Author : Mary Caponegro
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 16,32 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780393307917
A breathtaking debut, The Star Cafe heralds "an utterly original artist, already writing with something like mastery".--Robert Kelly.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 534 pages
File Size : 50,77 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Italian Americans
ISBN :
Author : Salvatore J. LaGumina
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 733 pages
File Size : 31,9 MB
Release : 2003-09-02
Category : History
ISBN : 1135583331
First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Author : Fred L. Gardaphé
Publisher :
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 30,1 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN :
In the first major critical reading of Italian American narrative literature in two decades, Fred L. Gardaphé presents an interpretive overview of Italian American literary history. Examining works from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, he develops a new perspective--variously historical, philosophical, and cultural--by which American writers of Italian descent can be read, increasing the discursive power of an ethnic literature that has received too little serious critical attention. Gardaphé draws on Vico's concept of history, as well as the work of Gramsci, to establish a culture-specific approach to reading Italian American literature. He begins his historical reading with narratives informed by oral traditions, primarily autobiography and autobiographical fiction written by immigrants. From these earliest social-realist narratives, Gardaphé traces the evolution of this literature through tales of "the godfather" and the mafia; the "reinvention of ethnicity" in works by Helen Barolini, Tina DeRosa, and Carole Maso; the move beyond ethnicity in fiction by Don DeLillo and Gilbert Sorrentino; to the short fiction of Mary Caponegro, which points to a new direction in Italian American writing. The result is both an ethnography of Italian American narrative and a model for reading the signs that mark the "self-fashioning" inherent in literary and cultural production. Italian Signs, American Streets promises to become a landmark in the understanding of literature and culture produced by Italian Americans. It will be of interest not only to students, critics, and scholars of this ethnic experience, but also to those concerned with American literature in general and the place of immigrant and ethnic literatures within that wide framework.
Author : Mary Jo Bona
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 18,93 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780809322589
Mary 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.
Author : Betty Hunley Carlyon
Publisher : Page Publishing Inc
Page : 605 pages
File Size : 15,90 MB
Release : 2022-02-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1646283295
In Curly Hair and Other Stories, Betty Hunley Carlyon reminisces about her Midwestern upbringing, her married life, and her duties as first lady of a nationally renowned community college in Michigan. Throughout the book, she shares happy and humorous tales of family, friends, marriage, children, and grandchildren. Readers will find this to be a beautiful testament to her. Lovely in face, spirit, and heart, Mrs. Carlyon was a prolific letter writer and a gracious and consummate hostess. In this book, she fills her stories with laughs, insights, perspectives, understandings, information, and even some tears—the good kind! They are heartfelt, written with love and gratitude.
Author : Julie Khristie
Publisher : Ukiyoto Publishing
Page : 147 pages
File Size : 12,28 MB
Release : 2022-12-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9356978271
This heartwarming book that speaks about hope and healing comes in a collection of short stories that deal with love and loss, death and deliverance. We journey through life carrying with us the stories that we do not readily share to others. And so we live, endure and patiently go through the humdrum routine of this world. But it is in the mundane things that change often happens; for deliverance always comes to hearts who hold on to hope. Sometimes deliverance comes through mere acceptance. Sometimes it comes through a person, a place, a circumstance or sometimes it comes solely through the welcoming of hope. And often, it comes, garbed not in an extravagant declaration, but in a simple and quiet realization: Begin again, dream again, live again. These are the stars we carry in our pockets.
Author : Mary Jo Bona
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 36,13 MB
Release : 2012-02-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0791481751
This groundbreaking collection reinvigorates the debate over the inclusion of multiethnic literature in the American literary canon. While multiethnic literature has earned a place in the curriculum on many large campuses, it is still a controversial topic at many others, as recent campus and corporate revivals of The Great Books attest. Many still perceive multiethnic literature as being governed by ideological and political issues, perpetuating a false distinction between highbrow "literary" texts and multiethnic works. Through historical overviews and textual analyses, the contributors not only argue for the aesthetic validity of multiethnic literature, but also examine the innovative ways in which multiethnic literature is taught and critiqued. The following questions are also addressed: Who and what determines literary value? What role do scholars, students, the reading public, book awards, and/or publishers play in affirming literary value? Taken together, these essays underscore the necessity for maintaining vibrant conversations about the place of multiethnic literature both inside and outside the academy.
Author : Phillip Mann
Publisher : Gateway
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 40,52 MB
Release : 2014-05-29
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1473204976
Six stories from Phillip Mann, taken from his long and varied career. Includes stories from the Out of Time Cafe, a very unusual refuge from reality. It attracts people afflicted with a deep malaise. It offers what seems from the outside to be sanctuary, but it can be subversive too, for on entering the cafe, one gives up a certain amount of independence, and before one knows it one is trapped. There is no escape... save one: the lift which services the cellars descends... but no one who has used the lift has ever returned. On a brighter note, the cafe has a will of its own, and travels different dimensions with ease and every journey is a new beginning. Also featured are The Gospel According to Mickey Mouse, originally produced as a hugely successful radio play; Maestro;Lux in Tenebris, a cautionary tale about a medieval stonemason's encounter with an anachronism and the effect it has on his culture; and An Old Fashioned Story, wherein Jody is having problems with his Sythno companion Elizabeth, who head butted him without warning. He is attempting to repair her. Then Elizabeth and her Sythno Joseph from next door drop in...
Author : Helen Barolini
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 49,1 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780299160845
"A lively, lucid, and often extremely moving collection of essays."--Sandra Gilbert, author of Wrongful Death: A Memoir "Barolini's essays moved me. Their commitment, their passion, their intelligence struck me very powerfully and made them among the most incisive essays on Italian-Americana, ethnicity, and diversity in literature that I have ever read."--Fred Misurella, author of Understanding Milan Kundera: Public Events, Private Affairs and Short Time Part memoir, part social commentary, and part literary criticism, Chiaroscuro is not only profoundly original but also of crucial importance in establishing the contours of an Italian-American tradition. Spanning a quarter century of work, the essays in Helen Barolini's essays explore her personal search; literature as a formative influence; and the turning of the personal into the political. Included in Chiaroscuro is an updated re-introduction to Barolini's American Book Award-winning collection, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian-American Women.
