Leaving Little Italy

Fred L. Gardaphé

Description

Leaving Little Italy explores the various forces that have shaped and continue to mold Italian American culture. Early chapters offer a historical survey of major developments in Italian American culture, from the early mass immigration period to the present day, situating these developments within the larger framework of American culture as a whole. Subsequent chapters examine particular works of Italian American literature and film from a variety of perspectives, including literary history, gender, social class, autobiography, and race. Paying particular attention to how the individual artist's personality has intersected with community in the shaping of Italian American culture, the book reveals how and why Italian America was invented and why Little Italys must ultimately disappear.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. A Historical Survey

1. The Southern Answer: Making Little Italys

2. Inventing Italian America

3. Mythologies of Italian America: From Little Italys to Suburbs

Part II. Thematic Essays

4. Left Out: Three Italian American Writers of the 1930s

5. The Consequences of Class in Italian American Culture

6. Variations of Italian American Women's Autobiography

7. Criticism as Autobiography

8. We Weren't Always White: Race and Ethnicity in Italian American Literature

9. Linguine and Lust: Notes on Food and Sex in Italian American Culture

Conclusion: Leaving Little Italy: Legacies Real and Imagined

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Ethnic studies
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791485972
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

LEAVING LITTLE ITALYSUNY series in Italian/American Culture
Fred L. Gardaphe, editorLEAVING
LITTLE
ITALY
Essaying Italian American Culture
FRED L. GARDAPHE
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESSPublished by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2004 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, address State University of New York Press,
90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207
Production by Marilyn P. Semerad
Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gardaphe, Fred L.
Leaving little Italy : essaying Italian American culture / Fred L. Gardaphe.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in Italian/American culture)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5917-9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5918-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. American literature—Italian American authors—History and criticism. 2. Italian
Americans—Intellectual life. 3. Italian Americans—Civilization. 4. Italian Americans in
literature. I. Title. II. Series
PS153.I8G38 2003
810.9'851—dc21 2002044771
10987654321This book is dedicated to
the people, past and present, of Melrose Park, Illinois,
and the Little Italy I left there.Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Part I. A Historical Survey
Chapter 1. The Southern Answer: Making Little Italys 3
Chapter 2. Inventing Italian America 13
Chapter 3. Mythologies of Italian America:
From Little Italys to Suburbs 37
Part II. Thematic Essays
Chapter 4. Left Out: Three Italian American Writers of the 1930s 53
Chapter 5. The Consequences of Class in Italian American Culture 67
Chapter 6. Variations of Italian American Women’s Autobiography 83
Chapter 7. Criticism as Autobiography 101
Chapter 8. We Weren’t Always White: Race and Ethnicity
in Italian American Literature 123
Chapter 9. Linguine and Lust: Notes on Food and Sex
in Italian American Culture 137
Conclusion: Leaving Little Italy: Legacies Real and Imagined 151
Notes 163
Works Cited 167
Index 185
viiAcknowledgments
Many of these chapters began as reviews, lectures, talks, or articles over the
years since 1995, when I finished my first book. I am grateful to everyone
who gave me the opportunities to test these ideas in speech and writing.
Chapter one, “The Southern Answer,” was first presented in Djelal Kadir’s
comparative literature graduate seminar, “Rethinking America” during the
fall 2001 semester. Portions of chapters two and three will appear in a
collection of essays on post–World War II American culture, edited by Josephine
Hendin and published by Blackwell.
Chapter four originally appeared in Radical Revisions, edited by Bill
Mullen and Sherry Linkon. Chapter five began as papers presented at the
Working Class Studies conference at Youngstown State University and at the
Modern Language Association. Chapter six began as papers presented at
conferences of the American Italian Historical Association and as an
encyclopedia article for The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia, edited
by Salvatore LaGumina and others.
Chapter seven brings together two articles: one on Frank Lentricchia,
which originally appeared in the journal Differentia in a double issue devoted
to Italian American culture, and the other on Sandra Gilbert, which first
appeared in the Romance Languages Annual of Purdue University. Chapter
eight was written first as a talk I presented in 1997 at Dartmouth College, to
which Graziella Parati invited me; it was later revised for another talk in 2002
at Catholic University, to which Stefania Lucamante invited me. A version of
chapter eight appeared in LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory volume 13.3.
Chapter nine comes first from a talk I presented at Kate Kane’s Colloquium
on Food and Culture at DePaul University, and later from a talk at Union
College to which Edvige Giunta invited me; versions were also presented as
talks through the Illinois Humanities Council’s Roads Scholars program.
As for this volume’s conclusion, versions were presented at Hunter
College in 2000 and the 2001 Italian Cultural Studies Conference at Florida
Atlantic University. I would like to thank Priscilla Ross and James Peltz
ixx Acknowledgments
of SUNY Press, and to freelance copyeditor Therese Myers, for their
guidance and help in preparing the manuscript for publication. Marianna and
Susan Gardaphe made the index possible and the work enjoyable.
Mille grazie to Anthony Julian Tamburri and John Paul Russo for reading
the original manuscript critically. Their suggestions helped me to transcend
my often-parochial perspectives and to present a better book. Others who
have helped along the way are Mary Jo Bona, my colleague at Stony Brook,
Josephine Gattuso Hendin, and Robert Viscusi. Susan, Rico and Mori
provided me with the love I needed to get this work done; to them I owe my
greatest debt.
Cover photo: Renato Rotolo.Introduction
This book is my attempt to further our thinking about Italian American
culture by looking at it through the concepts of class, race, gender, ethnicity, and
lifestyle. I do this by making connections between what I have come to call
Italian American studies and the larger field of American studies. My earlier
work, represented by books such as Italian American Ways, Italian Signs,
American Streets, and Dagoes Read: Tradition and the Italian American Writer,
resulted from my search for what it was we could call Italian American
narrative literature. I tried to map its evolution through key narrative texts.
This book is quite different in that it represents my attempt to fix just what
it is about what is called Italian American into what we call America. This
means I look at what assimilation is and at what it means to stretch Italian
American identity to show that when we study Italian American culture we
are really practicing American studies. This justification comes not just out of
my own curiosity, but out of a response I have had to provide to the State
University of New York (SUNY) system when we were asked for
explanations on how our Italian American studies courses would fulfill the American
history requirements for its current Distributed Education designation.
Some of my earlier writing referred to Italian American culture as being
orphaned by its parents: Italian and American cultures. That was then. Now, this
orphan is beginning to be claimed, especially when a resulting product can earn
profits, as in new television programs and new anthologies. With the arrival of
HBO series The Sopranos, as much an Italian American icon of the twenty-first
century as The Godfather saga was for the twentieth, the time has come for some
serious understanding of Italian American presence before it dissipates into the
thin air of historical amnesia and the clouds of pop culture imagery.
Josephine Gattuso Hendin’s recent article in American Literary History,
“The New World of Italian American Studies,” signaled the arrival of Italian
American studies in mainstream American studies venues. The acceptance of
a permanent discussion group in Italian American culture by the Modern
Language Association (MLA) after a three-year trial period, preceded by two
xixii Leaving Little Italy
outright proposal rejections, signifies that Italian American studies has been
allowed a place in the arena, but can it garner enough attention to justify its
existence as a legitimate field of study? This book will help us make sense
of what America has done to the culture created by its citizens of Italian
descent and to understand varying notions of selfhood, sexuality, masculinity,
femininity, food preparation, and consumption.
Leaving Little Italy is the result of my attempts to understand the history
of America’s Italians, to see where they came from, what they created, and
where it is all going. The goal is for us all to realize what this culture has
been, is, and will be saying about American culture as it keeps reinventing
itself. Since 1998 I have directed the Italian American studies program at
SUNY–Stony Brook and have been involved in creating and maintaining
courses for our minor in Italian American studies and our new major in
American studies. As part of this work I have begun to search for a way of
historicizing this project. What follows is a brief look at some of the earlier
work done in the name of Italian American studies.
The Origins of Italian American Studies
It is less permissible today to imagine oneself as writing within a tradition
when one writes literary criticism. This is not to say however, that every
critic is now a revolutionist destroying the canon in order to replace it with
his own. A better imag