Using original sources - such as newspaper articles, silent movies, letters, autobiographies, and interviews - Ilaria Serra depicts a large tapestry of images that accompanied mass Italian migration to the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century. She chooses to translate the Italian concept of immaginario with the Latin imago that felicitously blends the double English translation of the word as 'imagery' and 'imaginary'. Imago is a complex knot of collective representations of the immigrant subject, a mental production that finds concrete expression; impalpable, yet real. The 'imagined immigrant' walks alongside the real one in flesh and rags.

Book Information
ISBN 9781611474053
Author Ilaria Serra
Format Hardback
Page Count 313
Imprint Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Publisher Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Weight(grams) 594g