Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives is about identity—individual and national—and belonging. It is also an affirmation of diversity. The editors of this volume have brought together articles that analyze the literature of migration as well as creative pieces by recognized authors who have a lived experience of migration. English speakers will find their own societal struggles with diversity mirrored in Italy’s colonial inheritance and its renewed nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and shifting national identity.The artists and scholars who have contributed to this book challenge national discourses, dehumanizations, and issues of race and gender. But many also seek to move beyond the negative and critical to claim belonging—especially national belonging—in the name of diversity as part of human experience. The chapters emphasize how individuals both reflect and enact societal change, and they foreground the inescapable fact that human differences and migration drive and shape societal identity in our world.
