Wor(l)ds in progress. A study of contemporary migrant writings

In the contemporary world, the figure of the migrant, moving across spaces, cultures and languages, has acquired unprecedented centrality. Migrants have transformed the ways of representing, and narrating, the transnational world in which they live, responding in new fashions to one of the oldest impulses of men and women of every place and time: the impulse to tell stories. By engaging with notions of diaspora, postcoloniality, nomadism, translation, and exile, Di Maio moves across the Anglophone and Italophone spectra offering a compelling definition of migrant literature at the turn of the millennium.

Alessandra Di Maio teaches at the University of Palermo and is currently Visiting Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Her area of specialization includes migratory, postcolonial, diasporic and black studies, with a particular attention to the formation of national and transnational cultural identities. Among her publications are the volumes Tutuola at the University. The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (Bulzoni 2000), the collection An African Renaissance (Eurografica 2006), and the translations and critical editions of Nuruddin Farah's Rifugiati (Meltemi 2003, original title: Yesterday, Tomorrow) and Wole Soyinka's Sul far del giorno (Frassinelli 2007, original title: You Must Set Forth at Dawn).