Italian Writing 
  From its beginning in the 1920s, Italian-Canadian writing has existed in English, French and Italian. Liborio Lattoni wrote in Italian while Francesco M. Gualtieri published in English. La Ville sans femmes (1945) by Mario Duliani appeared in both French and Italian. Gianni Grohovaz, Elena Albani and Guglielmo Vangelisti (Gli Italiani in Canada, 1956), who published in the 1950s in Italian, were followed by authors who participated in both the growth of Canadian literature and the flowering of MULTICULTURALISM, thus making an impact on mainstream English and French Canadian writing. The bilingual tradition continued with Alexandre Amprimoz's Selected Poems (1979), Sur le damier des tombes (1983) and Bouquet de Signes (1986); Filippo Salvatore's Suns of Darkness (1980) and La Fresque de Mussolini (1985); Romano Perticarini's Quelli della fionda (1981); and Maria Ardizzi's Made in Italy (1982). Poets, who outnumber novelists, have received awards and recognition through inclusion in major anthologies. Narrative verse in Pier Giorgio DI CICCO's The Tough Romance (1979), Mary DI MICHELE's Mimosa and Other Poems (1981), George Amabile's The Presence of Fire (1982), Len Gasparini's Breaking and Entering (1980) and the work of Antonino Mazza and Antonio Corea show strong autobiographical elements. Diverse themes have begun to appear in the books of younger poets: Pasquale Verdicchio (Moving Landscape, 1985), Dorina Michelutti (Loyalty to the Hunt, 1986), and Salvatore di Falco and François d'Apollonia. 

In fiction the need to chronicle the immigrant experience is demonstrated; thus Frank PACI's Black Madonna (1982) and The Father (1984) are novels in the realist tradition. Caterina Edwards's The Lion's Mouth (1982) and Terra Straniera (1986) explores women's views on ethnic identity, whereas anecdotal stories by C.D. Minni (Other Selves, 1985), Darlene Madott (Bottled Roses, 1985), Gianni Bartocci and Dino Fruchi highlight the ironies and joys of life. The women mentioned, along with Matilde Torres, Genni Donati Gunn, Carole Fioramore David, Roberta Sciff-Zamaro and Lisa Carducci, have produced a significant feminist voice in Italian-Canadian writing. 

Québec poets Fulvio Caccia, Tonino Caticchio, Mary Melfi and Antonio D'Alfonso (The Other Shore, 1986) focus on ethnic identity. Dominique De Pasquale's plays in French and Marco Micone's Gens du silence (1982), Addolorato (1984) and Bilico (1986) explore linguistic and political relationships. The anthologies Roman Candles (1978, ed Di Cicco), Quêtes (1983, eds Caccia and D'Alfonso) and Italian Canadian Voices (1984, ed C.M. Di Giovanni) include many other writers. The Association of Italian-Canadian Writers has been formed to promote their work. 

The Canadian Encyclopedia 
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&ArticleId=A0004078

Ethnic Literature 

  In Canadian English, the term "ethnic" has been used to designate those immigrants who do not belong to Canada's founding European cultures: the Catholic French and the Protestant Anglo-Celtic. It also embraces the aboriginal inhabitants of Canada, the native Indian and Inuit who have stood distant and often alienated from Canadian society. Literature by ethnic writers or about ethnic experience has generally been regarded as outside the literary mainstream and has often been overlooked by scholars. 

The expression "Canadian ethnic literature" is itself complex, dependent on combinations of such variables as the writer's ethnic identity, the language of writing or translation and the literary expression of ethnic themes. To be fair, a definition of Canadian ethnic literature must be comprehensive and include émigré writing, both in the nonofficial languages and in translation; literature by writers who perceive themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority and write from this perspective (usually in English or French); and works that deal with immigrant or ethnic experience but are not necessarily written by a member of the group portrayed. 

The relationship between ethnic literature and mainstream writing is very much in flux. The latter is increasingly defined in the light of Canada's ethnic diversity. This can be seen in re-evaluations of the separate Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditions in mainstream writing; the recognition in English Canadian letters of Jewish writers; the increasing thematic significance of ethnicity in the works of contemporary writers; and the growing number of authors of ethnic descent who are making their mark on Canadian literature. 

The work of second and later generations of ethnic writers such as...  Pier Giorgio DI CICCO is permeating the mainstream sensibility; the work of émigré writers... is becoming increasingly available in translation; and the work of new immigrants...  is becoming accessible as it receives critical acclaim.

Canadian literature was born of the colonial mentality of early immigrants from the British Isles and France. The earliest form of ethnic bias may be seen marginally in the period 1841-55, which is described by Carl F. Klinck in Literary History of Canada (2nd ed 1976) as that of "genteel colonialism." The period's prominent English-language writers desired to be English and aristocratic in every sense, not only in lifestyle but in language. Thus some objected to "uncivilized" Irish and Scottish pronunciations invading Canadian speech patterns. 

Susanna MOODIE expressed a more blatant prejudice against the Irish in ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH (1852), calling the Irish "savages" without "common decency." Although British Canadian writers like Moodie may sometimes have perpetuated Old World prejudices against the "ethnic" Irish and Scots, the Anglo-Celtic community remained fundamentally united as a social and literary force. 

A more deeply significant ethnic subject of early English Canadian literature was one who, ironically, most deserves not to be considered foreign: the native Indian. Yet no other group has been as persistently portrayed as "the other" in the white man's literary world, nor has any other "ethnic" group registered as strongly on the consciousness of writers.Whether the fictional aboriginal was depicted as the barbaric antagonist or the noble savage... 

If the legacy of British colonialism meant the literary interpretation of the aboriginal through the view of whites, it also meant that other ethnic groups were dimly seen. English Canadian literature, if it treated the ethnic as a subject at all, demonstrated less interest in ethnic character than in assimilation. 

This is true of the work of Presbyterian minister Charles W. GORDON (pseudonym Ralph Connor) in the novel The Foreigner (1909), in which the protagonist, Kalmar Kalman, a "Slav," lives in the "foreign colony" of North Winnipeg of 1884. Ascribing to Kalman the stereotyped "Slavic" traits of exotic features and primitive passions, Connor "Canadianizes" and "civilizes" his hero by having him adopt the religion and moral values of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant. 

The pressure to assimilate necessarily affected the ethnic person's view of himself and his people. A crisis of identity is particularly evident in those second-generation English-speaking ethnic writers who write of themselves in relation to their immigrant parents, eg, Ukrainian Canadian Vera Lysenko, in Yellow Boots (1954), and Hungarian Canadian John Marlyn, in Under the Ribs of Death (1957). 

In more recent literature, the second-generation ethnic writer may express similar dislocation but does so with less shame and with a new authority and pride in ethnic roots, at the same time often protesting against racial discrimination or unfair treatment of ethnic minorities...

Immigrant writers, too, can write with self-confidence about injustice.... Assimilation continues to be problematic for the characters in ethnic literature, but their authors are making increasingly bold pleas for equal rights and opportunities, and enjoying literary success. 

The Canadian Encyclopedia 
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&ArticleId=A0002664