Offers the study of a largely ignored legacy. Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, this title recovers the voices of the generation - bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses - compelled to tell their stories.
In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy-the autobiographies written by immigrants. Moving between history and literature, Serra presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.
