3. Buy our books
Buying books builds better writers.
3.1 Buy our books (Till Now) In IAWA’s meetings of the first
two years, the Italian American writers invited publishers, agents, editors, bestselling
writers to discuss the problem that Italian American books weren’t getting
enough attention. IAWA made these meetings into a search for how the literary
marketplace was operating. It grew clear that American writing was no longer
organized only by region or by class. It was organized by different principles
of exclusion. Groups had boundaries based in an area where descent and
affiliation mingled with class. Jewish American, African American, Chicano,
Asian American, Nuyorican -- these had become categories in the book business.
Italian Americans had experienced very little success in establishing Italian
American as an effective marketplace category.
"Italian Americans don’t buy books." IAWA’s members heard this
mantra from almost every expert they consulted -- and most of these were
persons who would identify themselves as Italian Americans in the book
business! This was a serious, not to say devastating, folk belief. IAWA set out
to help change this belief. IAWA initiated two programs in 1994, and has
pursued them ever since:
Steerage. Each month the editors of the IAWA Newsletter choose
a book of interest to Italian American readers. The Newsletter asks its
readers to go to a bookstore and order this book.
Monthly Book Presentations. Every month IAWA presents at least one
new book of interest to Italian American readers. For years these presentations
took place at Barnes & Noble Astor Place every month.
Both steerage and the monthly book presentations aimed to
stimulate the circulation of Italian American titles in the book distribution
system, of which Barnes & Noble was the paradigm in 1994, when we began
these programs.
3.2. Buy our books (Now) IAWA has decided to take its monthly
book presentations and make them the first step for a much larger program,
which is called The Italian American Bookfair. The second day of the
conference (October 14) will be devoted to the discussion of this project,
among writers, editors, agents, publishers, and other publishing professionals
in conversation with Italian American teachers, booksellers, librarians,
scholars, and leaders of important Italian American organizations. IAWA’s
members are preparing for this discussion in several ways.
Bookfairs on various models. IAWA has already sponsored Bookfairs on
two models, both involving cooperation with Italian American voluntary
organizations. This year’s March Bookfair used the model of the "new-book
bookfair", where one invites the author of a new work and tries to sell a
copy of it to every person who attends. IAWA had procured fifty hardbound
copies of Steven Varni’s new novel The Inland Sea (William Morrow). The
publisher gave a good discount, and IAWA members Joann Sicoli and Jeanne Dickey
sold all fifty copies. Manhattan FIERI, the National Organization of Italian
American Women, the American Italian Cultural Roundtable, and the Italian
Cultural Institute of New York were all cosponsors at this event. IAWA’s May
Bookfair was a collaboration with the Association of Italian American Educators
(AIAE) and a bookseller, to sell books at AIAE’s annual dinner. Next year, this
event will include the price of a book in the price of the dinner. The
object of these exercises is to mobilize Italian Americans to buy books as
Italian Americans. It will become evident that Italian Americans do buy
books.
On August 10, IAWA will try another model of Bookfair. This one will present
several writers, and will take place in a bookstore, in this case Barnes &
Noble Union Square, in which IAWA will present Mary Jo Bona’s Claiming a
Tradition: Italian American Women Writers (Southern Illinois University
Press), along with some of the books she talks about in her study. A panel of
writers -- including Professor Bona, Helen Barolini, and one or two others, yet
to be named – will present titles that represent well the new wave of Italian
American Women Writers.
For August 15, IAWA is inviting Italian American booksellers to sell books
at the Ferragosto celebration on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.
All these experiments have this in common. IAWA is asking that Italian
Americans promote Italian American books using the already-existing admirable
network of Italian American organizations, with their annual rounds of dinners,
festivals, meetings, banquets, and other gatherings. The Italian American
Bookfair will give these organizations, numerous and varied as they are, a
common purpose, a chance to make a material difference in the public perception
of Italian Americans, their intelligence, their self-understanding, their
contribution to the American conversation.
Sunday, September 24, 2000, IAWA will have a table at New York Is Book
Country. This major New York bookfair is a place for the book business to
meet directly with the readers of this bookbuying city. Booksellers
specializing in Italian American books will also participate in this bookfair.
At the conference The Italian American Book, the second day will open
with the presentation of a new work The Italian American Bookfair Manual. This
brief guide introduces the principles by which any Italian American individual
or organization can make a material contribution to the social and cultural
advance of Italian America by sponsoring an Italian American Bookfair.
3.3 Buy our books (The Future) Italian America will become a
literary institution. That is, Italian Americans will use books to explore the
complexities of their heritage. How will we know that this is happening?
Italian American writers will produce new histories of the United States.
Italian American novelists will publish bestsellers whose protagonists are
Italian American poets and painters.
Italian American will be the name of not one, but several fashionable
styles in different pursuits. Italian American music and Italian American prose
will have their fans and well-known experts, much like the ones that Italian
American film already has acquired.
Bookstores will have sections devoted to Italian American culture, history,
and literature.
Colleges will have Italian American Studies programs.
There will be endowed chairs in the teaching of Italian American literature.
These will be institutional signs, visible in the worlds of commerce and of
academic bureaucracy.
But there is another sign by which we shall know that Italian American literature
has reached its appropriate audience. Young people will debate the meanings of
words they read in the texts of Pietro Di Donato and the locations of places
described in the fiction of Helen Barolini. Poets will recite from memory
famous poems of Diane Di Prima or John Ciardi. Some people will prefer one
school of poets, and some another. These will be considered serious matters,
worthy of public discussion.
These fantasies are not very far from the reality we have already begun to
see. The age of the Internet is making it possible for people to find each
other’s writings much more easily and on any basis . Already we have Italian
American booksellers. Barnes & Noble and Amazon have been good sources for
our books. But we also have Maryann Calendrille, Jim Periconi, Susan Barile,
and Vito DeSimone conducting brisk businesses in Italian American books. We
will feature the art of buying books in future episodes of "The Three
Rules."
The Three Rules of IAWA. Copyright Robert
Viscusi