Calabrian Voices. Diaspora Stories from the Younger Generation, edited by Steven J. Sacco and Alessandra De Marco, had been just published by Rubbettino. The book is the latest release in the Italian Diaspora Studies Series directed by Professor Margherita Ganeri.
Calabrian Voices Book Cover showing Natalina Coluccio's departure from the Port of Messina, November 1970.
Calabrian Voices is a collection of 23 stories of migration in English, told from the point of view of their young men and women authors, the students of the CLIA course. CLIA, Cultura e Letteratura Italo Americana, is the first official university course on Italian-American culture and literature in Italy, founded and directed by Professor Margherita Ganeri at the Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Calabria.
These stories open up a reflection on the issues affecting Italy, which has become both a point of arrival for growing migratory flows and a point of departure for younger generations in search of opportunities abroad. The protagonists of these stories, ordinary men and women, are portrayed through their strengths and weaknesses, hopes and dreams, successes and failures, courage and fears.
The book becomes a written testimony of those oral tales otherwise destined to be lost and forgotten, testifying to the profound human and personal toll that migration has on its protagonists.