Download or read book Tina Mafia Soldier written by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic of Italian feminist mafia literature about a gender-bending mafiosa and the writer who becomes obsessed with telling her story Sicily, 1980s: When she was just eight years old, Tina watched as her father, a member of Cosa Nostra, was murdered in cold blood. Now a teenager, she terrorizes her hometown of Gela, having made it her mission to join the mafia, an organization traditionally forbidden to women as made members. Nicknamed ’a masculidda, or “the tomboy,” Tina has taken charge of her own clan, and is notorious for her cruelty and reckless disregard for societal expectations. When a news article is published about Tina’s latest crimes, a teacher living in Rome feels compelled to write a novel about her—even though it means returning to her native Sicily to gather material. She and Tina circle around each other in a dangerous dance of obsession and violence until their first, and last, explosive meeting. This groundbreaking exploration of gender identity and clear-eyed presentation of an unseen side of the mafia is a landmark literary achievement by one of Italy’s feminist icons.
Download or read book The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature written by Robin Pickering-Iazzi and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using an array of cultural documents from 1990 to the present, including diaries, testimonies, fiction, online video postings, and anti-mafia social networks, Robin Pickering-Iazzi examines the myths, values, codes of behaviour, and relationships produced by the Italian mafia through a wide cross-disciplinary lens. The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature explores the ways that these literary engagements with the mafia relate to broader contemporary Italian life and offer implicit challenges, and a quiet code of resistance, to the trauma and injustice wrought by the mafia in various Italian cities. Despite the long tradition of representing the mafia in Italian literature, until now women’s contributions to this literature have been overlooked. Pickering-Iazzi’s aim is to encourage new critical reflection on a broader selection of literature through new theoretical lenses in order to enrich our understanding of crime fiction, Sicily and Sicilian identity in literature, narrative traits of the new Italian epic, and the cultural and social functions of storytelling in life and literature.
Download or read book Writing With An Accent written by Edvige Giunta and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Cappello, Louise DeSalvo, Sandra M. Gilbert, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Carole Maso, Agnes Rossi. These are some of the best-known Italian American writers today. They are part of a literary tradition with mid-twentieth century roots that began to develop, in earnest, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During those decades, a number of Italian American women, such as Helen Barolini, began to publish books that depicted their perspectives on life through the critical lenses of gender, class, and ethnicity. At the end of the twentieth century, this literature finally blossomed into a fully fledged cultural movement that also took into account issues of sexuality, age, illness, and familial and societal abuse. Writing with an Accent takes a look at this vibrant literary movement by discussing those first writers of the 1970s and 1980s as well as later authors. At the center of Edvige Giunta s Writing with an Accent is the literal notion of accent, the marker of linguistic and cultural difference that separates and identifies recent immigrants to the United States. In this study, an accent symbolically embodies the differences and creative strategies through which contemporary Italian American women writers engage Italian American culture in works of fiction, poetry, and memoir. Giunta also looks at the links between the literature and art, music, film, and video produced by contemporary Italian American women. The literature of the Italian American women in Writing with an Accent is shaped by the complicated connections these authors maintain with their cultural origins, but also, and perhaps more importantly, by their feminist consciousness and politicized sense of ethnic identity. Writing with an Accent celebrates and explores a group of authors who characteristically mix the joy and pain of Italian American life to paint a multifaceted picture of Italian American women and their complex place in U.S. culture.
Download or read book Tina Mafia Soldier written by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic of Italian feminist mafia literature about a gender-bending mafiosa and the writer who becomes obsessed with telling her story Sicily, 1980s: When she was just eight years old, Tina watched as her father, a member of Cosa Nostra, was murdered in cold blood. Now a teenager, she terrorizes her hometown of Gela, having made it her mission to join the mafia, an organization traditionally forbidden to women as made members. Nicknamed ’a masculidda, or “the tomboy,” Tina has taken charge of her own gang, and is notorious for her cruelty and reckless disregard for societal expectations. When a news article is published about Tina’s latest crimes, a teacher living in Rome feels compelled to write a novel about her—even though it means returning to her native Sicily to gather material. She and Tina circle around each other in a dangerous dance of obsession and violence until their first, and last, explosive meeting. This groundbreaking exploration of gender identity and clear-eyed presentation of an unseen side of the mafia is a landmark literary achievement by one of Italy’s feminist icons.
Download or read book Cottonwood written by Scott Phillips and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of New York Times Notable book The Ice Harvest, a cult classic of Western noir set in a 19th century Kansas frontier town rocked by a series of brutal murders Introducing photographer and saloon owner Bill Ogden. Perfect for fans of Deadwood and Justified In 1872, Cottonwood, Kansas, is a one-horse speck on the map; a community of run-down farms, dusty roads, and two-bit crooks. Self-educated saloon owner and photographer Bill Ogden looks on his adopted town with an eye to making a profit or getting out. His brains and ambition bring him to the attention of one Marc Leval, a wealthy Chicago developer with big plans for the small town. The advent of the railroad and rumors of a cattle trail turn Cottonwood into a wild and wooly boomtown—and with Leval as a partner, Ogden dreams of bringing civilization to the prairie. But civilizing the Great Plains was never that simple. While many in Cottonwood distrust Leval’s motives, and mob violence threatens to derail the town’s dreams of greatness, Ogden finds himself dangerously obsessed with Leval’s stunningly beautiful wife. Meanwhile, plying its sinister trade unnoticed, an apparently ordinary local farm family quietly butchers traveling salesmen, weary travelers, and other unsuspecting wanderers. In his own inimitable brand of narrative wizardry, Scott Phillips traces the metamorphosis of a frontier town that becomes a lightning rod for sin, corruption, and murder. He also brings to life actual crimes that befell Kansas in the 1870s and 1880s, carried out by a strange clan who popularly became known as the Bloody Benders. Brilliantly written, maliciously fun, and full of many surprises, Cottonwood is historical fiction at its finest.
Download or read book Perdition U S A written by Gary Phillips and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2024-06-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black private eye Ivan Monk’s search for a connection between three Black men murdered in Los Angeles leads to the unraveling of a white supremacist conspiracy that spans the West Coast. The mystery series that launched Gary Phillips's career. Robert “Scatterboy” Williams is a small-time hustler selling bogus Cartier watches in Pacific Shores, a port city south of Los Angeles. One day, he’s gunned down in the street, seemingly at random. Then drug dealer Ronny Aaron is shot and killed leaving a liquor store. Shortly thereafter, college student Jimmy Henderson is rendered comatose after two bullets to his body. The three victims have nothing in common save the neighborhood where they were shot—and the color of their skin. The police categorize Scatterboy’s murder as business as usual. But his girlfriend convinces private eye Ivan Monk to find the killer. What looks like three unrelated shootings of Black men in Southern California will put Monk on a tortuous trail unraveling a larger nefarious plan: the rise of an extremist demagogue.
Download or read book The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp written by Leonie Swann and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quirky group of seniors attempts to solve one murder while covering up another—with the help of an enterprising tortoise—in this twisty, darkly funny mystery from the author of Three Bags Full. It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house share for the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes, decreasing mobility, and gluttonous grandsons), nothing prepares them for an unexpected visit from a police officer with some shocking news. A body has been discovered next door. Everyone puts on a long face for show, but they are secretly relieved the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry, Lillith). It seems the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen right into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbor, so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two (old) birds with one stone (cold killer). With their plan sorted, Agnes and her geriatric gang spring into action. After all, everybody likes a good mystery. Besides, the more suspicion they can cast about, surely the less will land on them. To investigate, they will step out of their comfort zone and tangle with sinister bakers, broken stairlifts, inept criminals, the local authorities, and their own dark secrets.
Download or read book Why We Die written by Mick Herron and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The road to hell is paved with all sorts of intentions, as Oxford private investigator Zoë Boehm discovers when a straightforward jewelry store robbery turns out to be anything but. When Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney’s jewelry shop, she’s just hoping to break even in time for tax season. She certainly doesn’t expect to wind up in a coffin. But she’s about to become entangled with a strange collection of characters, starting with suicidal Tim Whitby, who’s dedicating what’s left of his life to protecting the pretty, battered Katrina Blake from her late husband’s sociopathic brothers, Arkle and Trent. Unfortunately for Zoë, Arkle has a crossbow, Tim has nothing left to lose, and even Katrina has her secrets. And death, like taxes, can’t be avoided forever.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies written by Gaetana Marrone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-12-26 with total page 2256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies A J written by Gaetana Marrone and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2007 with total page 2258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Feminist Writers written by Pamela L. Shelton and published by Saint James Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concise discussions of the lives and principal works of feminist writers from all time periods, written by subject experts.
Download or read book Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature written by and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-12-29 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of its kind in English, Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature is a selection of readings from Italian fiction and non-fiction writers on the subject of the Mafia. Among the renowned writers featured are Giovanni Verga, Grazia Deledda, Anna Maria Ortese, Livia De Stefani, and Silvana La Spina, as well as famous witnesses such as Felicia Impastato, Letizia Battaglia, and Rita Atria who provide personal, often terrifying testimonies about their experiences with the Mafia. It is a historically diverse examination of criminal and outlaw institutions by some of the most significant figures in Italian literature. These newly translated writings show the ways in which Italians perceived and wrote about the Mafia and crime from the 1880s to the 1990s. Among them are stories dealing with the important legends used by the Mafia as sources for their image and ideology, legends such as the brigand and the Blessed Paulists. Some of the fascinating themes discussed are connections between the Mafia, the State, and the Catholic Church; the Mafia and children; women and the Mafia; the Black Hand; and relations between the Mafia and the Allied Forces during the Second World War. Robin Pickering-Iazzi incorporates an invaluable introduction that charts key periods in the history of Italy and the Mafia, and profiles each of the authors in the collection, noting their major works in Italian as well as those available in English. These and other features make this text especially appropriate for courses in Italian studies. Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature takes a unique and intriguing approach to the subject of the Mafia, and offers informed judgements about its historical impact on Italian society and culture.
Download or read book Woody Allen written by Richard Aloysius Blake and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the religious dimensions of Woody Allen's films.
Download or read book The Insane Chicago Way written by John Hagedorn and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-08-19 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Police, the press, and the public all see the kind of violence that besets the inner city today as irrational and basically about turf, revenge, or drugs. Renowned criminologist and expert on gangs, John Hagedorn here tells a very different and little-known story centered on the dramatic rise and fall of a Mafia-like Latino organization in Chicago called "Spanish Growth & Development." Hagedorn's main informant is 'Sal Martino, ' an Italian Mafioso who became intimately involved with the "In$ane Family," one of the factions of Spanish Growth & Development. Through Sal's first-hand account, Hagedorn shows that the violence was not a result of "disorganized crime" but rather the outcome of SGD's prolonged demise. He gives us for the first time a detailed the history of SGD-the reasons for its creation, the uneasy alliances between gang families, the organization's reliance on bottom-up police corruption, and its ultimate collapse in a pool of blood at a 1999 "peace" conference. Revealing the hidden and riveting stories of Chicago gangs' efforts to build structures ostensibly to reduce violence and to organize crime, of the integration of gang and mafia history, and of the central role of police corruption in Chicago's gangland, "The In$ane Chicago Way" makes a powerful argument for the need to regard corruption as the bedrock of gang power. It dispels the notion that gang violence can be explained solely by ecological, neighborhood-based processes and sheds light on the current gang situation in Chicago by laying bare its history while raising disturbing questions for researchers, policy-makers, and the public.
Download or read book American Desperado written by Jon Roberts and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mafia insider and former head smuggler for the Medellin cartel describes his violent relationships with criminal powers, his alliance with the U.S. government, and his role in reshaping the nation's war on drugs.
Download or read book Sonny written by S. J. Peddie and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Couldn’t put it down.” —Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy (Goodfellas) and Casino The extraordinary life and times of a legendary crime boss who refused to squeal—but who finally agreed to talk to an award-winning New York Newsday reporter shortly before his death at age 103 . . . John “Sonny” Franzese reportedly committed his first murder at the age of fourteen. As a “made man” for the Colombo crime family, he operated out of his Long Island home specializing in racketeering, fraud, loansharking, and other illicit deeds he would deny to his dying day. His career in organized crime spanned over eight decades—and he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for robbery charges. But even behind bars, Sonny Franzese never stopped doing business . . . This is the true story of an old-school mafioso as it’s never been told before. Newsday reporter S. J. Peddie interviewed Franzese in prison—and uncovered a lifetime of shocking secrets from the legend himself: * Why FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a very personal interest in Sonny. * How Sonny managed to juggle numerous affairs with women, including a famous model. * How Sonny spent a third of his life in prison—and still managed to earn untold millions for the mob. * How Sonny accidentally revealed some of his worst crimes—to a “friend” wearing a wire. Through it all, Franzese refused to break the Mafia’s code of silence. Authorities believe he may have murdered, or ordered the murders of, forty to fifty people. Yet he earned a grudging respect from law enforcement and an absolute reverence from his fellow gangsters. Eventually he managed to outlive them all—until his death in 2020 of natural causes, a rare event in the Mafia. Thanks to a series of exclusive firsthand interviews, the astonishing life story of John “Sonny” Franzese can be told in all its bold, brutal, and blood-spattered glory. This is a must-read for anyone fascinated with Mafia history—and a rare look inside a criminal mind that has become the stuff of legend.
Download or read book Quitting the Mob written by Michael Franzese and published by . This book was released on 1993-11-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: