About the Book
In this searing and formally ambitious memoir, Mirella Di Benedetto-writing under the name Anna Verduci-unveils a life fractured by institutional silence, family secrets, and the weight of cultural shame. The Kintsugi Poet is a profoundly introspective exploration of adoption, identity, trauma, and the relentless, often painful search for truth in a world shaped by systemic erasure and silence.
Born into concealment and raised under a false name in 1970s Australia, the author's journey begins as a deeply personal quest to reclaim her origins and selfhood. What unfolds is a decades-long process of reconstruction-legal, genetic, emotional-that moves beyond mere discovery. It becomes a philosophical excavation of the nature of family, loss, belonging, and the invisible legacies passed down through generations. From the suburbs of Melbourne to the immigrant enclaves of New York, and finally to the rugged hills of Calabria, Di Benedetto confronts the labyrinth of bureaucracies, bloodlines, and the spectral presences of parents who never fully arrived.
Structured as a mosaic of fragments-memory shards, state documents, half-truths, and recovered voices-The Kintsugi Poet resists traditional storytelling and linear narrative arcs. Instead, it embraces a form that mirrors the fractured and recursive nature of memory and identity itself. This is a work of literary memoir in its highest form: formally precise, thematically layered, and ethically uncompromising. Each chapter is a shard of lived experience, brought together to create a luminous whole.
The title, inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, reflects the memoir's central metaphor: broken pottery repaired with golden lacquer. Rather than hiding the fractures, Di Benedetto chooses to illuminate them, rendering her life's fractures not as wounds to conceal but as seams that make her story precious and whole. Each break, each crack, becomes an opportunity for healing, transformation, and a reclaiming of beauty in the face of damage. With lyrical, unflinching prose, The Kintsugi Poet will resonate with readers who appreciate the works of Annie Ernaux, Deborah Levy, Christos Tsiolkas, and Carmen Maria Machado. The author's background as a clinical psychologist enriches the narrative with nuanced insight into the emotional logic of trauma, attachment, and the often invisible processes of reparation. She guides readers through the complex emotional terrain of growing up with fragmented origins, family betrayal, and cultural displacement, offering not just a story of loss but one of hope and resilience.
This memoir is not a conventional story of finding a family. Instead, it is a testament to the ongoing process of becoming a self-of assembling identity piece by piece, memory by memory, golden seam by golden seam. It speaks to anyone who has ever felt broken, displaced, or silenced, offering an invitation to hold their own fractures with tenderness, courage, and a fierce determination to heal. The Kintsugi Poet is also a meditation on the inheritance of silence-how trauma and shame travel through bloodlines, often unspoken, shaping futures in subtle and profound ways. It exposes the social and political forces behind adoption, migration, and cultural erasure, revealing the hidden stories of those caught between worlds. Through this intimate and courageous memoir, Mirella Di Benedetto crafts a cartography of return-a map not just of places, but of memory, identity, and belonging.
For readers seeking a memoir that challenges and enlightens, The Kintsugi Poet is a powerful journey into the heart of identity, the nature of family, and the transformative power of telling one's true story. It invites reflection on how we repair our broken selves and emerge stronger, shining with resilience forged through pain and love.
About the Author :
Dr Mirella Di Benedetto has lived in Melbourne, Australia, for most of her life. She has worked as a health psychologist since 2001 and as a researcher, lecturer, and academic at various universities in Victoria from 2001-2020.She has published numerous research papers in international peer-reviewed journals and two book chapters in Health Psychology in Australia. She completed her PhD in Psychology, at La Trobe University, in 2006. Prior to returning to university to complete her psychology studies, she worked as a medical laboratory scientist at various pathology laboratories in Melbourne from 1985-1996. She is an avid photographer, traveller, gardener, musician, artist, animal and nature lover, and a writer.When she is not creating or making music, she works as a clinical health psychologist, helping people with heart-related trauma integrate their past and present into a developing identity, with a strong focus on post-traumatic growth.
