Download or read book Italian Signs American Streets written by Fred L. Gardaphé and published by New Americanists. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first major critical reading of Italian American narrative literature in two decades, Fred L. Gardaphé presents an interpretive overview of Italian American literary history. Examining works from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, he develops a new perspective--variously historical, philosophical, and cultural--by which American writers of Italian descent can be read, increasing the discursive power of an ethnic literature that has received too little serious critical attention. Gardaphé draws on Vico's concept of history, as well as the work of Gramsci, to establish a culture-specific approach to reading Italian American literature. He begins his historical reading with narratives informed by oral traditions, primarily autobiography and autobiographical fiction written by immigrants. From these earliest social-realist narratives, Gardaphé traces the evolution of this literature through tales of "the godfather" and the mafia; the "reinvention of ethnicity" in works by Helen Barolini, Tina DeRosa, and Carole Maso; the move beyond ethnicity in fiction by Don DeLillo and Gilbert Sorrentino; to the short fiction of Mary Caponegro, which points to a new direction in Italian American writing. The result is both an ethnography of Italian American narrative and a model for reading the signs that mark the "self-fashioning" inherent in literary and cultural production. Italian Signs, American Streets promises to become a landmark in the understanding of literature and culture produced by Italian Americans. It will be of interest not only to students, critics, and scholars of this ethnic experience, but also to those concerned with American literature in general and the place of immigrant and ethnic literatures within that wide framework.
Download or read book Leaving Little Italy written by Fred L. Gardaphé and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaving Little Italy explores the various forces that have shaped and continue to mold Italian American culture. Early chapters offer a historical survey of major developments in Italian American culture, from the early mass immigration period to the present day, situating these developments within the larger framework of American culture as a whole. Subsequent chapters examine particular works of Italian American literature and film from a variety of perspectives, including literary history, gender, social class, autobiography, and race. Paying particular attention to how the individual artist's personality has intersected with community in the shaping of Italian American culture, the book reveals how and why Italian America was invented and why Little Italys must ultimately disappear.
Download or read book The Italian American Experience written by Salvatore J. LaGumina and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 733 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Grand Gennaro written by Garibaldi Lapolla and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-09 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illiterate Calabrian in southern Italy owes money to his church and mayor. He skips town for the bustling streets of New York. Meeting an old friend, a fellow immigrant, he thanks him for help getting settled, and then steals his money. With a new parcel of wealth, he materializes from a small-time laborer into a big-time entrepreneur, soon becoming the tyrant of the local Italian American community. By pluck, luck, and unscrupulous business practices, this cunning character "makes America." There are riches, pleasure, and the beautiful Carmela. Then trouble. Comeuppance. Ambush. Revenge.Twenty-first century popular culture? Not at all. The Grand Gennaro, a riveting saga set at the turn of the last century in Italian American Harlem, reflects on how youthful acts of cruelty and desperation follow many to the grave. A classic in the truest sense, this operatic narrative is alive once again, addressing the question: How does one become an "American"?
Download or read book Buried Caesars and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing written by Robert Viscusi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2006 Pietro Di Donato and John Fante Literary Award from The Grand Lodge of the Sons of Italy, New York State Robert Viscusi takes a comprehensive look at Italian American writing by exploring the connections between language and culture in Italian American experience and major literary texts. Italian immigrants, Viscusi argues, considered even their English to be a dialect of Italian, and therefore attempted to create an American English fully reflective of their historical, social, and cultural positions. This approach allows us to see Italian American purposes as profoundly situated in relation not only to American language and culture but also to Italian nationalist narratives in literary history as well as linguistic practice. Viscusi also situates Italian American writing within the "eccentric design" of American literature, and uses a multidisciplinary approach to read not only novels and poems, but also houses, maps, processions, videos, and other artifacts as texts.
Download or read book Gangster Priest written by Robert Casillo and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely acclaimed as America's greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is also, some argue, the pre-eminent Italian American artist. Although he has treated various subjects in over three decades, his most sustained filmmaking and the core of his achievement consists of five films on Italian American subjects - Who's That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino - as well as the documentary Italianamerican. In Gangster Priest Robert Casillo examines these films in the context of the society, religion, culture, and history of Southern Italy, from which the majority of Italian Americans, including Scorsese, derive. Casillo argues that these films cannot be fully appreciated either thematically or formally without understanding the various facets of Italian American ethnicity, as well as the nature of Italian American cinema and the difficulties facing assimilating third-generation artists. Forming a unified whole, Scorsese's Italian American films offer what Casillo views as a prolonged meditation on the immigrant experience, the relationship between Italian America and Southern Italy, the conflicts between the ethnic generations, and the formation and development of Italian American ethnicity (and thus identity) on American soil through the generations. Raised as a Catholic and deeply imbued with Catholic values, Scorsese also deals with certain forms of Southern Italian vernacular religion, which have left their imprint not only on Scorsese himself but also on the spiritually tormented characters of his Italian American films. Casillo also shows how Scorsese interrogates the Southern Italian code of masculine honour in his exploration of the Italian American underworld or Mafia, and through his implicitly Catholic optic, discloses its thoroughgoing and longstanding opposition to Christianity. Bringing a wealth of scholarship and insight into Scorsese's work, Casillo's study will captivate readers interested in the director's magisterial artistry, the rich social history of Southern Italy, Italian American ethnicity, and the sociology and history of the Mafia in both Sicily and the United States.
Download or read book Literature and Ethnic Discrimination written by Meyer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-27 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even though universities and colleges make a concerted effort to foster unity and worldwide acceptance of different ethnicities by including politically correct literature in their curriculums, their attempts to protect students from being exposed to texts that portray discrimination and exhibit racial insensitivity are futile and ill-advised. Texts that contain biases based on otherness continue to be written and those produced in the past remain relevant and still demand the attention of an audience of reader. In order to see the full picture of the world in which they live, students must face even that which is uncomfortable and disturbing. To think otherwise is to create and academic environment that is totally idealistic and distorts the fact that ethnic discrimination has been a potent reality in every society in history and remains so today. These studies in this volume allow readers to meet writers from the traditional American and European canon while also being exposed to third world writers whose work may be unfamiliar. They include memoirs of Holocaust survivors and even record the silencing of Italian women, Apartheid in South Africa and tribal conflict in Nigeria as well as transplanted Asian culture in Canada and the idolization of the black body in Japan. The collection permits a viewing of the ethnic 'other' not merely in a politically correct way in which one samples the differences and nods approvingly. Rather its intent is to offer opportunities for contemplative assessment of authorial motives and goals, thereby engendering a wealth of understanding based on active engagement rather than passive acceptance of the status quo.
Download or read book Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates written by Mary Jo Bona and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection reinvigorates the debate over the inclusion of multiethnic literature in the American literary canon. While multiethnic literature has earned a place in the curriculum on many large campuses, it is still a controversial topic at many others, as recent campus and corporate revivals of The Great Books attest. Many still perceive multiethnic literature as being governed by ideological and political issues, perpetuating a false distinction between highbrow "literary" texts and multiethnic works. Through historical overviews and textual analyses, the contributors not only argue for the aesthetic validity of multiethnic literature, but also examine the innovative ways in which multiethnic literature is taught and critiqued. The following questions are also addressed: Who and what determines literary value? What role do scholars, students, the reading public, book awards, and/or publishers play in affirming literary value? Taken together, these essays underscore the necessity for maintaining vibrant conversations about the place of multiethnic literature both inside and outside the academy.
Download or read book Italian Americans on Screen written by Ryan Calabretta-Sajder and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian Americans on Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future reconsiders Robert Casillo’s definition of Italian-American cinema as “appl[ying] to works by Italian-American directors who treat Italian-American subjects” to expand this classification. Contributors situate Italian-American cinema and media within the contemporary and intersectional debates about ethnic identity, including race, class, gender, and sexuality studies. This book links past scholarship to theoretical underpinnings with new hermeneutical approaches in television and film to establish new interpretations concerning Italian Americans on screen. Scholars of film studies, media studies, cultural studies, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.
Download or read book Ciao America written by Beppe Severgnini and published by Crown. This book was released on 2003-05-13 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wry but affectionate tradition of Bill Bryson, Ciao, America! is a delightful look at America through the eyes of a fiercely funny guest—one of Italy’s favorite authors who spent a year in Washington, D.C. When Beppe Severgnini and his wife rented a creaky house in Georgetown they were determined to see if they could adapt to a full four seasons in a country obsessed with ice cubes, air-conditioning, recliner chairs, and, of all things, after-dinner cappuccinos. From their first encounters with cryptic rental listings to their back-to-Europe yard sale twelve months later, Beppe explores this foreign land with the self-described patience of a mildly inappropriate beachcomber, holding up a mirror to America’s signature manners and mores. Succumbing to his surroundings day by day, he and his wife find themselves developing a taste for Klondike bars and Samuel Adams beer, and even that most peculiar of American institutions—the pancake house. The realtor who waves a perfect bye-bye, the overzealous mattress salesman who bounces from bed to bed, and the plumber named Marx who deals in illegally powerful showerheads are just a few of the better-than-fiction characters the Severgninis encounter while foraging for clues to the real America. A trip to the computer store proves just as revealing as D.C.’s Fourth of July celebration, as do boisterous waiters angling for tips and no-parking signs crammed with a dozen lines of fine print. By the end of his visit, Severgnini has come to grips with life in these United States—and written a charming, laugh-out-loud tribute.
Download or read book The Italian American Heritage written by Pellegrino A D'Acierno and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-12 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999. The many available scholarly works on Italian-Americans are perhaps of little practical help to the undergraduate or high school student who needs background information when reading contemporary fiction with Italian characters, watching films that require a familiarity with Italian Americans, or looking at works of art that can be fully appreciated only if one understands Italian culture. This basic reference work for non-specialists and students offers quick insights and essential, easy-to-grasp information on Italian-American contributions to American art, music, literature, motion pictures and cultural life. This rich legacy is examined in a collection of original essays that include portrayals of Italian characters in the films of Francis Coppola, Italian American poetry, the art of Frank Stella, the music of Frank Zappa, a survey of Italian folk customs and an analysis of the evolution of Italian-American biography. Comprising 22 lengthy essays written specifically for this volume, the book identifies what is uniquely Italian in American life and examines how Italian customs, traditions, social mores and cultural antecedents have wrought their influence on the American character. Filled with insights, observations and ethnic facts and fictions, this volume should prove to be a valuable source of information for scholars, researchers and students interested in pinpointing and examining the cultural, intellectual and social influence of Italian immigrants and their successors.
Download or read book The North American Italian Renaissance written by Kenneth Scambray and published by Guernica Editions. This book was released on 2000 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kenneth Scrambray offers the reader a critical analysis of the wide range of Italianese literature written over the last thirty years in North America. These last three decades in both Canada and America can justifiably be termed a renaissance in Italian writing.
Download or read book The Routledge History of Italian Americans written by William Connell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 915 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.
Download or read book A New Language A New World written by Nancy C. Carnevale and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of Italian immigrants and their children in the early twentieth century, A New Language, A New World is the first full-length historical case study of one immigrant group's experience with language in America. Incorporating the interdisciplinary literature on language within a historical framework, Nancy C. Carnevale illustrates the complexity of the topic of language in American immigrant life. By looking at language from the perspectives of both immigrants and the dominant culture as well as their interaction, this book reveals the role of language in the formation of ethnic identity and the often coercive context within which immigrants must negotiate this process.
Download or read book Sense of Origins written by Rosemary Serra and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sense of Origins, Rosemary Serra explores the lives of a significant group of self-identified young Italian Americans residing in New York City and its surrounding areas. The book presents and examines the results of a survey she conducted of their values, family relationships, prejudices and stereotypes, affiliations, attitudes and behaviors, and future perspectives of Italian American culture. The core of the study focuses on self-identification with Italian cultural heritage and analyzes it according to five aspects—physical, personality, cultural, psychological, and emotional/affective. The data provides insights into today's young Italian Americans and the ways their perception of reality in everyday interactions is affected by their heritage, while shedding light on the value and symbolic references that come with an Italian heritage. Through her rendering of relevant facets that emerge from the study, Serra constructs interpretative models useful for outlining the physiognomy and characterization of second, third, fourth, and fifth generations of Italian Americans. In the current climate, questions of ethnicity and migrant identity around the world make Sense of Origins useful not only to the Italian American community but also to the descendants of the innumerable present-day migrants who find themselves living in countries different from those of their ancestors. The book will resonate in future explorations of ethnic identity in the United States.
Download or read book Re reading Italian Americana written by Anthony Julian Tamburri and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the general situation of Italian/American literature and its reception both in the United States and in Italy. It also discusses other social and cultural issues that pertain to Italian Americana. Section two consists of six chapters, each discussing a specific author; three dedicated to prose (Pietro di Donato, Mario Puzo, Luigi Barzini), three dedicated to poetry (Joseph Tusiani, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Rina Ferrarelli). Section three examines the current state of criticism dedicated to Italian/American literature, the second part focusing in on a number of specific works.
Download or read book New Italian Migrations to the United States written by Laura E Ruberto and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2017-03-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian immigration from 1945 to the present is an American phenomenon too little explored in our histories. Until now. In this new collection, Laura E. Ruberto and Joseph Sciorra edit essays by an elite roster of scholars in Italian American studies. These interdisciplinary works focus on leading edge topics that range from politics of the McCarren-Walter Act and its effects on women to the ways Italian Americans mobilized against immigration restrictions. Other essays unwrap the inner workings of multi-ethnic power brokers in a Queens community, portray the complex transformation of identity in Boston 's North End, and trace the development of Italian American youth culture and how new arrivals fit into it. Finally, Donna Gabaccia pens an afterword on the importance of this seventy-year period in U.S. migration history. Contributors: Ottorino Cappelli, Donna Gabaccia, Stefano Luconi, Maddalena Marinari, James S. Pasto, Rodrigo Praino, Laura E. Ruberto, Joseph Sciorra, Donald Tricarico, and Elizabeth Zanoni.
