Writing with an Accent Contemporary Italian American Women Authors
Edvige Giunta
palgrave For Louise DeSalvo, Joshua Fausty, and Cettina Minasola Giunta and for my children, Emily and Matteo, with love and gratitude
WRITING WITH AN ACCENT Copyright © Edvige Giunta, 2002. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2002 by * PALGRAVE™ 175 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world.
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ISBN 978-0-312-29469-4 ISBN 978-1-137-05049-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-05049-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Giunta, Edvige, 1959- Writing with an accent: contemporary Italian American women authorsl Edvige Giunta. Inc1udes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-294694 (pbk) 1. American literature-Italian American authors-History and criticism. 2. Women and literature-United States-History-20th century. 3. American literature-Women authors-History and criticism. 4. American literature-20th century-History and criticism. 5. Italian American women-Intellectuallife. 6. Italian Americans in literature.
PS153.I8 G58 2002 810.9'9287'08951073-dc21 2001048209
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First edition: ]anuary 2002 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Transferred to Digital Printing 2012 Contents
Acknowledgments V Priface Writing with an Accent IX
Introduetion What's in an Aeeent? 1 Chapter 1 OfWomen, Writing, and Reeognition 15 Chapter 2 Immigrant Literary Identities 35 Chapter 3 "A Song from the Ghetto" 53 Chapter 4 Speaking Through Silene es, Writing Against Silenee 71 Chapter 5 "Spills of Mysterious Substanees" 93 Chapter 6 Forging Publie Voiees: Memory, Writing, Power 117 Epilogue Coming Horne to Language 139
Notes 145 Bibliography 169 Index 189 Ma fino a quando si pub chiedere alle cose ehe ci stanno intorno, di rimanere forestiere, perfettamente comprensibili e remote nella loro indecifrabilitil?
(But for how long can she expect things around her to remain for eign, perfectly intelligible, yet far away and impossible to decipher?)
-Dacia Maraini, La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria (The Silent Duchess)
A lingua ni tagghiaru quannu vinemmu ca. (They cut our tongues out when we came here.)
-Rose Spinelli, Baking Bread
Everything my American friends say sounds like a translation.
-Caroie Maso, The American Woman in the Chinese Hat Acknowledgments
ince 1992, I have been writing and giving papers and lectures on Ital Sian American wornen at conferences, universities, bookstores, and corn rnunity centers. Sorne of these writings have becorne part of this book. Earlier versions of chapters two and three appeared as afterwords to the reprints ofHelen Barolini's Umbertina (1999) and Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish (1996) (NewYork:The Feminist Press, CUNY). Earlier versions and sec tions of Chapter 4 variously appeared in the following articles: "Speaking Through Silences: Ethnicity in the Writings ofltalianlArnerican Wornen" in Race and Ethnic Discrimination in American Literature, edited by Michael Meyer (Amsterdarn and Adanta: Rodopi Press, 1997); "Narratives of Loss: Voices of Ethnicity in Agnes Rossi and Nancy Savoca" in The Canadian Journal oJ Italian Studies, Special Issue on ltalian Arnerican Culture 19 (1996); "Reinventing the Authorial/Ethnic Space: Communal Narratives in Agnes Rossi's Split Skirt" in Literary Studies East and ffist. Constructions and Confrontations: Changing Representations oJ TMlmen and Feminisms, East and ffist 12 (1996). A section of Chapter 5 appeared as "'Spills of Myste rious Substances' or Making One's Own History: Tina De Rosa, Louise DeSalvo, Sandra Mortola Gilbert, and Rose Rornano" in A Tavola: Food, Tradition, and Community Among Italian Americans, edited by Edvige Giunta and Sarnuel J. Patti (Staten Island, NY: Arnerican Italian Historical Associ ation, 1998). Finally, sections of Chapter 6 appear in an article entided, "Where They Corne Frorn: ltalian American Wornen Writers as Public In tellectuals," included in a forthcoming volurne edited by Phil Cannistraro and Gerald Meyers, The Lost Radicalism oJ Italian American and in the fol lowing articles: "Teaching Mernoir at New Jersey City University:' pub lished Transformations 11.1 (Spring 2000), "Writing Life, W riting History: Italian American Wornen and the Memoir." Italian Americana 18.1 (Winter 2000); and "Figuring Race in Kym Ragusa's jUoriloutside, " included in Shades oJ Black and White: Conflict and Collaboration Between Two Communi ties. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association, edited by Fred Gardaphe, Dan Ashyk, and Anthony J. Tarnburri (Staten Island; American ltalian Historical Association, 1999). VI Writing with an Accent
The writing of this book has been made possible by colleagues, stu dents, friends, and family who have continuously sustained my work. John Paul Russo first believed that I should write about Italian American liter ature and pushed me to do so long before I became an Italian American. My students in Italian American literature and film classes at Union Col lege in the early 1990s first witnessed and shared my passion for Italian American studies. The NEH Seminar on "Emerging American Litera tures" run at Baruch College by John Brenkman in 1995 provided me with many opportunities to explore issues that are central to this book. At New Jersey City University, I found a welcoming and supportive ac ade mic horne that treated my work as worthy and important. By granting re lease time through a Separately Budgeted Research Grant, the University helped me as I sought vital time to complete this book. I am grateful to my colleagues at New Jersey City University for their support and to Ansley LaMar for valuing and sustaining the memoir project, which has deeply influenced my work on Italian American women writers. My grat itude also to Larry Carter and Jo Bruno for their support. My memo ir stu dents at New Jersey City University, who have taught and continue to teach me about keeping one's commitment to one's writing in the most difficult circumstances, have helped shape this book-especially the last chapter-through their insights, their writings, and their community building. I am especially thankful to the students whose writings are quoted in this book. My gratitude to Jean Casella and FIorence Howe, current and previous directors of the Feminist Press, for having believed in and supported my work since we first met. I wish to acknowledge Fred Gardaphe, Paolo Gior dano, and Anthony Tamburri for their important work in Italian American studies and for the consideration and support they have given to my own work in the field. Peter Covino's poetry and his friendship have inspired me; I only regret that the subject ofthis book did not allow any lengthy dis cussion ofhis remarkable contribution to Italian American literature. I also wish to acknowledge Stefano Albertini, Maura Burnett, Ernie De Salvo, Maria Vittoria D'Amico, Carlos Coello, Michael Eskin, Lisa Vanderlinden, Barbara Stacy, Deborah Starewich, Laura Lawrie, Regina Tuma, Nino Ca muso, Eric Bulson, Caterina Romeo, Bob Viscusi, Ben Lawton, Peter Car ravetta, Carol Bonomo Albright, Anthony Valerio, and Phil Cannistraro. My colleagues and friends, Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Kym Ragusa, and Jennifer Guglielmo, read some of the chapters and offered exacting and astute crit icism: I am deeply grateful for their help and friendship, as well as for the inspiration their work has provided. My gratitude to Audrey Goldrich for her unfailing encouragement and confidence in my work. Thank you to Rosette Capotorto, Mary Cappello, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Gioia Timpan- Acknowledgments Vll elli, Rita Ciresi, Marisa Labozzetta, Nancy Caronia,Agnes Rossi, Sandra M. Gilbert, Mary Saracino, Nancy Azara, Nancy Savoca, Adele Regina La Barre, Franca Barchiesi, Joanna Clapps Herman, Mariarosy Calleri, Phyllis Capello, Annie Lanzillotto, B. Amore, Carole Maso, Maria Fama, Mary Russo Demetrick, Vittoria repetto, Dorian Cirrone, Loryn Lipari, Flavia Rando, Maria Laurino, Jeanette Vuocolo, Luisa Pretolani, Giuliana Miuccio, and all my Italian American sisters, who have believed in and helped make my work possible. I have been fortunate enough to have Michael Flamini as an editor: I am grateful to him for his enthusiasm about and commitment to this proj ect; my thanks also to Amanda Johnson, Amanda Fernandez, and Donna Cherry at Palgrave for their invaluable help. My gratitude, also, to the Giunta, Minasola, Urbano, Ossip, Forster, and Fausty families-my Italian and American families-for their love for me and their faith in my work. Among family members, Irwin Forster has been a sharp and devoted reader, whose opinions and insights I will always cherish. I am grateful to Al and Andy Ossip for their loving support and for rescuing my children-their grandchildren-when I locked myself in my office to write or when I needed to get a breath of fresh air. The his tory lessons of my father, Vincenzo Giunta, were very much on my mind while writing this book. Claudia Giunta, loving sister, brilliant lawyer, fel low immigrant and Italian-American-in-the-making, has given me her friendship, insight, and humor when I needed them most. My mother, Cettina Minasola Giunta, who saves all my letters and al ways believed I should write, came to my rescue when the deadline was looming; she continued to be by my side--even six thousand rniles away as did my grandmother, Nunziatina Nuncibello Minasola. I thank Louise DeSalvo for her friendship, for her work, and for her ex traordinary generosity; for Vertigo, a book that has transformed lives, in cluding my own and those of many of my students; for reading and responding to portions of the manuscript; for helping me see (and feel) that my work is important; for our many enlightening conversations about Ital ian American literature, especially in a multicultural and feminist context; for being my guiding light as I have ventured into the territory of memoir reading, writing, and teaching; for cooking gourmet meals for me when I was beaten down and had no strength or will to cook, much less to keep writing; for acknowledging the struggles of her own life, which has been contagious and healing; for our daily conversations which, whether we are talking about tomato sauce or our writing, have sprinkled my life with plea sure; for her wisdom and her strength; for her courage; for her example. My husband, Josh Fausty, has traveled with me through each stage of this book since its inception and has known it in each of its incarnations. viii Writing with an Accent
I am grateful to hirn for his countless readings, his patience, his cooking and his deaning, his love, and, most of all, for being with me throughout this book's journey and our own. Finally, I thank my 12-year old daugh ter, Emily Giunta-Cutts, the youngest Italian American woman writer I know, and my 2-year old son, Matteo Giunta Fausty, who have lived with this book and who fill my life with joy. They are two of the greatest plea sures of my life between cultures and languages; for this, and for them, I will always be grateful.
Edvige Giunta Teaneck, New Jersey Preface
Writing with an Accent
ersey City, early July 1998. I am sorting clothes and books, packing for Ja month away from the place that I currendy call horne, getting ready to return to Italy, my other horne. I linger by the neat row of Italian books, right next to the bookshelf that holds my Italian American collection, and pull out a couple ofbooks from the odd assortment ofItalian writers that includes Verga, Maraini, Leopardi, Messina (both Maria and Annie), Ar iosto, Cutrufelli, La Spina, Lampedusa, and, of course, Dante. What better time than my upcoming stay in Italy to read the batch of recent Italian books I had asked my mother to send me a while ago and that have been waiting patiendy for my attention? What better time-and place-to reread Leonardo Sciascia's La Sicilia come metqfora or Pirandello's Uno, nes suno e centomila? In Italy, I will be able to hear my voice speak without any trace of the accent that, as I often say half-seriously, I cultivate with daily devotion in the United States. In Italy, my cultural identity and the way in which I articulate it will be transparent, uncomplicated. After all, I am Ital ian: Born in Italy, I lived in that country for the first 25 years of my life; I have returned there many tim es; most of my farnily and many of my clos est friends live in Italy. I maintain, to this day, my Italian citizenship, even though in 1999 I also became an American citizen. Should not my Italian identity be clear and simple? However, I regard myself as an Italian American, too, although I am not exactly sure when I became one. It was long before I became an Ameri can citizen. I began to call myself Italian American when American En glish no longer felt clumsy and hard on my tongue; when I stopped shuttling back and forth between Italy and the United States, and did not go back to Italy for five years; when I started feeling kinship and solidar ity toward the descendants of earlier Italian immigrants in the United States. In some ways, my choice to call mys elf Italian American is political, a response to those who claim that I do not fulfill their expectations of x Writing with an Accent
Italian Americans. Because my social and educational experience and background are different from those of most Italian immigrants from the nineteenth- and early-to-mid-twentieth century, I wish to challenge quin tessential notions of Italian American identity. What does it mean to be Italian American? Does it mean to be Italian and American? A particular kind of ltalian or a particular kind of American? Either? Neither? I have become increasingly more ItalianAmerican-and presumably less Italian as I have distanced myself, at least geographically, from my country of ori gin, and as I have begun to feel closer to the country to which I emigrated about 16 years ago. Becoming Italian American: a process of splitting and joining, blending but not melting, absorbing but not assimilating; a nego tiation with cultural identities and languages that I often perceive as at odds with each other; a rethinking of the question of-and the quest for origins.
Late July 1998. I am in Italy now. In a moment of distress I call my younger sister, who lives in Washington, and beg her to speak to me and let me speak to her in English. The sounds of English have a soothing effect, and my body relaxes as the words once foreign to me unroll smoothly off my tongue, slip into my ear. I live in the United States. I have spent most of my adult life here. I work, love, cook, write, mother, read, teach in this country. But I also have done most of these things in Italy, the country where I became an adult. A hybrid, an inhabitant of cultural borders, I am one of those who feel at horne and in exile on both sides of the border. When I return to Italy, I experience a sense of intimacy toward and estrangement from the places and the people.As Eva Hoffinann puts it, in her memoir Lost in Translation, there is pain in departure, even for those who want it. And so for me. Re cendy, while I was in Italy to give lectures on Italian American women au thors at the University ofRome, a faculty member there introduced me as "la collega italo americana." The appellation surprised me, even as I have been calling myself Italian American in the United States for years, and even as I have been referred to jokingly as "l'americana" by family and friends in Italy ever since lieft to come to the United States in 1984. These days, I would not quite know how to describe my national and cultural identity in abrief and uncomplicated way. The Italian accent in my spoken English remains the most recognizable sign of my foreignness, a mark of origin that sticks to me like a second skin. No longer self-conscious about my accent, these days I would quickly dismiss the suggestion given so many years ago by a well-meaning friend to hire a speech pathologist to help me rid myself of my accent. At one Preface Xl time, I did consider such a suggestion and went as far as calling a number of"experts" to find out about possible "eures." But if mine is a pathology, it is one that I embrace willingly and consciously, for it is in this linguistic difference that I nestle-if not always comfortably-and begin to trace the slippery contours of cultural identity. Language is a manifestation of cultural identity. My languages are diverse and interconnected: English (which I first learned and spoke in its British form), Italian (which evolved from the regional Tuscan dialect), Sicilian (a hodgepodge ofItalian, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Greek, among others), Latin (which I began studying in middle school, like all Italian children of my generation), Greek (another ancient "mother language" that I studied in high school), and Spanish (yet another ancestrallinguistic layer for Sicilians, which I chose to study in college, in homage to the dreams and memories of my grandfather who, as a young man, emigrated to Argentina and, even in his old age, spoke with fluency and affection a language with which he had no direct contact for over 50 years). Brief excursions into other lan guages did not last: English, so foreign to my immediate cultural experi ences and origins, would become my language of choice, and as such it would come to permeate my sense of cultural and binational identity. If the inflections in my Italian occasionally reveal that I am Sicilian, those in my English shout the unambiguous fact that I am, and remain, Italian. Accents bespeak geographical and dass origins but also that transi tional quality that characterizes cultural hybrids such as mys elf. How can I not write with an ac cent?
Jersey City. Early July 1998. I hold La Sidlia come mettifora, skim through its pages, reread a couple of passages I have marked previously. Then I put it back on the shelf. I should not take any books. I should just plan on read ing the Italian books I want to buy in Italy. Travellight for a change.Yet bag gage reassures me, especially on returning to the United States from Italy, when I will carry with me a wealth of objects that embody Italy: oregano and rosemary from my parents' orchard; limoncello (a sweet liqueur my mother makes with pure grain alcohol and a special variety of small Mediterranean lemons); torroncini (almond candies of Arabic origin, coated with an exquisite glaze in many flavors: orange, vanilla, chocolate); colorful and shapely marzipan fruits, like those that adorn the windows of the best Sicilian pasticcerie, particularly in early November, when the Day of the Dead is celebrated; my mother's homemade orange rnarmalade; and more: embroidered linen, family recipes and photos, Caltagirone and De Simone ceramies, pictures and icons of Sicilian Madonnas and saints, small Greek day masks I hang on the walls of my American horne for good luck. It is XIl Writing with an Accent material culture that speaks most powerfully to those who are separated from their homeland. 1 am, predictably, an immigrant, notoriously and in evitably attached to baggage, the physical embodiment of ahorne that needs to be portable. 1 The suitcases 1 drag from one port to another counteract the odd lightness of migrancy, that which lifts the immigrant and throws her around, without direction or roots. For this trip, 1 will anchor myself down with books, bricks of an imaginary horne 1 can pack and unpack at will. 1 pick three: Mary Cappello's memoir, Night Bloom, still in galleys; a col lection of essays edited by Mickey Pearlman, A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing VJiJmen Remember; and Layne Redmond's VVhen the Drummers lftre VJiJmen:A Spiritual History cifRhythm. Mary Cappello, a fellow SicilianAmer ican, has just returned from Sicily: Her book will serve as a tangible sign of her presence, for 1 need a traveling companion who understands the impact of repeated cultural crossings. The memoiristic meditations on horne- hornes lost, acquired, forgotten, remembered, craved, dreaded, imagined-in Remembering Home will help me face my own sense ofhomelessness and the longing to search for and create ahorne wherever I go. 1 am especially fond of one piece, "The Shelter of the Alphabet," by Carole Maso, fellow ltalian American: "I am a wandering soul-but not an aimless one," she announces as she writes of the need "to imagine ahorne that might be moveable .... a horne that can be conjured within .... [Horne is] Where language trembles and burns" (182-3). 1 understand this trembling, this burning: It occurs in the space where one's languages and identities meet and conflate, momen tarily without discord. Lastly, 1 pack VVhen the Drummers lftre VJiJmen, a book 1 hope will reveal to me more about the tarantella and tammurriata, ancient dances of Southern Italy 1 have been learning in the crypt of St. John the Divine in NewYork, with my nine-year-old daughter and a handful ofItal ian American women-friends and fellow writers-under the guidance of Alessandra Belloni, musician, dancer, singer, and cultural traveler extraordi naire. This book will help my feet balance and move at ease, following an cient rhythms, on the soil of the island to which I am about to return. These books-although meant to facilitate my journey to Italy-are all written in English. I have come to realize that, while in the United States 1 hold on to my Italian identity, in Italy 1 will need to hear my voice fil tered through the now familiar and comforting sounds of English. I will need to hear English mingle with Italian. 1 will need to speak, read, and write with an ac cent "here" as weIl as "there."This is a necessity that, as a perpetual traveler, 1 cannot-and will not-avoid.
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It is the coming to consciousness of this necessity that has led me to write this book. Writing with an Accent is the result of work 1 have been doing in Preface Xl11 the last decade to help the literature, film, photography, painting, and sculp ture of Italian American women gain visibility and recognition. I came to Italian American studies through indirect, unexpected routes. After study ing English and American literature at the University of Catania, Sicily, where I wrote a thesis on Lewis Carroil, in 1984 I came to the United States to study in the graduate program in English at the University of Miami, Florida. As a graduate student eager to immerse mys elf in-and, indeed, to be assimilated into-American culture, I shied away from any involvement with Italian American communities, despite the frequent en couragement to explore scholarly venues in the field offered by my men tor and friend lohn Paul Russo. At that stage, I was fully invested in adjusting to my new environment and too absorbed by my anxieties about navigating American language and culture as a whole. Italian Americans were both foreign and too dose to me: What could I learn from them that could be of relevance to me as I tried to understand how to exist within U.S. culture? They did not seem to fare weil in terms of cultural respect. I was also at that time invested in emphasizing that I was Italian and not Ital ian American, keenly aware, I realize in retrospect, that a dass distinction existed between the two and I had nothing to gain from aligning myself with these people toward whom I felt a strong but uncomfortable sense of kinship. I did gravitate toward Italian Americans who had and maintained dose inteilectual and linguistic ties with contemporary Italy: people who had traveled to Italy, people who spoke Italian and not some degenerated form of dialect. Yet, I spent my first Christmas in Flushing, Queens, with an Italian American family I knew from Italy. The strong Sicilian inflection and the Neapolitan dialect overpowering their mix ofEnglish and Italian comforted me as much as the foods they fed me, foods that tasted of a dis tant horne. Inteilectuaily, Iwanted to be what in Italy would have been described as an "Anglista": Iwanted to study authors who were unequivocally"En glish," whether on the American or the European side.Yet I sank my teeth into the esoteric writings of H.D. and ]oyce, an American expatriate and an Irish exile, respectively, who, in different ways, epitomized the benefits and liabilities of living between cultures. That ]oyce spoke Italian with his family-he was always "nonno" to his grandson Stephen-and that H.D. traveled to Greece and Sicily-and made the rewriting of ancient Greek mythology central to her work--strangely did not seem to strike a chord with me at the time, at least not consciously. The modernist concentration ofthe graduate program at the University ofMiami and the fortunate con fluence in the English department of a number of]oyce scholars made my choice to write a dissertation on ]oyce and Lewis Carroil at once appeal ing and wise. In 1991, when I completed my Ph.D. and was offered a xiv Writing with an Accent teaching position in a college of liberal arts in upstate New York, my ca reer as a Joyce teacher and scholar seemed laid out in front of me. Being a Joycean enabled me to reconcile the contradictions inherent in my position as a woman, Italian-born, and Sicilian at that, on the one hand, and as a student of English and American literatures in the United States, on the other-one who hoped to teach at an American university. Joyce's linguistic experimentalism had endeared hirn to me. The chal lenges that Finnegans Wake posed for me were not any greater than those they posed for my American peers. If anything, my multilingualism and accent served me weil as I made my way through the foggy paths of the J%ke. And, as a male writer,Joyce placated my predictable yearning for a confrontation with a powerful paternal figure. Call it anxiety of influence or anxiety of authorship, Joyce did fulfill the ambivalent function ofliter ary forefather. 2 While I was not alone among the Italian college graduates of my gen eration to come to the United States, most of them ended up in Italian de partrnents, although they, too, held English literature degrees from Italy. I had considered taking and had been advised to take a Ph. D. in Italian or Comparative Literature because that would improve my job opportunities: I was told that my ltalian accent would probably not serve me weil in an English Department, while my Italian-not ltalian American-background would constitute an asset in Comparative or ltalian Literature Programs. I decided against both options, however, as I feIt they would seriously un derrnine my goals. I very much wanted to continue to study and write about literature written in English (and that is, in many respects, still true, although my understanding of what English languages and cultures are has since considerably changed). As a graduate student, I also had little interest in contemporary American literature: I had not been really exposed to it through course work, but perhaps I also felt safer with authors who were close enough to me historically, but not too close to push me to explore is sues I was not quite ready to address. 3 Working in English departments, first as a graduate student and a teach ing assistant, later as a faculty member, has forced me never to forget my foreignness, even as I have become more connected with American cul ture than I would have had I chosen to study and work in an Italian de partment. I spent years clearing my English writing of those idiosyncrasies that betrayed my foreign accent. If I spoke with a heavy accent, I did not want traces of my ltalian identity to emerge in my writing. My writing, on Joyce and other authors, did not reveal any such traces. I developed a clear, limpid, almost aseptic style. I managed to make Joyce's lesson my own by disappearing behind my work. But Joyce does not truly become invis ible, as I instead did, following the imperatives of"objectivity" in critical Preface xv writing and the deman
The Collective ofItalian American Women is one outcome of the work I have done and continue to do in collaboration with a handful of brave and resourceful women such as Kym Ragusa, Rosette Capotorto, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Joanna Clapps Herman, Nancy Azara, Jennifer Guglielmo, Phyllis Capello, Annie Lanzillotto, Jean Casella, Loryn Lipari, Mary Ann Trasciatti, Suzanne lasenza, and others. The work of many of these women appears here as my inspiring subject matter. Creating pro gressive initiatives revolving around the work of Italian American women has been the mission of this grassroots organization, which is serving as a catalyst for the tireless efforts of several Italian American women to form a movement that would build aspace for their ideas. In the year 2000, the Collective organized, in conjunction with Casa Italiana and the Depart ment of Italian at New York University, aseries of events on the theme "Italian American and Italian Women 2000: Cross-Disciplinary Narra tives." This series brought together, for the first time, sister writers, schol ars, filmmakers, and artists from Italy and Italian America in a face-to-face conversation. This event, and many others that have occurred in the last several years (for example, the Conference on the Lost Radicalism ofItalian Americans, which took place at the Graduate Center, City University ofNewYork, in 1995; the Conference on Italian Americans and Publishing organized by Maria Mazziotti Gillan at the Paterson Museum in 1995; the Conference on Italian Americans and African Americans organized in Cleveland in 1997 by the American Italian Historical Association; the series "The Jour ney of Emigration," cosponsored by the Collective and Com.lt.Es., in 1998-9; and the many important readings and events organized by Bob Viscusi andVittoria repetto with the Italian American Writers Association) have added a new complexity and depth to the question of Italian Amer ican identity. These events, and the people who have lent their energies to creating them, inform this book and have contributed to the creation of a climate in which it could be written-and published.
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In 1996, a few years after I had started writing about Italian American women and had become an active member of this burgeoning cultural movement, I began writing poetry and memoir, which up to then I had never envisioned myself capable of or interested in doing. I showed abrief essay I had written about my lost childhood diaries to Anthony Valerio, au thor of such books as The Mediterranean Runs Through Brooklyn (1982), Uzlentino and the Great Italians (1996), and Anita Garibaldi: A Biography (2000). He recognized the voice and the story of the Italian American cul tural worker in the autobiographical recollection ofSicilian childhood and Preface XlX suggested I use the piece as an introduction to the special issue of Voices in Italian Americana. While I did not follow his suggestion,Valerio pointed out an important connection, one that would help open my eyes to new pos sibilities and ventures. In that essay, I wrote: "I never thought I could be a writer. . . . I guess I am the first writer in my farnily." I did not at first re alize how much the private, intensely personal predicament I described in my autobiographical piece was one that I had already been exploring for a few years in the works of writers who, as some senior colleagues in the college where I used to teach put it, are not "household names in English departments."7 That comment, meant to dissuade me from pursuing re search in a field that those colleagues-and many others-did not recog nize as worthy of attention, only served to spur me on. I have been trying to make these writers "household names in English departments" ever since. I hope this book will help me to accomplish just that.
Edvige Giunta ACCENT. The mode of utterance peculiar to an individual, local ity, or nation, as "he has a slight accent, astrang pravincial accent, an indisputably Irish, Scotch, American, French or German ac cent." ... This utterance consists mainly in a prevailing quality of tone, or in a peculiar alteration ofpitch, but may include mispra nunciation of vowels or consonants, misplacing ofstress, and mis inflection of a sentence. The locality of a speaker is generally clearly marked by this kind of accent. A touch of colour or light which serves to bring the features of a structure into relief or furnishes a contrast in a scheme of colour. To mark emphatically or distinctly; to heighten, sharpen, or in tensify; to make conspicuous. -Oxford English Dictionary