Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America

Thomas J. Ferraro

Published by New York University Press 2005

Feeling Italian

The Art of Ethnicity in America

Thomas J. Ferraro

Volume 18 in the series Nation of Nations

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814728635.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

2006 American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation
Southern Italian emigration to the United States peaked a full century ago—;descendents are now fourth and fifth generation, dispersed from their old industrial neighborhoods, professionalized, and fully integrated into the “melting pot.” Surely the social historians are right: Italian Americans are fading into the twilight of their ethnicity. So, why is the American imagination enthralled by The Sopranos, and other portraits of Italian-ness?
Italian American identity, now a mix of history and fantasy, flesh-and-bone people and all-too-familiar caricature, still has something to teach us, including why each of us, as citizens of the U.S. twentieth century and its persisting cultures, are to some extent already Italian. Contending that the media has become the primary vehicle of Italian sensibilities, Ferraro explores a series of books, movies, paintings, and records in ten dramatic vignettes. Featured cultural artifacts run the gamut, from the paintings of Joseph Stella and the music of Frank Sinatra to The Godfather’s enduring popularity and Madonna’s Italian background. In a prose style as vivid as his subjects, Ferraro fashions a sardonic love song to the art and iconography of Italian America.

Author / Editor information

Ferraro Thomas J. :

Thomas J. Ferraro is Associate Professor of English at Duke University. He is the author of Ethnic Passages and editor of Catholic Lives, Contemporary America.

Reviews

Ferraro traces the 'evolution and persistence' of an identifiable Italian American identity, from the time of widespread Italian immigration in the late 1800s through popular mediated portrayals of Italian Americans such as those found in The Sopranos television series. The book is an important contribution not only to Italian American studies, but to the understanding of ethnicity in the 21st-century US.

Carlo Rotella,author of Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt:
This inspired, sophisticated, provoking book should command the attention of anybody interested in American Italianness in particular or the cultural consequences of ethnicity in general. Joseph Stella and Frank Sinatra, Maria Barbella and Giancarlo Esposito, Madonna and the good people who brought you the Corleones and Sopranos;they and others appear here, often seen in startlingly fresh ways, as creators and exemplars of the aesthetic Tom Ferraro calls & feeling Italian. Wise, funny, contagiously enthusiastic, Ferraro takes us far beyond the narrow pieties of the identity police or anti-defamation types as he traces the development of a widely accessible American cultural style that still bears the marks of distinctively Italian ways of making do and making sense.

Jay Parini,author of Passage to Liberty: The Story of Italian Immigration and the Rebirth of America:
Original and deeply right. There is no other book that digs so deeply into the matter at hand, and does so with such eloquence and ferocity of intellect.

Feeling Italian is a smart book, one that makes the reader think beyond the usual ways of looking at whats Italian about the US.

Ferraro maintains a breezy, journalistic style that has produced an easy and entertaining read. His work may give hope to people of other ethnicities who presently suffer from isolation and alienation on the part of the general American public.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
contents Publicly Available Download PDF	10
acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
Introduction Feeling Italian Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
Chapter 1. Honor Friday Bloody Friday Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
Chapter 2. City New York Delirious Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
Chapter 3. Job Close to the Flesh and Smell and Joy of Them Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Chapter 4. Mother The Madonnas of Tenth Avenue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Chapter 5. Song A Punch in Everyman’s Kisser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Chapter 6. Crime La Cosa Nostra Americana Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
Chapter 7. Romance Only a Paper Moon? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Chapter 8. Diva Our Lady the Dominatrix of Pop Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
Chapter 9. Skin Giancarlo and the Border Patrol Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Chapter 10. Table Cine Cucina Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
Conclusion The Art of Ethnicity in America Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
narrative bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	252
index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
about the author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 9780814728635