About FDU Press

Homebound Italian literati spent the early twentieth century writing exquisite formalism (Pirandello) and sprawling sociopolitical novels (Silone). Meanwhile, their counterparts on these shores followed a different literary trajectory, one dictated largely by venue. Newspapers were the medium of choice in the immigrant community, and the Italian-language literary trends were commensurately pulpy, naturalistic, and plot-driven. Marazzi's anthology bristles with serial gangster fiction, breathless flapper romances, and impassioned tales of triumph over poverty, all of which make for a sharp contrast with his erudite elucidation of their historical context. The result is a glimpse of a largely forgotten literary heritage and of the life of what one epigraph calls "the Italian immigrant in the land of America who, enduring danger and derision, built a nation that never became a homeland."

—The New Yorker, February 2005