| Monday - Thursday | 7:45 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. | |
| Friday | 7:45 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. | |
| Saturday | 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. |
|
| Sunday | Closed | |
Italian American Women Writers: Forging Identities Through a Shared Immigrant Heritage: Home
Anthologies
The books on this page represent collections and anthologies of important works by Italian American women authors, some of which are considered seminal, groundbreaking compilations by writers, scholars, and discoverers / preservers of pieces that might otherwise have fallen out of view. They feature voices in poetry, essays, short stories, novels, and drama.
Breaking Barriers: Female Italian-American Authors
"Italian-Americans cannot be conveniently generalized; they are differentiated by a multitude of variables, including class, education, political activism, religion, number of generations in this country, their Italian provenance, and the subsequent area of settlement in America. But, by and large, the women have a commonality. They are women who, with rare exceptions, had never before been authorized to be authors (of themselves, of the word) -- not by their external world, nor again by their internal one." (Helen Barolini)
Italian American female authors have emerged far beyond this earlier time of struggle in being heard, accepted, and published. As part of NCC's 2018 Italian Heritage Day Festival we celebrate their journey from the breaking of literary barriers to the unifying and energizing influence of the feminist movement, to their recent stunning successes and inevitable branching out into myriad styles. In some recent works, the immigrant past can seem very remote, but because of the unique background of a shared immigrant history, as Regina Barreca points out, the writings of Italian American Women always in some way look to the literary pioneers whose works reflect "a life not inherited, but invented." They also worked through and against stereotypes about the literary culture of the Italian American immigrant household. Fred Gadarphe writes about growing up in a loud, bustling Italian household: "Reading anything beyond newspapers and the mail required escaping from my family ... it betrayed my willingness to enter mainstream American culture." In her wonderful study "Writing With an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors, Edvige Giunta claims that as recently as the 1970's "Italian American authors in general, and Italian American women writers in particular, were virtual unkowns to the academic as well as lay readership."
The books featured here can be obtained either from our catalog (where indicated), or via interlibrary loan at NCC or by inquiring at your local public library. Please contact the NCC library for help with the interlibrary loan process available to faculty, staff, and current students.
From Helen Barolini's Umbertina, which Giunta singles out as "one of the first Italian American novels to explore the immigrant experience from a female perspective" to the bestselling novels of Adriana Trigiani and Lisa Scottoline, in addition to anthologies, essays, and poetry, these wonderful titles are available in our libraries and should be enjoyed by all.
Anthologies
Below are some additional suggested titles that can be explored by requesting via interlibrary loan from NCC or inquiring at your local public library. Staff and faculty can contact the library about setting up an interlibrary loan account.
Writing with an Accent by ISBN: 9780312294694Publication Date: 2002-01-10Mary 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.
Claiming a Tradition by ISBN: 9780809322589Publication Date: 1999-11-17Mary Jo Bona reconstructs the literary history and examines the narrative techniques of eight Italian American women's novels from 1940 to the present. Largely neglected until recently, these women's family narratives compel a reconsideration of what it means to be a woman and an ethnic in America. Bona discusses the novels in pairs according to their focus on Italian American life. She first examines the traditions of italianitá (a flavor of things Italian) that inform and enhance works of fiction. The novelists in that tradition were Mari Tomasi (Like Lesser Gods, 1949) and Marion Benasutti (No Steady Job for Papa, 1966). Bona then turns to later novels that highlight the Italian American belief in the family's honor and reputation. Conflicts between generations, specifically between autocratic fathers and their children, are central to Octavia Waldo's 1961 A Cup of the Sun and Josephine Gattuso Hendin's 1988 The Right Thing to Do. Even when writers choose to steer away from the familial focus, Bona notes, their developmental narratives trace the reintegration of characters suffering from a crisis of cultural identity. Relating the characters' struggles to their relationship to the family, Bona examines Diana Cavallo's 1961 A Bridge of Leaves and Dorothy Bryant's 1978 Miss Giardino. Bona then discusses two innovative novels--Helen Barolini's 1979 Umbertina and Tina De Rosa's 1980 Paper Fish--both of which feature a granddaughter who invokes her grandmother, a godparent figure. Through Barolini's feminist and De Rosa's modernist perspectives, both novels present a young girl developing artistically. Closing with a discussion of the contemporary terrain Italian American women traverse, Bona examines such topics as sexual identity when it meets cultural identity and the inclusion of italianitá when Italian American identity is not central to the story. Italian American women writers, she concludes, continue in the 1980s and 1990s to focus on the interplay between cultural identity and women's development.
Revisionary Identities by ISBN: 9780820448534Publication Date: 2000-09-21Italian Americans, the fifth-largest ethnic group in the United States, make up a large segment of the population. It is only recently that the daughters and granddaughters of Italian immigrants have begun to write fiction and poetry about their experiences as Italian/American women. Revisionary Identities focuses on the writings of these women and argues that their works reveal a new identity that is composed of both Italian and American elements but which is neither completely Italian nor totally American. For these writers the categories of race, class, gender, and religion blur causing conflicts, which they try to resolve by imagining an all-powerful immigrant grandmother with whom they form a bond.
The Voices We Carry by ISBN: 0920717845Publication Date: 1994-03-01The collection voices the ongoing fascination with ethnicity in America. In this case, it is Italian-American ethnicity and its attendant themes - the ineluctable bonds between mothers and daughters, granddaughters and grandparents; the family rituals centered around but not limited to celebration and dining; and the desire to reinvent the meanings of ethnicity, especially for third-generation writers, in order to re-establish ties to the homeland country (Italy) and to renegotiate women's position within both American and Italian cultures. Authors invited: Mary Bush, Rachel Guido DeVries, Daniela Gioseffi, Diana Cavallo, Lisa Ruffolo, Laura Marello, Dodici Azpadu, Susan J. Leonardi, Adria Bernardi, Phyllis Capello, Giovanna Capone, Dorothy Byrant, Anne Paolucci, and Lynn Vannucci.
Italian Heritage Day Program
Available at NCC
Don't Tell Mama! by Call Number: PS508 .I73 .D66ISBN: 014200247XPublication Date: 2002-10-01This important collection reveals as never before the quality, extent, and variety of the Italian American contribution to American literature. Bringing together fiction and poetry as well as academic essays and newspaper articles from the 1800s to the present, this volume covers a wide field of cultural experience. Including many previously unpublished pieces as well as classic works, and enhanced by an insightful and entertaining introduction by Regina Barreca, Don't Tell Mama highlights both the unity and the diversity of the Italian American experience.
One Education Drive
Garden City, New York 11530
Phone: 516.572.7401
