Using semiotics as a theoretical foundation, this book reexamines the notion of the hyphenate writer. It argues for an analogous set of categories no longer chronologically or generationally based, but cognitively based, so that the traditionally considered "first-stage" or first generation hyphenate writer now figures as an "expressive" writer who is not necessarily part of the immigrant or first American-born generations. He or she may actually belong to a later generation and write about his or her ethnicity with those characteristics more readily associated with the first-stage hyphenate writer.

Anthony Julian Tamburri is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Purdue University. He is the author of Of Saltimbanchi and Incendiari: Aldo Palazzeschi and Avant-Gardism in Italy; To Hyphenate or not to Hyphenate: the Italian/American Writer: Or, An Other American; and Per una lettura retrospettiva. Prose giovanili di Aldo Palazzeschi. He is coeditor (with Paolo A. Giordano) of Beyond the Margin: Readings in Italian Americana; (with Mary Jo Bona) of Italian Americans and the Media; (with Paolo A. Giordano and Fred L. Gardaphe) of From The Margin: Writings in Italian Americana; and editor of Fuori. Essays By Italian/American Lesbians and Gays.