Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian American Culture (Suny Series in Italian/American Culture)

Leaving Little Italy explores the various forces that have shaped and continue to mold Italian American culture. Early chapters offer a historical survey of major developments in Italian American culture, from the early mass immigration period to the present day, situating these developments within the larger framework of American culture as a whole. Subsequent chapters examine particular works of Italian American literature and film from a variety of perspectives, including literary history, gender, social class, autobiography, and race. Paying particular attention to how the individual artist's personality has intersected with community in the shaping of Italian American culture, the book reveals how and why Italian America was invented and why Little Italys must ultimately disappear._x000D_

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"Absorbing from beginning to end, this book is original, well informed, insightful, and comprehensive. It represents not only a disciplinary history but also a history of the materials that make up the objects of study, e.g., fiction, poetry, memoir, lifestyle, etc. The range of reference is extraordinary. No American—and possibly no Italian—knows more than Gardaphe about the field. Gardaphe is the dean of Italian American Studies." — John Paul Russo, University of Miami_x000D_

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"Gardaphe provides a complete 'history' of Italian/American criticism, while, at the same time, introducing material on new topics, such as whiteness, food, and city vs. suburb." — Anthony Julian Tamburri, author of A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer