The past two decades have witnessed important developments in Italy's artistic and literary scene, with people of sub-Saharan African origins increasingly becoming active participants in the cultural life of the country. Starting from the beginning of the 1990s, the literary scene has seen the rapid development of what is commonly referred to as ‘migration literature’, a corpus of texts produced in Italian by immigrants from so-called developing countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In contrast to European countries where mass migration is largely a postcolonial phenomenon (in the cultural if not strictly historical sense), the notion of a multicultural Italy is much more recent, and the fact that Italians themselves have been labour immigrants (both abroad and within the country, in the mass movements from the South to the North) places the country in a very special position with regard to diasporic cultures in the Western world and in Europe in particular. Physically and racially at the fringes of Europe (Southern Italy was long associated with Africa rather than with Europe), colonially amnesic (Italian colonial history in Eastern Africa is rarely a subject of public debate and rarely explored in literature, theatre and cinema), traditionally lacking in pragmatism and imbued instead with Christian notions of caritas (rather than recognising the economic need for migrants, Italian politicians insist in discussing migration policies in the framework of an ethical duty to host and support people in need), stuck in a stubborn view of a socially stratified society (discrimination and exclusion are often articulated in terms of class and status, and social mobility is difficult for immigrants as well as for locals), Italy stands out indeed as a unique case.