Valeria Parrella talks about her intense and contradictory bond with Naples and the neighborhood she lives in. The full-time innovative Donna Assunta school overlooks the sea, but faces Nisida, the juvenile detention center. Naples, she says, is not a city you can just live in and ignore, and has become for her an inexhaustible source of literary inspiration.

Author Valeria Parrella talks about the connection between her novel Almarina and various locations within Naples: Nisida (a volcanic islet that houses a juvenile detention center) and Bagnoli (a seaside neighborhood of Naples). What emerges is the portrait of an intense and contradictory city, marked by working-class identity, the sea, and the reality of juvenile prison.

Sandra now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in North Carolina. She is still working and loves it. She and Marika discuss some Italian expressions about the value of work and about how their friendship has lasted all these years.

Valeria Parrella tells of her deep and complex bond with Naples, a city that becomes language, identity, and memory. Through Almarina emerges a Naples that is "marvelous and terrible," but also a place of freedom, growth, and hope.

The story of Sandra continues, a restaurateur in Miami, chosen to cook at a White House event for Barack Obama. Between initial disbelief and rigorous security checks, the experience becomes a source of great pride for her. The story also highlights the value of friendship and the importance of reinventing oneself in life.

The documentary follows journalist Annalena Benini on a journey through Italy discovering writers in the places that shaped them. The first stop is Naples, told through Valeria Parrella: an intense and complex city, where landscape, memory and daily life intertwine with literature and the identity of authors.

The story of Sandra continues, a Tuscan chef who emigrated to the United States, who established herself in Miami with authentic Tuscan cuisine. Thanks to her continuous ties with Italy, she keeps her roots alive, even cooking for Barack Obama.

During an important evening at the Washington, D.C. restaurant where Sandra was the dining room manager, the usual chef didn't show, and Sandra found herself having to manage the kitchen as well. She had no experience there, and so it was somewhat of a disaster. The episode pushed her to learn, however: Thanks to the help of an expert cook, she began an apprenticeship, acquired skills, and started building a career bringing Italian cuisine to the United States.

Sandra tells about her initial difficulties in the United States and how, realizing she wouldn't get very far without knowing English, she learned it on her own. Starting from a humble job in the restaurant industry, she quickly grew professionally.

Sandra tells about her immigration experience to the United States in 1979. At first, without knowing English well and without technology, she faces many difficulties in daily life and in finding work. Starting from a simple job as a coat check attendant in a restaurant, she slowly begins a new life that would later lead her to become a chef.

Sandra was born in the province of Pisa and tells the story of her personal transformation. She begins at the beginning, when she was a young girl growing up in Cascina, a town near Pisa. But she wasn't happy and felt like a fish out of water.

Alessandro Piperno comes from a mixed Jewish family and recounts how he learned, at an early age, to cherish the relationship between Jerusalem and Rome, where Christianity and Judaism blend. Thus we come to the end of this episode about the region of Lazio.

Annalena continues her conversation with Piperno in his favorite restaurant. They look at some photos from his past while they wait for their meal to be served.

Alessandro explains some things about the characters in his books and tells a story about when he won the Strega award. The Strega Award is the most important Italian literary award. It gets its name from one of its creators, the owner of the company producing Strega, a brand of an amaro (after-dinner, digestive bitters).

Leaving the outskirts of Rome, Annalena goes to a middle-class neighborhood where she meets professor and writer, Alessandro Piperno. He talks about what it was like growing up there and about his identity as a writer.