From Friday 11 April to Friday 30 May, the Biblioteca del Polo di Mediazione Interculturale e Comunicazione will host a book display entitled “Per un primo canone della letteratura italiana della migrazione” (Towards an Initial Canon of Italian Migrant Literature), curated by Giuseppe Sergio with the collaboration of Paola Arrigoni, Daniele Comberiati, Jacopo Ferrari and Daniela Finocchi.
The exhibition seeks to take stock of what is known as Italian migrant literature, a body of work that began to emerge in the late 1980s and the early 1990s with novels such as Asmara addio (1988), Io, venditore d’elefanti (1990), and Immigrato (1990), written by authors who were not native Italian speakers but who chose Italian as the language of their literary expression.
By drawing on a variety of criteria—such as critical or popular success and the degree to which writers represent their countries of origin—this initiative aims to outline an initial canon of the genre, while also laying the foundations for a library collection that will, it is hoped, continue to grow in the coming years and find an ideal home on the shelves of the Biblioteca del Polo di Mediazione Interculturale e Comunicazione.
The display brings together the first editions of the selected works, presenting them to the public in their original published form. Once the exhibition ends, the books will be available for loan.
The opening will be preceded at 3 p.m. by a lecture by Daniele Comberiati (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry), entitled “La lingua e la letteratura italiana della migrazione: tempo di bilanci?” (Language and Italian Migrant Literature: Time for a Review?), held in Room P4 at the Polo di Mediazione.
