This volume is intended as complementary to Mediterranean Crossroads: Migration Literature in Italy that traced the changes in literature written by migrants in Italy from 1990 to the end of that decade. The short stories and excerpts from novels included in that volume concentrated on very specific themes such as exile, displacement, cultural fragmentation, otherness, racism, and other concerns that are characteristic of the writings of a first generation migrants.

Marie Orton is associate professor of Italian at Truman State University. Graziella Parati is the chair of comparative literature at Dartmouth College.