Introduction: Race as narration: studies of Italian women's writings since unification -- Grazia Deledda's narrative negotiations with the racialization of Sardinian character -- The tropics of race in the land of Cockayne -- The irreducible individual and the ethics of writing in Natalia Ginzburg's Lessico famigliare -- "We are stories of stories in history": re-imagining community as narrative in Regina Di Fiori e di Perle by Gabriella Ghermandi -- Conclusions: The persistent past: haunting as metaphor for racism in texts from Deledda to Ghermandi.