You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Since 1987, writer and critic Fred Gardaphé has regularly reviewed Italian/North American literature in Fra Noi, an Italian/American monthly newspaper based in Chicago. This volume features the best of 'Parole Scritte', his monthly columns. Introduced by an essay from which the collection gets its title, Dagoes Read is the first publication of its kind in the history of Italian/North American literature. It serves as a fine introduction to this literary movement as well as a survey of recent publications by Italian/North Americans. Works reviewed include those by Tony Ardiaone, Dorothy Bryant, Pietro di Donato, John Fante, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Frank Lentricchia, Jay Parini, Diane Raptosh, Gay Talese, Sal LaPuma, and many others.
Italian-Americans compose one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States, numbering more than 14 million in the 1990 census. Though they have often been portrayed in fiction and film, these images are often based on stereotypes not borne out among the immigrant and assimilated population.
Sunday dinners, basement kitchens, and backyard gardens are everyday cultural entities long associated with Italian Americans, yet the general perception of them remains superficial and stereotypical at best. For many people, these scenarios trigger ingrained assumptions about individuals' beliefs, politics, aesthetics, values, and behaviors that leave little room for nuance and elaboration. This collection of essays explores local knowledge and aesthetic practices, often marked as "folklore," as sources for creativity and meaning in Italian-American lives. As the contributors demonstrate, folklore provides contemporary scholars with occasions for observing and interpreting behaviors and obj...
A Singing Ambivalence undertakes a comprehensive examination of the ways in which nine immigrant groups - Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, Eastern European Jews, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Chinese, and Mexicans - responded to their new lives in the United States through music. Each group's songs reveal an abiding concern over leaving their loved ones and homeland and an anxiety about adjusting to the new society. But accompanying these feelings was an excitement about the possibilities of becoming wealthy and about looking forward to a democratic and free society. known and unknown origins that comment on the problems immigrants faced and reveals the wide range of responses they made to the ...
For Italian immigrants and their descendants, needlework represents a marker of identity, a cultural touchstone as powerful as pasta and Neapolitan music. Out of the artifacts of their memory and imagination, Italian immigrants and their descendants used embroidering, sewing, knitting, and crocheting to help define who they were and who they have become. This book is an interdisciplinary collection of creative work by authors of Italian origin and academic essays. The creative works from thirty-seven contributors include memoir, poetry, and visual arts while the collection as a whole explores a multitude of experiences about and approaches to needlework and immigration from a transnational p...
An insightful history of Italian immigrants' personal experience of language in America
Are included. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Private Devotions in Public Places: The Sacred Spaces of Yard Shrines and Sidewalk Altars -- 2. Imagined Places and Fragile Landscapes: Nostalgia and Utopia in Nativity Presepi -- 3. Festive Intensification and Place Consciousness in Christmas House Displays -- 4. Multivocality and Sacred Space: The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto in Rosebank, Staten Island -- "We Go Where the Italians Live": Processions as Glocal Mapping in Williamsburg, Brooklyn -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
In a masterful evocation of Italian Harlem and the men and women who lived there, Robert Orsi examines how the annual festa of the Madonna of 115th Street both influenced and reflected the lives of the celebrants. His prize-winning book offers a new perspective on lived religion, the place of religion in the everyday lives of men, women, and children, the experiences of immigration and community formation, and American Catholicism. This edition includes a new introduction by the author that outlines both the changes that Italian Harlem has undergone in recent years and significant shifts in the field of religious history.
The acclaimed biography—now updated and revised. “Many writers have tried to probe [Dylan’s] life, but never has it been done so well, so captivatingly” (The Boston Globe). Howard Sounes’s Down the Highway broke news about Dylan’s fiercely guarded personal life and set the standard as the most comprehensive and riveting biography on Bob Dylan. Now this edition continues to document the iconic songwriter’s life through new interviews and reporting, covering the release of Dylan’s first #1 album since the seventies, recognition from the Pulitzer Prize jury for his influence on popular culture, and the publication of his bestselling memoir, giving full appreciation to his artistic achievements and profound significance. Candid and refreshing, Down the Highway is a sincere tribute to Dylan’s seminal place in postwar American cultural history, and remains an essential book for the millions of people who have enjoyed Dylan’s music over the years. “Irresistible . . . Finally puts Dylan the human being in the rocket’s red glare.” —Detroit Free Press