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FDU PRESS
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| Scholarly Review |
 | The Imagined Immigrant
ISBN# 9780838641989
Reviewed by: Joseph P. Cosco, old Dominion University
Italian American Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 |
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In The Imagined Immigrant, Ilaria Serra undertakes the ambitious task of exploring the turn-of-the-century Italian imago migrationis, what she calls that "complex knot of collective representations, how the immigrant is seen, and self-representations, how the immigrant sees himself." Serra contends, quite rightly that the imagined immigrant, though invisible and impalpable, is absolutely real and "walks alongside the real immigrant in flesh and rags." Her goal is to trace a "history of mentality" and to "listen to these protagonists of history to discover their full humanity." In large measure, this worthwhile book succeeds in that endeavor.
The protagonists of this history are the first- and second- generation Italian immigrants of the Great Migration. Serra tells their stories through diverse sources, including newspapers, letters, autobiographies, and interviews. In this way, the author has pulled together a fascinating array of sources and begun the task of examining in some detail what she calls the "reality" of the imagined immigrant. The book does valuable work in revealing the complexity and diversity of the immigrant experience. Building on this productive, interdisciplinary approach, Serra and other researchers can further explore these rich materials to more fully recreate the immigrants mental world.
Readers will be rewarded with a detailed picture of the conflicting ways in which the immigrants imagined themselves and in turn were imagined by others.
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