Behind Barbed Wire: Creative Works on the Internment of Italian Canadians

Behind Barbed Wire: Creative Works on the Internment of Italian Canadians presents fiction and nonfiction, poetry and drama, and visual art - works which bring to life the memory of the internment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War. Through words and images, writers and visual artists reconstruct a hidden past and give voice to those who were silenced by shame or the inability to speak out. These works interpret the painful reality that some Italians in Canada lived during, and after, the period of the internment. In bringing together the work of established and emerging writers and artists to break the silence of past decades, Behind Barbed Wire bridges the generations. These creative works reflect various ways of approaching the subject of internment and commemorate those who suffered. The appearance of Behind Barbed Wire - and its companion volume of essays Beyond Barbed Wire - marks the passage of Italian Canadians from victims to agents of social change. The two volumes are important contributions to Canadian letters and to the history of Italian Canadians. They revisit a painful period so that we can all move forward.