Nonfiction. Literary History & Criticism. MIGRATION WORDS explores the multifaceted and very complex phenomenon of Italian emigration literature. This experience represents an important component both in the history of Italian literature, produced outside its homeland, and within twentieth-century American literature, to which Italian authors, who immigrated to the United States, gave a significant contribution. The book investigates in depth the sociocultural phenomenon of Italian emigration in the US, discussing theoretical and methodological issues, as well as historical factors that compelled some writers to migrate into another culture, and learn another language, with all problems and the challenges linked to a "literature of expatriation."

Author City: STONY BROOK, NY USA

Luigi Fontanella was born in Salerna, Italy, in 1943. He studied at the University of Rome and at Harvard, where he earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures. He has served as a Fulbright Fellow (Princeton University, 1976-1978), and has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and Wellesley. He is currently professor of Italian at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Founder and President of the Italian Poetry Society of America, Fontantella is the editor of Gravida, an international journal of Italian poetry. He has published ten books of poetry, two books of fiction, and seven books of criticism.