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The Italian/American Experience represents a meaningful attempt to inform Italian Americans about their group's varied experiences in America. This collection of eleven works offers readers an in-depth view of Italian American culture and heritage.
This collection analyzes the qualities that ensured Sinatra's staying power: his impeccable musicality, his charisma, his tough-mindedness, and even his peccadilloes. The contributors to this volume evaluate Sinatra's impact on all areas of entertainment, and examine many of the cultural forces he influenced and was influenced by, including Bing Crosby, Elvis, the "Beats," the Beatles, and Rock 'n' Roll. What emerges is a portrait of an artist, entertainment icon, and legendary symbol of popular culture. This appreciation of the Sinatra phenomenon celebrates his enduring impact on American entertainment and cultural life.
This collection provides the reader with a candid glimpse into the lives of fifteen women from across North America: some were born and raised in Italy while some have only been there on holidays; some are mothers and grandmothers and some are single; some only know a few words of Italian, while others are fluent, but we all have a discerning perspective on what it means to live with two cultures.
Mario Puzo’s classic saga of an American crime family that became a global phenomenon — nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read . With its brilliant and brutal portrayal of the Corleone family, The Godfather burned its way into our national consciousness. This unforgettable saga of crime and corruption, passion and loyalty continues to stand the test of time, as the definitive novel of the Mafia underworld.
A Circular Journey collects for the first time in one book the essays that most powerfully define the unique gifts of one of America’s most distinctive voices. These fifteen pieces, tracking some thirty years of a writer’s life, come together to illuminate the stages and themes and places that mark Helen Barolini’s art. Divided into three closely linked sections―“Home,” “Abroad,” “Return,”―the essays move through Barolini’s worlds.
It's 1936, and the Yankees have just hired a star center fielder whose name sounds like music. What could be a better time for Papa-Angelo's grandson to be born? Christened after the legendary ballplayer, young Joseph Paul learns much at his Italian grandfather's knee — about holding your breath in front of the radio during a 3-2 count with the bases loaded and having the audacity to dream big dreams.
To appreciate the life of the Italian immigrant enclave from the great heart of the Italian migration to its settlement in America requires that one come to know how these immigrants saw their communities as colonies of the mother country. Edited with extraordinary skill, Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943 brings to an English-speaking audience a definitive collection of classic writings on, about, and from the formative years of the Italian-American experience.
John Fante’s second book details the adventures of his alter ego, Arturo Bandini, a young writer in Los Angeles in the late 1930s. Struggling to succeed, Bandini falls in love with the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Yet just as fortune looms with the publication of his first novel, everything falls apart when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears—propelling Bandini to reject the writer’s life.
Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers explores the different ways in which Italian American directors from the 1920s to the present have responded to their ethnicity. Jonathan J. Cavallero examines the films of Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Savoca, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino with a focus on what the films reveal about each director's view on Italian American identities.
As the child of children of immigrants, Louise DeSalvo was at first reluctant to write about her truths. Her abusive father, her sister's suicide, her illness. In this stunning collection of her captivating and frank essays on her life and her Italian-American culture, Louise DeSalvo centers on her beginnings, reframing and revising her acclaimed memoiristic essays, pieces that were the seeds of longer collections, to reveal her true power as a memoirist: the ability to dig ever deeper for personal and political truths that illuminate what it means to be a woman, a child of Italian immigrants, a writer, and a scholar.
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another.
Looking at the historic Italian American community of East Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, Simone Cinotto recreates the bustling world of Italian life in New York City and demonstrates how food was at the centre of the lives of immigrants and their children. From generational conflicts resolved around the family table to a vibrant food-based economy of ethnic producers, importers, and restaurateurs, food was essential to the creation of an Italian American identity.
In By the Breath of Their Mouths, Mary Jo Bona examines the oral uses of language and the liberating power of speech in Italian American writing, as well as its influences on generations of assimilated Italian American writers. Probing and wide-ranging, Bona's analysis reveals the lasting importance of storytelling and folk narrative, their impact on ethnic, working-class, and women's literatures, and their importance in shaping multiethnic literature.
When Strega Nona leaves him alone with her magic pasta pot, Big Anthony is determined to show the townspeople how it works.
With writings that span more than 35 years, this book is a rich collection of essays that fleshes out the realities of today's Italian American women and explores the myriad ways they continue to add to the American experience.