Voices of Italian America: A History of Early Italian American Literature with a Critical AnthologyMartino Marazzi, Translated by Ann Goldstein
About the Author:
Martino Marazzi has widely written, in journals in Italy and in the United States, on literary and cultural relations between the two countries, a topic which is at the center of two of the four books he has published in Italian: Little America: Gli Stati Uniti e gli scrittori italiani del Novecento (1997) and Misteri de Little Italy: Storie e testi della letteratura italoamericana (2001). He is a regular contributor to Belfagor, and has lectured at various American universities. He teaches Italian literature and culture at the State University in Milan and has been a fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University.
An unprecedented exodus that brought millions of Italians to the New World, the Great Migration has been studied until now mainly in its historical, social, and ethnographical dimensions. Scholars of literature, on the contrary, have neglected this field, despite the rich and varied literary fabric to be found in the teeming Little Italies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What is presented here is thus the first detailed history of that forgotten territory. This book presents also for the first time in English a substantial choice of texts (excerpts from novels, short stories, memoirs, and poems), mostly written in Italian by first-generation immigrants. Marazzi, a specialist in Italo-American cultural relations, introduces here the lives and works of a number of novelists, poets, activists, and journalists, who wrote for the myriad of newspapers published all around the country. There are authors serialized novels (the "mysteries" of downtown Manhattan), N.Y.P.D. cops, and nationalists extolling the virtues of the Duce, as well as red anarchists, ladies and "flappers" from the Italian American middle class, and proletarian rhetoricians. Their personal stories testify to a wider collective novel focused around myth and the dream of "making America." Through their pages and their critical presentation, the reader is brought to discover the literary dignity of this production, clearly linked to the popular roots of nineteenth-century Italian culture, but at the same time confronted with the traumas and the different realities of a new society. The main themes are voiced with characteristic intensity--immigration, labor conditions, family ties, the lure and snares of the big city, its multiethnicity. Over a period of more than a half century, we witness the rise and demise of Italian-speaking literature in the United States, which will then lead the way to the new generation, most notably represented by John Fante and Pietro di Donato. On the whole, Voices of Italian America gives the reader a key to the understanding of a full-fledged civilization, still underappreciated in the United States and ignored in Italy by the elitism of the literary milieu.
ISBN 0-8386-4016-8, Price $55.00
About FDU Press New Releases Features Recent Publications by Topic Recent Book Reviews Book Reviews by Topic Submission Guidelines
TO ORDER BOOKS:
2010 Eastpark Boulevard
Cranbury, New Jersey 08512
Phone (609) 655-4770
Fax (609) 655-8366
TO REQUEST A CATALOGUE:
M-GH2-01
285 Madison Avenue
Madison, New Jersey 07940
Phone (973) 443-8564
Fax (973) 443-8364
fdupress@fdu.edu
TO RECEIVE UPDATES ON NEWLY RELEASED TITLES BY EMAIL:
fdupress@fdu.edu
The FDU Press has particular strengths in literary studies, world history and politics, biography, film, ethnic studies, sociology, the Civil War, art, religion, local history, and urban studies.
