Description

These essays reconsider the Italian American experience from the point of view of the close relationship between writing and identity. The authors analyzed in this study have found on the written page their true homeland, the place from which to critically survey the North American scene. These authors range from the second half of the 19th century to the present and are representative of different social and regional backgrounds as well as different facets of hyphenated identity in North America. Reading their works, these essays argue, means discovering a significant range of voices and a complex set of cultural issues that attest to the increasingly rich history and evolution of Italian American literature. Also included is Luigi di Cesnola's important memoir of 1865, Ten Months in Libby Prison.