ITALIAN BOOKSHELF (download as PDF) - Ibiblio

430 Annali d’italianistica 30 (2012)
The Art of Reading Italian Americana serves as a companion piece to
Gardaphé’s earlier collection, Dagoes Read: Tradition and the Italian American
Writer (1996), which included selected works from his column in Fra Noi, a
Chicago-based monthly publication dedicated to Italian American culture.
Gardaphé describes his latest collection, also primarily composed of reviews
from Fra Noi, as a celebration of “The Art of Reading,” an act he defines as the
interaction between reading and writing about books, when the reader “talks
back” to the author. He boldly states, “Those who strive to respond to those
artists in careful and dedicated replies, I would argue, should be seen as artists of
a different ilk” (12).
The Art of Reading Italian Americana contains 92 reviews, organized
alphabetically by author’s name, and six review essays. A brief introduction by
Gardaphé precedes the reviews, and an alphabetical index of book titles
concludes the collection. Gardaphé’s rationale for the book’s content is very
personal — these are works that have “inspired, taught, and challenged” him
(11). The reviews are aimed at an educated but not necessarily academic
audience, and Gardaphé often comments on the accessibility of the works for
general audiences.
Reading the reviews in the order in which they are presented, one gets a
sense of the wide-ranging and profoundly interdisciplinary nature of Italian
American Studies. For example, the review of folklorist Luisa Del Giudice’s
Studies in Italian American Folklore (1993) precedes the review of Don
DeLillo’s novel Underworld (1997); historian Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore
Salerno’s Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America (2003) follows
Edvige Giunta’s Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American
Women Writers (2002); Peter Bondanella’s Hollywood Italians: Dagos,
Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys and Sopranos (2004) precedes Dorothy Calbetti
Bryant’s novel Miss Giardino (1997); Salvatore La Gumina’s The Italian
American Experience: An Encyclopedia (2000) follows Luciano Iorizzo’s Al
Capone: A Biography (2003). In addition to demonstrating the epic scope of
available literature, provocative juxtapositions like those listed above highlight
the existence of a vibrant and engaged community of scholars.
The collection also underscores the political commitment of so many Italian
American scholars and how studies in Italian American history and culture
connect to larger questions of justice and equality. The buried history of Italian
American intellectual and political activity surrounding labor issues, for
example, is addressed in a number of books reviewed and especially in two
review essays, “Radically Italian American” and “Working Class Culture.”
Women authors and gender studies are well represented too, making up about a
third of the entries. However, the inclusion of Queer Studies, with an anthology
such as Giovanna Capone, Denise Nico Leto and Tommi Avicolli Mecca’s Hey
Paesan! Writing by Lesbians & Gay Men of Italian Descent (1999), would have
added to the collection’s breadth.