A well-written, thought-provoking, and well-researched work that is an important contribution in the areas of Italian American studies specifically, and race and ethnic relations and identity in general. Highly recommended.
Choice In this thought-provoking, academic, yet often lively study, Gennari explores the intersections between African-American and Italian-American culture. . . . Whether he's discussing the relationship between Italian-American basketball ... Read morecoaches and black players or the importance of food to both cultures, Gennari shows that despite tensions between them, black and Italian-Americans have much in common and understand one another better than many outsiders realize.
Publishers Weekly A thoroughly enlightening cultural perspective and retrospective on the mythical and well-known burgeoning effects of Italian American and African-American cultural icons and identity on America. . . . Gennari succeeds in making clear how inevitable and beautiful, even if oft times difficult and sometimes violent, the mutual understanding and appreciating of races and cultures is when each benefits and supports the other while always recognizing, preserving, and nurturing what is good.
Berkshire Eagle Gennari packs more into a paragraph than most scholars do into pages and delivers that knowledge in an ear-rewarding style
smooth, riffy, without all the high-falutin' jargon we've come to expect from academics. This book connects the academy to the streets in ways that few cultural studies monographs can.
Fra Noi In this compelling, original book, Gennari ?stylishly rethinks everything from racial and ?ethnic boundaries to the oeuvres of virtuosi as different as Spike Lee and Rollie Massimino. With wit, compassion, and a sharp eye for what matters most, he manages to take seriously the most sentimental and wishful renditions of identity while also pushing past them in? to edgier, harder-minded territory.
Carlo Rotella, author of Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories Flavor and Soul is so damn good. The reader
whether passingly curious or utterly invested
is going to have a ball and come out wiser, better informed, and more determined to do the right thing, too. Gennari's purpose is to identify, unpack, meditate upon, reenact and reinflect that dimension of Italian America created in tension with, and, especially, in mutual emulation of, African America. After all we're talking about Sinatra and Miles, The Godfather and '70s blaxploitation, the cult of food TV, Mookie and Pino then Travolta and Jackson, Calipari and his latest All-African American crew vs. Izzo and basketball's la via vecchia, and hip-hoppers galore. Why is this approach such a revelation if so much of it is so darn obvious? American writers and intellectuals, with a few quiet exceptions, have paid attention at best only to each other's accounts of these matters rather than to the arts, the artists, and their aficionadas, who really do have different stories
especially Gennari's story
to tell.
Thomas J. Ferraro, author of Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America There is no other than Gennari
a huge-hearted scholar of voracious curiosity and impeccable taste
to productively mine what happens when black and Italian meet. He sees the third thing those two galaxies of history and self-expression create at the crossroads. Cooking and eating, sports, film, and, of course, music are where the most potent and telling cultural action is, where we go to experience the true beauty and meaning of life in a world where we may know ourselves deeply along cultural lines but then find so much more at the recombinant intersection. Flavor and Soul is brilliant, encyclopedic scholarship that also accomplishes the rare work of speaking directly to and from the heart. This is a passionate treasure book of scholarship and ultimately a handbook for living a rich, surprising, culturally-guided life.
Elizabeth Alexander, author of The Light of the World: A Memoir An eloquent book about Italian Americans and race that carves out new space in our increasingly polarized national debate about whiteness and racial identity. . . .No scholar or writer has ever explored the multiple zones of contact between these two groups in the world of arts and the imagination the way Gennari does. . . A powerful work of healing and imaginative reconciliation. . .Flavor and Soul is a landmark in both cultural studies and in the exploration of race in the United States.
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