Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing is the first book of academic essays on the publications of Italian-Canadian authors who publish in English, Italian or French. This book was edited by Joseph Pivato and published in 1985 by Guernica Editions of Montreal and Toronto. Pivato contributed three essays. The other contributors were F. G. Paci, C. D. Minni, Roberta Sciff-Zamaro, A. L. Amprimoz, S. A. Viselli, Robert Billings, Filippo Salvatore and Antonio D'Alfonso. This volume was meant to promote the literary works of Italian-Canadian authors and was issued in a second edition in 1991. As part of this literary project Pivato also produced Echo: Essays on Other Literature (1994 & 2003) and edited The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing (1998) and all three volumes were used as university and college texts for over ten years in Canada. Contrasts soon became a seminal work that initiated the critical reception and study of ethnic minority writing in Canada and beyond. Literary scholars in Canada such as Linda Hutcheon, Christl Verduyn, Smaro Kamboureli and George Elliott Clarke have referenced this text in their own publications listed below:
Clarke, George Elliott, Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature. University of Toronto Press, 2002. Clarke, George Elliott, Directions Home: Approaches to African-Canadian Literature. UofT Press, 2012. Hutcheon, Linda, Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies. Oxford U.P. 1991. Hutcheon, Linda and Marion Richmond, eds. Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Oxford U.P. 1990. Kamboureli, Smaro, ed. Making a Difference: An Anthology of Canadian Multicultural Literature. Oxford U.P. 1996 and 2007. Verduyn, Christl, ed. Literary Pluralities. Broadview Press, 1998.