Full Description
Runner Up Winner of the Edinburgh Gadda Prize - Established Scholars, Cultural Studies Category
Winner of the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize (20th & 21st Centuries)
Honorable Mention for the Howard R. Marraro Prize
By linking Italy's long history of emigration to all continents in the world, contemporary transnational migrations directed toward it, as well as the country's colonial legacies, Fiore's book poses Italy as a unique laboratory to rethink national belonging at large in our era of massive demographic mobility. Through an interdisciplinary cultural approach, the book finds traces of globalization in a past that may hold interesting lessons about inclusiveness for the present.
Fiore rethinks Italy's formation and development on a transnational map through cultural analysis of travel, living, and work spaces as depicted in literary, filmic, and musical texts. By demonstrating how immigration in Italy today is preoccupied by its past emigration and colonialism, the book stresses commonalities and dispels preoccupations.
Contents
Preface
Introduction. All at One Point: The Un/likely Connections between Italy's Emigration, Immigration, and (Post-)Colonialism
Part I. Waters: Migrant Voyages and Ships from/to Italy
Aperture I: An Osean of Pre-occupation and Possibilities: The Show L'orda
1. Crossing the Atlantic to Meet the Nation: The Emigration Ship in Mignonette's Songs and Crialese's Nuovomondo
2. Overlapping Mediterranean Routes in Marra's Sailing Home, Ragusa's The Skin Between Us, and Tekle's Libera
Part II. Houses: Multi-Ethnic Residential Spaces as Living Archives of Pre-occupation and Invention
Aperture II. A Multi-Cultural Project in a National Square: The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio
3. Displaced Italies and Immigrant "Delinquent" Spaces in Pariani's Argentinian Conventillos and Lakhous' Roman Palazzo
4. Writing the Pasta Factory and the Boarding House as Trans-National Homes: Public and Private Acts in Melliti's Pantanella and Mazzucco's Life
Part III. Workplaces: A Creative Re-occupation of Labor Spaces against Exploitation
Aperture III. Labor on the Move: Rodari's Construction Workers and Kuruvilla's Babysitter
5. Edification between Nation and Migration in Cavanna's Les Ritals and Adascalitei's "Il giorno di San Nicola"
6: The Circular Routes of Colonial and Post-Colonial Homecare: Però's and Ciaravino's Alexandria and Ghermandi's "The Story of Woizero Bekelech and Signor Antonio"
Conclusions. Italy as an Imagi-Nation Laboratory: The Citizenship Law between In and Outbound Flows
Notes
Works Cited
Index
