers of Performance Studies, ritual "[transforms] people, either permanently or temporarily" into "selves other than their daily selves" (Performance Studies, 2002:45). Del Negro illustrates how "the kitchen was transformed into a dramatic stage," (p. 7) and how her mother, Anna, "is instantly transformed into a performer," (p. 66) and Del Negro becomes the audience. Schechner also explains the function of rituals as being to "help people (and animals) deal with difficult transitions, ambivalent relationships, hierarchies, and desires that trouble, exceed, or violate the norms of daily life" (p. 45). In this study, it is clear that rituals "function as tools for survival" for the Italian immigrant women, who live "under harsh social and economic conditions" (p. 110). These women need to cope not only with the "institutionalized male dominance" of traditional Italian society, but also their transition to "their strange new environment" of urban Canadian life (pp. 114-115). Del Negro explains, "by retaining their beliefs, [the immigrant women] preserve their social identity and develop, in the present, a critical sense of continuity with the past" (p. 114).