Joey Dee Gets Wise

Joey Dee Gets Wise

Author: Louisa Ermelino

Publisher: Kensington Books

Published: 2004-05-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9780758203304

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When Sonny Magro gets whacked in Little Italy, the only witness--a mentally impaired man--tells his friend Joey Dee, which gets him involved with crime boss Nicky Mole.


From Wiseguys to Wise Men

From Wiseguys to Wise Men

Author: Fred Gardaphe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1135397791

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The gangster, in the hands of the Italian American artist, becomes a telling figure in the tale of American race, gender, and ethnicity - a figure that reflects the autobiography of an immigrant group just as it reflects the fantasy of a native population. From Wiseguys to Wise Men studies the figure of the gangster and explores its social function in the construction and projection of masculinity in the United States. By looking at the cultural icon of the gangster through the lens of gender, this book presents new insights into material that has been part of American culture for close to 100 years.


Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies

Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies

Author: Gaetana Marrone

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-12-26

Total Pages: 2258

ISBN-13: 1135455295

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The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.


Writing With An Accent

Writing With An Accent

Author: Edvige Giunta

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-30

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1137050497

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Mary 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.


The Right Thing to Do

The Right Thing to Do

Author: Josephine Gattuso Hendin

Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY

Published: 2017-03-15

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1936932113

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A young Italian American woman struggles to find her way between two cultures in this novel of “familial dignity . . . credibility and intelligence” (Kirkus Reviews). On a stroll in his Queens neighborhood, Sicilian-born Nino Giardello glimpses his daughter, ambitious nineteen-year-old Gina, heading for the subway. Silently, he follows her to Manhattan and watches, outraged, as she walks into the arms of a golden-haired stranger. The incident confirms Nino’s worst suspicions about his daughter, whose American lifestyle he sees as an insult to his heritage. In a struggle that exceeds all boundaries, including death, father and daughter will engage in a conflict of generations, cultures, and sexes. Josephine Gattuso Hendin captures New York Italian immigrant life with startling precision, exploring the intricate web of a community’s everyday transactions and the multifaceted father-daughter relationship at the heart of the Italian American family. A coming-of-age novel that is both wryly funny and achingly sad, “The Right Thing to Do effectively portrays both New York’s Italian immigrant milieu and one man’s rage at his own powerlessness in the face of his child’s hunger for life” (Booklist).


The Italian American Experience

The Italian American Experience

Author: Salvatore J. LaGumina

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 733

ISBN-13: 1135583331

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First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


The Italian American Heritage

The Italian American Heritage

Author: Pellegrino A D'Acierno

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-12

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 1000525554

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First published in 1999. The many available scholarly works on Italian-Americans are perhaps of little practical help to the undergraduate or high school student who needs background information when reading contemporary fiction with Italian characters, watching films that require a familiarity with Italian Americans, or looking at works of art that can be fully appreciated only if one understands Italian culture. This basic reference work for non-specialists and students offers quick insights and essential, easy-to-grasp information on Italian-American contributions to American art, music, literature, motion pictures and cultural life. This rich legacy is examined in a collection of original essays that include portrayals of Italian characters in the films of Francis Coppola, Italian American poetry, the art of Frank Stella, the music of Frank Zappa, a survey of Italian folk customs and an analysis of the evolution of Italian-American biography. Comprising 22 lengthy essays written specifically for this volume, the book identifies what is uniquely Italian in American life and examines how Italian customs, traditions, social mores and cultural antecedents have wrought their influence on the American character. Filled with insights, observations and ethnic facts and fictions, this volume should prove to be a valuable source of information for scholars, researchers and students interested in pinpointing and examining the cultural, intellectual and social influence of Italian immigrants and their successors.


The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction

The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction

Author: Catherine Ross Nickerson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-07-08

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0521136067

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This Companion examines the range of American crime fiction from execution sermons of the Colonial era to television programmes like The Sopranos.


Claiming a Tradition

Claiming a Tradition

Author: Mary Jo Bona

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780809322589

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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.