Vol. XXVIII No. 2 Summer 2020
Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor………………………………………………………………… v
Notes on Contributors………………………………………………………………. ix
Interview and Essay
Stephen Sartarelli—Catching Up
Joan Leotta………………………………………………………………….. 105
Essay: An Excursion to Tindari
Joan Leotta………………………………………………………………….. 109
Articles
Nonsense or Riddle? Elusive Genre in Giuseppe Pitrè’s Sicilian Folktales
Joseph Russo……………………………………………………………….. 115
A US Feminist in “the Land of Remorse”: Re-considering the Southern Italian Cult of Tarantism
Celia R. Caputi…………………………………………………………….. 123
Featured Poet: John Bargowski
Essay: “Sometimes It’s All About Survival”…………………………… 141
“Advent”……………………………………………………………………….. 143
“Pistols and Silver Dollars”………………………………………………… 144
“Clearing Stone”……………………………………………………………… 146
Poetry
“First Fall Warblers” by Catherine DeNunzio………………………………………………………. 147
“It Happens All the Time” by Paul Mariani……………………………………………………………….. 149
“This Key Unlocks” by Lenore Balliro……………………………………………………………… 150
“In the Bronx They Say” by Paola Corso………………………………………………………………… 151
“Marshfield, Massachusetts” by R.S. Mengert……………………………………………………………….. 153
“Chet’s Song” by ill Barrie……………………………………………………………………. 154
“The Time of Year to Consider Lamplighters” by Carla Panciera…………………………………………………………….. 155
“Attorney General Heuzel Says That the Error in Printing Does Not Lessen the Force of the Act” by Jackie Chicalese…………………………………………………………… 156
“After the Whale” by Joanie DiMartino…………………………………………………………. 157
“Vanquished” by Jennifer Martelli…………………………………………………………… 158
“The Harvest” by Paola Bruni…………………………………………………………………. 159
“To Hear a Cloud Pass” by Joseph Zaccardi…………………………………………………………… 160
FIctIon and CreatIve Non-FIctIon
“Exotic Bets” by Mike Dell’Aquila………………………………………………………….. 163
“La Corona” by Nancy C. Carnevale………………………………………………………. 173
“Mom and Her Sisters Never Separated” by Edward A. Iannuccilli 181
RevIews
Review Essay: “A pure act of love”: Poetic Views of New York
Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills by Sara Fruner
Review by Mariaconcetta Costantini…………………………………. 189
Review Essay: Built and Breached: Rethinking Borders
The Color Inside a Melon by John Domini
Review by Dennis Barone………………………………………………. 192
Enigmi by Louisa May Alcott,
Review by Gigliola Nocera……………………………………………… 196
Whom We Shall Welcome: Italian Americans and Immigration Reform, 1945–1965 by Danielle Battisti
Review by Claudio Staiti………………………………………………… 198
The Autobiography of a Language: Emanuel Carnevali’s Italian/American Writing by Andrea Ciribuco
Review by Perri Giovannucci………………………………………….. 200
Unburial by Marc Alan Di Martino
Review by Stefano Maria Casella…………………………………….. 203
In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen by Samuel F.S. Pardini
Review by Francesca de Lucia…………………………………………. 205
Only Gossip Prospers: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott in New York by Lorraine Tosiello
Review by Martina Mastandrea……………………………………….. 206
Missing Madonnas by Gil Fagiani
Review by Marc Alan Di Martino…………………………………….. 208
A Space Between by Anna Citrino
Review by Andrea Gazzoni…………………………………………….. 209
Antonio Veneziano, Sicilian Rhymes of Love, Disdain, and Faith edited, introduced, and translated into English verse by Gaetano Cipolla
Review by Joseph Russo………………………………………………… 211
The Clyburn Touch-Me-Nots by Ned Balbo
Review by Joseph Bathanti……………………………………………… 214
Towers of Aging by Joseph A. Amato
Review by John Paul Russo…………………………………………….. 215
Letter from the Editor
Carla A. Simonini
Dear Readers,
I am very proud to bring you the Summer 2020 issue of Italian Americana. As has been the case all over the United States, our ability to work was greatly affected by the COVID-19 crisis, which, among other things, precluded me from using the resources normally available at Loyola University Chicago. Despite a number of setbacks, though, we still managed to come together as a team, and each of our editors has curated high quality selections offering diverse perspectives on Italian-American scholarship and creative endeavors. Readers will note that our opening section—featuring an interview, a personal essay, and two scholarly articles—focuses on Italy, specifically Southern Italy, Il Mezzogiorno, from which the greatest percentage of Italians emigrated to the US during the great wave of immigration from the 1890s through the 1920s. The editorial selection of these pieces aims to highlight how the history, culture, and traditions of Southern Italy remain relevant to our explorations of identity in the twenty-first century. Joan Leotta opens the issue with a follow-up interview with Stephen Sartarelli, the award-winning translator whose masterful translations have made the complex linguistical forms and culturally nuanced themes of the Montalbano detective novels by Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri accessible to an English readership. Leotta catches up with Sartarelli to find out how the prolific author’s passing last year has fans and critics reflecting on his legacy, but Sartarelli poses his own question at the end of his interview. He wonders whether there has been any sort of identification with Camilleri’s world and characters on the part of Italian Americans, especially those of Sicilian descent. In response I can offer a personal anecdote. When I was invited to speak at a Sicilian American cultural group last spring and chose the topic of Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano detective novels, I was enthusiastically received and asked many questions about Camileri’s use of the Sicilian dialect and the process of translating them—and the cultural context which they represent—into English. This group, at least, was vested in exploring their relationship to their Sicilian origins and saw Camilleri’s work as a vehicle for doing so.
Leotta follows her interview with a personal essay, exploring how her reading of Camilleri led her to Tindari, a town of Greek origin on the northeastern coast of Sicily best known as the site of the sanctuary dedicated the “Black Madonna,” a wooden statue that dates back to the ninth century. Tindari became an important pilgrim destination in Sicily in the middle ages, and remains so today. Veneration of “The Black Madonna” was so important that Sicilian immigrants brought the tradition with them to New York in the early twentieth century. Knowing the town’s history, it is perhaps not too surprising that Leotta’s visit to Tindari enables her to uncover parts of her own family story.
Our two scholarly articles deal with cultural traditions in Sicily and Apulia, respectively. Joseph Russo examines a particularly enigmatic story that is included in Giuseppe Pitrè’s collection of Sicilian folk tales, first published in 1875. Through Russo’s article, the reader is familiarized with not only the specific story being examined, but also the various genres into which the works can be categorized—tales, proverbs, legends, anecdotes, etc.—and how they collectively exemplify cultural norms and beliefs. Russo’s analysis proceeds from a revised English translation of Pitrè’s tale, which leads in turn to a new interpretation, not unlike the transformation that can take place when Sicilian folk traditions are transposed through the immigration experience. Featured poet John Bargowski’s essay reflects this phenomenon as he reminisces fondly about how his Italian immigrant relatives “related their tales to a rapt audience of family and friends.” The tradition of story-telling sustained them, and he writes, “During these challenging days, it was particularly comforting to hear some of those old stories again. . . Many had a seed of wisdom and common sense street- smarts buried under the sometimes-rough surface.”
Celia Caputi, for her part, offers a feminist analysis of “tarantism” and the manner in which it has been studied. Beginning with Ernesto De Martino’s ground breaking study The Land of Remorse, Caputi goes on to examine 1970s’ analyses by French feminists of the “tarantate” (women affected with tarantism), the rise of “neotarantism” in the twenty-first century, and her own complicated relationship with the syndrome and its meaning as she approaches it from the dual perspective of a feminist and a person of southern Italian ancestry. Caputi notes how tarantism is a distinctly southern Italian phenomenon, most often associated with the region of Apulia. Thought to be caused by the bite of a spider, the malady’s only known cure was to engage in the ritual dance known as the Tarantella, a version of which still today is often played at Italian-American celebrations. What the happy tune masks in its American manifestation are the oppressive social conditions that induced the “tarantate’s” affliction (women were the vast majority) in Southern Italy, which were rooted in patriarchal structures designed to suppress women’s agency, especially with regard to their sexuality. These historical conditions emerge in Nancy Carnevale’s memoir “La Corona,” which offers a poignant view of how Southern Italian cultural norms regarding male and female relationships and codes of behavior had tragic consequences for her aunt, who immigrated to the US as a toddler in the 1950s.
Our turn towards Italy is completed in our Book Review section. While we often publish reviews in English of books written in Italian, this time we have a review of an Italian translation of a work by an American writer, written in Italian. Gigliola Nocera of the University of Catania brings us an insightful review of Daniela Daniele’s recent translation of Louisa May Alcott’s story Enigmi (“Enigmas”), which Alcott originally published anonymously in the popular publication Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in May 1864. The translation introduces Italian readers to Alcott’s lesser known engagement with the genre of detective stories and thrillers, while Nocera’s review gives readers of Italian Americana a chance to brush up on their Italian while engaging in a critical evaluation of the story and its translation.
All of the sections in the Summer 2020 are very strong. In addition to his opening essay, featured poet John Bargowski’s poems are sure to please, as are the other poems that our poetry editor, Maria Terrone, has selected. We are happy to feature some new voices, along with more established ones, to create a diverse group of poems. In our Fiction and Creative Nonfiction section, editor Christine Palamidessi has curated a trio of works that complement each other in tone and theme, from the distinctly masculine voice of Mike Dell’Aquila’s story “Exotic Bets,” to the somber feminine motif of Nancy Carnevale’s “La Corona,” and finally to the nostalgic and humorous strains of Edward Iannuccilli’s “Mom and Her Sisters Never Separated.” Completing the issue, John Paul Russo has once again brought together over a dozen different book reviews of works representing diverse genres and perspectives that hold in common themes and subject matters that are likely to be of interest to anyone seeking to further explore the connections between Italian and American culture.
My heartfelt thanks goes out to all the section editors—John Paul Russo, Maria Terrone and Christina Palamadessi—and special gratitude to our amazing editorial assistant Tom Slagle. We always work “at a distance,” but this spring posed far greater challenges than any of us could have imagined. I am grateful to everyone on the editorial team, without whose dedication and creativity this issue would never have made it to press.