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"Only silence is shame" - Bartolomeo Vanzetti
1.1. Read One Another (Till Now) IAWA’s first rule came out of IAWA’s first meeting. A room full of Italian American writers met at the home of Theresa Aiello-Gerber, March 23, 1991. Everyone brought things to eat or drink. For two hours the writers ate prosciutto and focaccia and drank six kinds of wine and nibbled at six kinds of olives. Then they began talking. Many had horror stories to tell. "Americans don’t read our books. Americans don’t want to publish our books." This venting session took another two hours. Finally, it was time to change gears. "Let’s try something positive," said one writer. "Let’s each talk for five minutes about our favorite Italian American writer other than ourselves." Nobody wanted to do this. The writers could not resist the suspicion that the reason Americans weren’t reading Italian American books is that we Italian Americans weren’t reading them ourselves. Writers need editors and publishers. Editors and publishers need to find readers, paying customers. They must publish books for readers, not for writers. The writers thus put the development of an Italian American readership at the head of IAWA’s agenda. The writers began with themselves. They began reading one another. Within a few months, IAWA meetings began to include public readings. Soon the readings took over: They became a steady feature of IAWA’s practice. Every month, on the second Saturday at 6 pm, IAWA sponsors an open reading at the Cornelia Street Café. Anyone can read who signs up before the list is full. Each person gets five minutes. There are no restrictions of form and no restrictions of genealogy. This monthly reading has become a laboratory for Italian American literary exchange. Writers who read there can expect an intelligent hearing. Readers who listen there can expect to learn a great deal about Italian America, about its secret interior, about its vast variety of experience, about its powers of expression. Italian American writers during the past decade have developed many ways of encouraging the reading of Italian American writing. Anthony Tamburri, Paolo Giordano, and Fred Gardaphé published in 1991 the landmark anthology From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana (1991, Purdue University Press, new edition due out soon) and began publishing the journal VIA: Voices in Italian Americana (inquiries: 317-494-3839) The same year Carole Bonomo Albright revived the journal Italian Americana: Cultural and Historical Review (inquiries: 401-277-5306) with John Paul Russo as its book review editor and Dana Gioia as its poetry editor. These publications have been enormously helpful to Italian American writers seeking readership, as well as to readers who wanted to read about Italian American writing, or who needed to find bibliographies or other literary information. Others, using these works, have developed courses in Italian American writing. From Harvard (Elvira Di Fabio and Carole Albright) to Columbia (Pellegrino D’Acierno) to Jersey City State (Edvige Giunta) to Penn State and to John Carroll (Santa Casciani), the teaching of Italian American literature is becoming part of the academic world in the United States. A useful survey of some such courses is Alyssa Nota, "Course Survey of Italian American Studies: Who, What, Where," in Italian Americana: Cultural and Historical Review, XVIII, 2 (Summer 2000), 133-146. In short, the Italian American ‘nineties have been a period of intense literary exchange. Writers discovering one another, readers discovering writers, teachers and students discovering a common interest in the literature of the large and often invisible population of Italian America – these people have been at work, building the foundation of a large and lively literary world. 1.2. Read One Another (Now) In March 2000, IAWA marked the beginning of its tenth anniversary by marking this year, from March 2000 to March 2001, as The Year of the Italian American Book. IAWA is giving substance to this grandiose expression by engaging in a number of very practical and focused activities.
Conference: "The Italian American Book" This conference promotes reading Italian American books. We have commissioned a new Bibliography of Italian American Books, which leading scholar Fred Gardaphé and leading bookseller (and attorney) James Periconi are preparing. IAWA board member Steven Acunto has donated the printing for this landmark reader’s tool. Each registrant at the conference will receive a copy of its historic First Edition. The conference has inspired IAWA to create iawa.net as a focus for news and development of the Italian American literary scene. The conference will produce major readings of Italian American books. The keynote speakers will be Josephine Gattuso Hendin, professor of English at New York University, and author of the prize winning novel The Right Thing to Do (recently reprinted by Feminist Press in its new series of books by Italian American women). Edward W. Said, University Professor of English at Columbia University, author of Beginnings, Culture and Imperialism, and many other books, articles, essays, reviews, and the recent bestselling memoir A Life Out of Place. Professor Said has long been one of the leading theorists of emergent literatures. He is a member of the Board of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. Several Italian American writers will address the questions posed at IAWA’s first meeting in 1991. "Who is your favorite Italian American writer other than yourself? What is your favorite Italian American book, other than your own?" The following writers will take part: Helen Barolini, novelist and essayist, author of the now-classic novel of Italian American Women Umbertina (recently reprinted in the Feminist Press series), essayist whose Chiaroscuro has recently been reprinted by the University of Wisconsin Press, and editor of the landmark anthology The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women, which appeared in 1985 and was the first major publication in the now-flourishing new Italian American literature (new edition forthcoming from Syracuse University Press this fall). Maria Maziotti Gillan, poet and anthologist, author of Where I Come From: New and Selected Poems and Things My Mother Told Me (both from Guernica Editions, Toronto), and editor, with Jenifer Gillan, of three major anthologies: Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry; Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing about Learning to be American; and Growing Up Ethnic: Contemporary Fiction about Learning to Be American (all Viking Penguin).
Other Writers Present Will Include The
Following: The second day of the conference is called The Italian American Bookfair. It introduces a number of new techniques we have been adopting in order to increase the distribution, sale, and readership of Italian American books. Speakers at this session will include Hon. Andrew Spano, county executive, Westchester County; Maria Lombardo, National Italian American Foundation; Roberto Ragone, FIERI National; Vito De Simone, Association of Italian American Educators; Joann Sicoli, National Organization of Italian American Women; George Altomare, United Federation of Teachers; Elizabeth Messina, Italian American Women's Collective; Mario Mignone, Center for Italian Studies, SUNY/Stony Brook; John Paul Russo, review editor, Italian Americana; Kenneth Scambray, book reviewer; Evelyn Rosetti, Museum of the City of New York; Sandy Auriti, Mondadori editore; Flavia Pankiewicz, editor, Bridge Apulia / USA; Peter Carravetta, editor, Differentia: Review of Italian Thought; Liz De Franco, agent, author and editor; Jean Casella, editor, The Feminist Press; Alane Salierno Mason, editor, W.W. Norton & Co. There will be a reading Saturday evening at Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street, hoste by Vittoria repetto, poet, and vice president of the Italian American Writers Association. Featured readers will be: Magdalena Alagna, Gil Fagani, Vittoria repetto, Robert Viscusi, George Guida and Peter Covino. The conference has been co-sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York, the National Italian American Foundation, the Consulate General of Italy in New York, FIERI National and The New York Cty Council. The conference is part of the initiative Roma/New York 2000, and is coordinated with the Festival di Letteratura Italoamericana, to be held in Rome Nov. 3 and 4, at the Casa delle Letterature. 1.3 Read One Another (The Future) We are entering a new decade of intense literary activity, new journals, webzines, book series, courses, anthologies, reprints of classics in the field, as well as "on demand" reprinting. All of this will signify an entry of Italian American writing into the collective awareness of Italian American and American readers. Italian Americans are the first readers of their own literature. They will teach one another, and they will teach others, to read this literature for what it reveals of the Italian American heart and mind. They will read this literature for how well it situates Italian American positions in personal and social space and time, for what it contributes to American letters as well as to the world awareness of the Italian diaspora.. IAWA looks forward to the time when Italian American literature will have a full place at the table of American literature and at the table of Italian literature as well. What will this mean in practice? Italian American literature and American literature. Italian Americans, according to Domenic Vacca Italia, are 26 million in number today. Not only is this nearly ten percent of the nation’s population, but it is a group that has been a large part of U.S. history for more than a century, a group that claims filiation to the very initiators of the European experiment in the Western hemisphere. The place of Italian Americans in American literature and history is a complex one. It has scarcely begun to receive attention in the American literature anthologies and literature courses. When historians treat Italian Americans as mostly illiterate immigrants or, worse, as gangsters, they show themselves not only narrow-minded but just plain blind. Italian American literature will give Italian America a way to supply the missing complexity, and it will give Italian America a more articulate voice in the American forum. Italian American literature and Italian literature. About a third of the Italians in the world today speak English. In Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, and the United States, substantial numbers of Italians have settled and acquired the national language. These populations of Italians, long after their members become English-speaking people, still identify themselves as Italian and still maintain relations of commerce and of culture with Italy, its people, and its traditions. During the past hundred and twenty years, Italy has sent a great part of its people into the English-speaking world. Recently, Italians in Italy have finally begun to grow interested in how their diaspora has come to think and feel and express itself. Italian American novelists John Fante and Don De Lillo, poets Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti are widely read in Italy today. Italian scholars have begun publishing important work on Italian American literature, and many Italian American books have begun appearing in translation in Italy. In the future, Italian readers will think of Italian American writing as part of their own literary heritage, a voice in the forum of Italian culture. |