Failed Family Sagas
Male Lineage in Italian/American Literature and Literary Tradition
Abstract
The aim of this article is to examine how failed family sagas have defined early Italian/American culture and female literary tradition through Julia Savarese’s The Weak and the Strong (1952) and Marion Benasutti’s No Steady Job for Papa (1966). The idea of failed (female) lineages is articulated in a thematic sense that is overtly expressed in the depiction of both families in the texts. These convey a doomed plot which matches the coarse realities of immigration and the depression, as well as reflects the boundaries represented by the intersecting limitations of embodying racial and gender difference. Particularly, the article focuses on how male lineage is paramount in the novels and define Italian/American culture. In this sense, the analysis also contends that, as the authors themselves also encountered similar limitations, the lost genealogy of these early precursors has equally endangered the Italian/American female literary tradition.
Downloads
References
Barolini, H. (1985). The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women. New York: Schocken.
Benasutti, M. (1966). No Steady Job for Papa. New York: The Vanguard P.
Boelhower, W. (1991). Ethnic Trilogies: A Genealogical and Generational Poetics. In W. Sollors (Ed.), The Invention of Ethnicity (pp. 158-175). New York: Oxford UP.
Bona, M. (1999). Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP.
DeSalvo, L. (1996). Vertigo: A Memoir. New York: Penguin Group.
DeSalvo, L. & Giunta, E. (Eds). (2003). The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. New York: The Feminist P.
Falco, S. (Dir). (2006). Pietro di Donato, lo scrittore muratore. Mediacom, DVD.
Gabaccia, D. (1996). Women of the Mass Migration: From Minority to Majority, 1820–1930. In D. Hoerder & L. P. Moch (Eds), European Migrants. Global and Local Perspectives (pp. 90-111). Boston: Northeastern UP.
Gardaphe, F. (1996). The Latter Mythic Mode: Reinventing Ethnicity through the Grandmother Figure. In Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (pp. 86-119). Durman and London: Duke UP.
———. (2004). Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian American Culture. New York: State U of New York P.
———. (2006). From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities. New York and London: Routledge.
Giunta, E. (1998). Afterword: An Immigrant Tapestry. In H. Barolini, Umbertina (pp 425-453). New York: The Feminist P.
Hirsch, M. (1989). The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP.
Laurino, M. (2009). Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton.
Lisella, J. (2007). Modernism, Maternity and the Radical Woman Poet. In R. Hammerman (Ed.), Womanhood in Anglophone Literary Culture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Perspectives (pp. 184-210). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Mannino, M. (1997). The Empowered and Empowering Grandmother in the Poetry of Italian-American Women. VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, 8, 29-36.
———. (2000). Revisionary Identities: Strategies of Empowerment in the Writing of Italian/American Women. New York: Peter Lang.
Nardini, G. (1999). Che bella figura! The Power of Performance in an Italian Ladies’ Club in Chicago. Albany: State U of New York P.
Pipino, Mary Frances. (2000). I Have Found My Voice: The Italian-American Woman Writer. New York: Peter Lang.
Ruberto, L. (2007). Gramsci, Migration and the Representation of Women’s Work. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington.
Savarese, J. (1952). The Weak and the Strong. New York: G. P. Putnma’s Sons.
Simonini, C. (2010). Julia Savarese’s Novel The Weak and the Strong (1952) as a Case Study. In D. Barone & S. Luconi (Eds), Small Towns, Big Cities: The Urban Experience of Italian Americans (pp 228-241). New York: American Italian Historical Association.
Tamburri, A. J., Giordano, P. A. & Gardaphe, F. L. (Eds). (2000/1991). From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP.
Walker, A. (1984). In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. London: The Woman’s P.
Wall, C. (2005). Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition. Chapel Hill and London: U of North Carolina P.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The works published in this journal are subject to the following terms:
1. The Publications Services at the University of Murcia (the publisher) retains the property rights (copyright) of published works, and encourages and enables the reuse of the same under the license specified in item 2.
2. The works are published in the electronic edition of the magazine under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike 4.0.
3.Conditions of self-archiving. Authors are encouraged to disseminate pre-print (draft papers prior to being assessed) and/or post-print versions (those reviewed and accepted for publication) of their papers before publication, because it encourages distribution earlier and thus leads to a possible increase in citations and circulation among the academic community.
RoMEO color: green