Abstracts
Abstract
How did a lover’s letter help to negotiate physical absence, separation, and migration? How can words of romantic love and yearning contribute to historians’ understanding of amour-passion, letter-writing, and transnational relationships? And, finally, what do they tell us about ordinary lives and migration experiences? In this article, I argue that love letters written by everyday writers in a context of international migration are extraordinary historical documents. These cultural artefacts offer a plethora of insights on transnational communication, the romantic love that infused such epistolary narratives, the challenges that ordinary lovers faced in their separation, and how letter-writing helped them to negotiate a lover’s absence. Letters written by women and men in the context of Italian postwar migration to Canada are employed to illustrate my points.
Keywords:
- Migration,
- letters,
- transnational communication,
- love relationships
Résumé
Comment les lettres d’amour ont-elles permis de surmonter la séparation en contexte migratoire? Comment nos connaissances historiques sur l’immigration et les relations transnationales peuvent-elles être approfondies par l’analyse de ces missives romantiques? Finalement, que nous révèle ce courrier intime sur la vie quotidienne et l’expérience de l’immigration? Dans cet article, nous soutenons que les correspondances amoureuses des gens ordinaires constituent des documents historiques et culturels d’un grand intérêt. Ils offrent une foule d’informations sur la communication transnationale, l’amour romantique, les défis d’une relation à distance et le réconfort que de tels échanges peuvent apporter. Nous nous appuyons pour illustrer nos propos sur des lettres rédigées dans le contexte d’après-guerre de l’immigration italienne au Canada.
Mots-clés :
- Immigration,
- échange épistolaire,
- communication transnationale,
- relations amoureuses
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Appendices
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the University of Manitoba Press for their permission to reproduce excerpts of the letters that are printed in my book, Families, Lovers, and their Letters: Italian Postwar Migration to Canada. I also wish to thank Mrs. Antonietta Petris and the anonymous donors for their permission to reproduce letter excerpts from their collection. I thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. They have helped me to sharpen my arguments throughout much of the text. I am grateful to Deirdre Meintel for encouraging me to submit the article for publication.
Biographical note
Sonia Cancian is an historian specializing in international migration, life writings, and emotions. She is affiliate assistant professor at Concordia University’s History Department in Montreal, and lead scholar for a large immigrant letters project at the University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center, where she is working with director, Prof. Donna Gabaccia. Sonia Cancian is also affiliated with the Centre d’études ethniques des universités montréalaises at the Université de Montréal and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. She is the author of Families, Lovers, and their Letters: Italian Postwar Migration to Canada (Cancian 2010). Cancian is currently working on a collection of love letters which will be published in 2013 by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
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