
Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943
Francesco
To appreciate the life of the Italian immigrant enclave from the great heart of the Italian migration to its settlement in America requires that one come to know how these immigrants saw their communities as colonies of the mother country. Edited with extraordinary skill, Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943 brings to an English-speaking audience a definitive collection of classic writings on, about, and from the formative years of the Italian-American experience.
Originally published in Italian, this landmark collection of translated writings establishes a rich, diverse, and mature sense of Italian-American life by allowing readers to see American society through the eyes of Italian-speaking immigrants. Filled with the voices from the first generation of Italian-American life, the book presents a unique treasury of long-inaccessible writing that embodies a literary canon for Italian-American culture—poetry, drama, journalism, political advocacy, history, memoir, biography, and story—the greater part of which has never before been translated.
Italoamericana introduces a new generation of readers to the “Black Hand” and the organized crime of the 1920s, the incredible “pulp” novels by Bernardino Ciambelli, Paolo Pallavicini, Italo Stanco, Corrado Altavilla, the exhilarating “macchiette” by Eduardo Migliaccio (Farfariello) and Tony Ferrazzano, the comedies by Giovanni De Rosalia, Riccardo Cordiferro’s dramas and poems, the poetry of Fanny Vanzi-Mussini and Eduardo Migliaccio.
Edited by a leading journalist and scholar, Italoamericana introduces an important but little-known, largely inaccessible Italian-language literary heritage that defined the Italian-American experience. Organized into five sections—“Annals of the Great Exodus,” “Colonial Chronicles,” “On Stage (and Off-Stage),” “Anarchists, Socialist, Fascists, Anti-Fascists,” and “Apocalyptic Integrated / Integrated Apocalyptic Intellectuals”—the volume distinguishes a literary, cultural, and intellectual history that engages the reader in all sorts of archaeological and genealogical work.
The original volume in Italian:
Italoamericana Vol II: Storia e Letteratura degli Italiani negli Stati Uniti 1880-1943
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About Francesco
Reviews for Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943
-Pellegrino D'Acierno Hofstra University "In its girth, the volume is a metaphorical feast, suggesting both the collective heft of the rediscovered output and the unique works still waiting to be discovered... highly recommended." -Choice "Italoamericana is a supreme work of scholarship-an archive unto itself in the form of a meticulously researched and scrupulously glossed and documented historical anthology of the literary creation of the Italian migration. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Fordham University Press for having the vision and gumption to have undertaken the monumental task of preparing the American edition and for making available to the English readership Francesco Durante's inclusive retrieval of the lost and marginalized literature of the Great Immigration. That retrieval constituted a powerful act of cultural and historical memory by which the texts of the diaspora (of the "colony" as comprising all of the Little Italies) were "repatriated" and re-inscribed within the literary history of the Italian nation. The American edition enacts a homecoming for these texts of and in exile that returns them to their rightful place in the Italian American narrative." -Pelligrino D'Acierno, Hofstra University "This massive anthology rings out with the voices of legions of Italians and Italian Americans over six decades. From it flows their poetry, drama, stories, memories, novels, speeches, oral histories and more." -Voce Italiana "Italoamericana spotlights, through a broad variety of literary work, the distinct culture and history of Italian Americans, while showing the universality of the immigrant story. It should find a place in every Italian American household, as a touchstone to a reality few of us know anything about." -Feile-Festa