The Imagined Immigrant

Download or read book The Imagined Immigrant written by Ilaria Serra and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.