SUNY in Italian/American Culture

Approaches Italian American literature from new critical perspectives and explores contemporary and understudied voices from both the United States and Canada. Italian Americans on the Page fills a significant gap in Italian American and Italian diaspora studies, particularly literature, as it explores four genres-fiction, poetry, memoir, and theater-from a variety of critical perspectives. The first section of the book offers reconsiderations of two canonical authors, Helen Barolini and Don DeLillo, while the other three sections bring new attention to understudied Italian American and Italian Canadian writers, including women and LGBTQIA+. These include Mary Jo Salter, Peter Covino, Louise DeSalvo, Karen Tintori, Juliet Grames, Ben Piazza, Salvatore Antonio, Christopher DiRaddo, Michele Linfante, Chris Cinque, Theresa Carilli, Mary Melfi, and Michaela Di Cesare. Each contribution approaches Italian American and Italian diaspora studies through a unique theoretical lens, adding to the richness of what proceeds this publication in the field. Ultimately, the volume offers rereadings of foundational Italian American works and provides newfound attention to understudied and emerging Italian diasporic voices.

The story of how an Italian American housewife and community organizer battled a Brooklyn Mafia boss and political activist for the hearts and minds of a white working class in revolt. This is the true story of a rivalry between a pair of improbable social justice crusaders––Mary Sansone, an Italian homemaker, and Joe Colombo, a Mafia boss––set against the backdrop of Brooklyn's racial and ethnic feuds of the 1960s and 1970s. From her basement kitchen, Mary Sansone launched the Congress of Italian American Organizations, a social-action coalition operating multimillion-dollar programs on behalf of the Italian poor. From his office suite high above Madison Avenue, Joe Colombo defied omertà to commandeer the Italian American Civil Rights League, an audacious anti-defamation organization that convinced thousands to join sidewalk pickets and mass demonstrations. When, around 1970, Mary and Joe's paths finally cross, they battle each other for the hearts and minds of a white working class in revolt. This book challenges stereotypes of the docile Italian wife and the parochial Mafioso by recasting these actors as a rebel girl and a renegade wiseguy. It offers an alternative history of the 1960s and 1970s, when it was presumed that white ethnics living in urban America were predisposed to responding to the civil rights movement with backlash and the women's movement with scorn.