Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana [Paperback]

Carol Bonomo Albright (Editor), Joanna Clapps Herman (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0823229106 | ISBN-13: 978-0823229109 | Publication Date: October 15, 2008

For more than thirty years, the journal Italian Americana has been home to the writers who have sparked an extraordinary literary explosion in Italian-American culture. Across twenty-five volumes, its poets, memoirists, story-tellers, and other voices bridged generations to forge a brilliant body of expressive works that help define an Italian-American imagination. Wild Dreams offers the very best from those pages: sixty-three pieces-fiction, memoir, poetry, story, and interview-that range widely in style and sentiment, tracing the arc of an immigrant culture's coming of age in America. What stories do Italian Americans tell about themselves? How do some of America's best writers deal with complicated questions of identity in their art? Organized by provocative themes-Ancestors, The Sacred and the Profane, Love and Anger, Birth and Death, Art and Self-the selections document the evolution of Italian-American literature. From John Fante's My Father's God,his classic story of religious subversion and memoirs by Dennis Barone and Jerre Mangione to a brace of poets, selected by Dana Gioia and Michael Palma, ranging from John Ciardi, Jay Parini, and Mary Jo Salter to George Guida and Rachel Guido de Vries. There are also stories alive with the Italian folk tradition (Tony Ardizzone and Louisa Ermelino), and others sleekly experimental (Mary Caponegro, Rosalind Palermo Stevenson). Other pieces-including an unforgettable interview with Camille Paglia-are Italian-American takes on the culture at large.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the mid 1970s, Richard Gambino, Ernest Falbo and Bruno Arcudi co-founded Italian Americana, which ran "not only the historical articles and book reviews that other such newly initiated ethnic journals published but also... fiction, memoirs, and poetry." Put together by current editor Albright and writer Herman, this anthology collects notable works from across the decades, "great literature that could easily be included in ethnic studies and American literature." Slotted into five categories-Ancestors, the Sacred and Profane, Love and Anger, Birth and Death, Art and Self-the more than 60 poetry and prose pieces effectively communicate the breadth of the Italian American experience. In "The Garden of the Apocalypse," Vincent Ferrini writes of identity and posterity: "(Each) person/ carries a civil war within him/ who wedding the contraries/ in himself/ already is on his way/ pioneering the new civilization." In "My Father at Eighty-Five," Vince Clemente writes, "I find him/ in the haze and drone/ of the hospital ward, trace/ every line in his sad face/ back to his lower East Side boyhood." One of the most remarkable pieces is Christina Bevilacqua's conversation with academic Camille Paglia; in it, the women reflect on a slew of topics, including family, solitude and Dante. With broad appeal and a strong, distinct point of view, this collection should relate to readers of all backgrounds.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

. . . pays witness to the explosion of high quality literary art that is one of the signal triumphs of Italian American culture in the last twenty years.-John Gennari

Unlike our dreams that remove us from reality, here we have the written testimony of Italian Americans across the decades, from the early authors who unhesitantly embrace their Italian identity to today's authors struggling to recover its meaning as it is transformed by the New World.-Rosemarie Crupi Holz

. . . Recognizes the often poignant experiences of people who live in two cultures, and who try to preserve the one and be understood by the other.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press (October 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823229106
• ISBN-13: 978-0823229109
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,947,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carol Bonomo Albright grew up in Greenwich Village and attended school on Washington Square North. She remembers vividly the many art exhibits, initiated by Jackson Pollack in Washington Square Park and seeing Eleanor Roosevelt stride by on her way to her apartment in Washington Mews. She has been editor-in-chief of Italian Americana for twenty years. She is active in literary and historical associations and was a two-term Vice-President of the American Italian Historical Association. She taught Italian American Studies at Harvard University Extension School and has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University as well. A section of her memoir was translated into Italian, as part of an anthology entitled Padri. Another section of her memoir was published in the Harvard University Journal of Italian American Studies. She has also written reviews and articles for the Providence Journal-Bulletin. She has received numerous grants and awards, including being named an Associate Fellow of the Danforth Foundation of Higher Education and receiving a university-to-community outreach grant from that foundation. Most recently she worked with co-editors to initiate a free Web Site Supplement to Italian Americana at www.italianamericana.com which is updated twice a year with feature supplements such as Foods of Affection (very short stories about food and love with Italian recipes).