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Identity in Contemporary Italian American Women Writers Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale Classe LM-38 Tesi di Laurea American Women, Italian Souls: Identity in Contemporary Italian American Women Writers Relatore Laureando Prof.ssa Anna Scacchi Nicolò Salmaso n° matr. 1149666 / LMLCC Anno Accademico 2018 / 2019 Helen Barolini Tina De Rosa Carole Maso Mary Cappello TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER I: The Italian American Experience ..................................................... 11 1.1 Italian Immigration to the United States (1880-1920) ......................................... 11 1.2 The Lynchings in New Orleans (1891) ............................................................... 15 1.3 The Sacco and Vanzetti Case (1920-1927) ......................................................... 16 1.4 Weak Acceptance and Subsequent Alienation (1924-1945) ................................ 17 1.5 Italian Americans in a Globalized World (1945-Today) ..................................... 18 1.6 Immigration and the Creation of an Italian American Identity ............................ 20 1.7 Italian American Women: Between Silence and Affirmation ............................. 21 CHAPTER II: An Overview of Italian American Literature ................................. 25 2.1 Early Practitioners: Luigi Donato Ventura, Bernardino Ciambelli, Constantine Panunzio, and Pascal D’Angelo ............................................................................... 29 2.2 Italian American Realists: Pietro di Donato and John Fante ............................... 31 2.3 The Success of Italian American Mafia Gangster Stories: Mario Puzo’s The Godfather ................................................................................................................ 34 2.4 Italian American Postmodernists: Don DeLillo and Tony Ardizzone.................. 37 2.5 Previously Unheard Voices: Italian American Women Writers .......................... 40 CHAPTER III: Journey in Search of the Self: Helen Barolini’s Umbertina .......... 47 3.1 Structure and Language in Umbertina ................................................................ 49 3.2 Part One (1860-1940): Umbertina, the Strong-Willed Matriarch ........................ 51 3.3 Prologue and Part Two (1927-1973): Marguerite, a Woman Divided between Two Conflicting Identities ............................................................................................... 60 3.4 Part Three (1950-): Tina and the Acceptance of Her Italian American Identity ... 66 CHAPTER IV: A Legacy of Memories and Imagination: Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish ................................................................................................................................... 73 4.1 Structure and Language in Paper Fish ............................................................... 74 4.2 Grandma Doria: A Legacy through Storytelling ................................................. 76 4.3 A Novel of Memories and Imagination .............................................................. 84 CHAPTER V: Changing Perspectives: Carole Maso’s Ava and Mary Cappello’s Night Bloom: An Italian-American Life .................................................................... 89 5.1.1 Structure and Language in Ava........................................................................ 92 5.1.2 Strands of Italianità in Ava ............................................................................. 94 5.2.1 Structure and Language in Night Bloom: An Italian-American Life ................. 98 5.2.2 Lesbianism and Italian American Identity in Night Bloom: An Italian-American Life ........................................................................................................................ 100 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 105 SUMMARY IN ITALIAN ...................................................................................... 107 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................... 121 INTRODUCTION In 2018, during my Erasmus+ placement at the University of Leeds, I started to collaborate with Claudio Staiti, Ph.D. student in Contemporary History at the University of Messina, when he asked me to revise his translation of an autobiography written by Vincenzo D’Aquila, an Italian American man, who returned to Italy during the First World War and fought in the trenches to defend his country of birth. Bodyguard Unseen: A True Autobiography is a largely forgotten work, but it is now being studied by historians because of its unprecedented historical significance. D’Aquila’s experience represents, in a certain sense, a reverse migration process that saw an Italian immigrant, who was already an American citizen, collect his war testimony in autobiographical form and in English. Working on this project led me to wonder if an Italian American literature actually existed. I was certainly aware of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and the successful trilogy of movies that were based on the novel, but I did not have any knowledge of the rich literary tradition that originated from the encounter of Italian and American cultures. Moreover, having being always passionate about literature written by women, I wanted to know if there was an Italian American female literary tradition. This dissertation therefore originated from the desire to find an answer to the questions that I posed myself in Leeds. Although little known in Italy, Italian American authors have produced a copiousness of works and have focused on many interesting themes and topics of investigation, such as identity and Italianness as experienced in an American environment. The first pieces of Italian American literature can be traced back to the end of the nineteenth century and the tradition that originated from these first works continues to the present day, encompassing therefore almost 150 years of activity. As a result, this literature, among other American ethnic literatures such as those produced by African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, has been treated as a subject in its own right in the United States and its teaching is now making its way in several American colleges. However, it has to be said that these authors have yet to be fully recognized as a part of the larger American literary canon mainly because the circulation of their works was almost always difficult and, as a result, these works have 5 remained out of print for many years. Surprisingly, the study of Italian American literature written by women has been approached only recently. In fact, for a long time, Italian American women, immersed in a strongly patriarchal culture, were raised in an environment that restricted their roles to the care of home and family, and discouraged cultural ambitions. In the 1960s, thanks to the feminist movement, Italian American women could finally come out of their isolation and establish themselves as authors. For Italian American women writers felt it was their duty, to recover and save from oblivion the works of other female authors who came before them. From their research, it emerged that there were Italian American women who wrote and published books before the 1960s, in spite of their community’s patriarchal culture, but their works had had difficult publication histories and little circulation. The recovery work of Helen Barolini in The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women (1985) was therefore seminal because it gave voice to many forgotten authors. Up to the present day, Italian American women writers have continued to produce interesting works, incorporating the themes of identity and ethnicity in their writings in audacious and innovative ways. This work deals with four Italian American women writers who have surely significantly contributed to American literature. They are Helen Barolini, Tina De Rosa, Carole Maso, and Mary Cappello. All of them wrote about Italian American culture as experienced from a distinct female perspective. Barolini, De Rosa, and Maso mainly wrote novels, and Cappello, instead, focused on writing experimental essays and memoirs. I analyze Barolini’s multigenerational saga Umbertina (1979), De Rosa’s creative novel Paper Fish (1980), Maso’s experimental novel Ava (1993), and Cappello’s unusual memoir Night Bloom: An Italian-American Life (1998). All these works explore the conflictual interplay of gender and ethnic identity. Their main characters include strong women who have been shaped and influenced by the feminist movement, and, in the case of Maso and Cappello, also by queer theories. In addition, these works also explore the importance of reestablishing a meaningful relationship with one’s family past and ancestors, although most of the times it is difficult and painful. Umbertina was the first Italian American novel written by a woman to explicitly deal with the intertwining themes of gender and ethnic identity. The novel, set between Italy and the United States, chronicles the lives of three generations of women belonging to the same family, in a period of time that spans from the end of the nineteenth century to 6 late twentieth century. Tina, the great-granddaughter of the title character Umbertina, after solving her inner
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