WRITING THE DIFFERENCE: THE MINORITARIAN PERSPECTIVE OF ITALIAN MIGRANTS IN QUÉBEC
WRITING THE DIFFERENCE: THE MINORITARIAN PERSPECTIVE OF ITALIAN MIGRANTS IN QUÉBEC

Summary/Abstract: Canada and the United States have an established literary tradition linked to immigration and minorities. However, for Canada, this tradition was mainly, if not exclusively, expressed in English. Instead, the historical context of Québécois literature reflects the close link between the French language and a single cultural community: this has made it impossible to include minority voices in the context of Québec's literary context. Today, now that Québécois literature begins to look ahead, taking exploratory journeys towards "foreign lands", diversity has become the main theme of emerging writers. Certainly, in the younger generation, as in the previous ones, identities are still only defined starting from a pre-established cultural and family background, perhaps Québécois, but perhaps also Haitian, Algerian, Chinese, Polish or Italian. Marco Micone and Fulvio Caccia, among the first, wrote from a space that is at the same time both internal and peripheral to Québec society. Their 'marginality' is expressed, above all, through targeted choices of language and form: the provocative mixture of continuity and diversity, affiliation and dissidence, as well as the importance they give to language, characterize their writing and make a significant contribution to the development of Québécois literature.

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