Table Of ContentRevisionary Identities
Studies in Italian Culture
Literature in History
Aldo Scaglione
General Editor
Advisory Board
Peter Bondanella
Indiana University
Giuseppe Mazzotta
Yale University
Paolo Cherchi
University of Chicago
Vol. 29
PETER LANG
New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore • Boston • Bern
Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Brussels • Vienna • Oxford
Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino
Revisionary Identities
Strategies of Empowerment
in the Writing of
Italian/American Women
PETER LANG
New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore • Boston • Bern
Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Brussels • Vienna • Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mannino, Mary Ann Vigilante.
Revisionary identities: strategies of empowerment in the writing
of Italian/American women / Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino.
p. cm. — (Studies in Italian culture—Literature in history; vol. 29)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. American literature—Italian American authors—History and criticism.
2. American literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Italian
American women—Intellectual life. 4. Women and literature—
United States. 5. Power (Social sciences) in literature. 6. Identity
(Psychology) in literature. 7. Italian Americans in literature.
8. Group identity in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PS153.I8.M36 810.9’9287’08951—dc21 99-052471
ISBN 0-8204-4853-2
ISSN 1043-5794
Die Deutsche Bibliothek-CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Mannino, Mary Ann Vigilante:
Revisionary identities: strategies of empowerment in the writing
of Italian/American women / Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino.
−New York; Washington, D.C./Baltimore; Boston; Bern;
Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Brussels; Vienna; Oxford: Lang.
(Studies in Italian culture: literature in history; Vol. 29)
ISBN 0-8204-4853-2
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2000 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Sally Mitchell who first suggested I pursue my dream of
writing about the Italian/American women who, despite great odds, in-
scribe the values and dreams of the southern Italian peasants into Ameri-
can Literature. I am also most grateful to Daniel O’Hara, whose theoreti-
cal approach to contemporary literary criticism has given me a method
for explaining the fluid identity of Italian/American women writers. Dan’s
suggestions, made throughout the writing, helped me solve problems great
and small and have been a most helpful guide to revision. Laura Levitt
also suggested many theoretical readings that have become central to this
text.
Mary Jo Bona, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Fred Gardaphé, Justin Vitiello,
Daniela Gioseffi, and Maria Fama, my colleagues in this area of scholar-
ship, have all read parts of my manuscript in various stages. I want to
thank them for their comments and enthusiastic support.
I also want to thank the many writers who permitted me to quote their
poetry and prose. Without their kindness this book would not have been
possible. Unfortunately, Rose Romano would not permit me to quote her
poetry directly, and I was forced to paraphrase her work.
Gunter and Dahlia David were supportive friends in the preparatioen
of the manuscript. Joan Gacad offered me invaluable technical assistance
and advice. For their efforts, I offer deep-felt thanks.
I also wish to thank my children, Robert and Jennifer, for their pa-
tience through all the years that I have spent at my computer into the long
hours of the night. Without their love and understanding, this project
would never have been completed.
Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to copyright holders for per-
mission to use portions of the following copyrighted material:
VI Acknowledgments
The Voices We Carry, edited by Mary Jo Bona, 1994, Guernica,
Montreal, reprinted with the permission of the publisher.
The Dream Book, edited by Helen Barolini, 1985, Shocken Books,
New York, reprinted with the permission of Helen Barolini.
Excerpts from Umbertina, by Helen Barolini are reprinted by permis-
sion of the author and The Feminist Press at the City University of New
York. Copyright 1979 by Helen Barolini. Originally published by Seaview
in 1979, The Feminist Press reissued the work, with an afterword by
Edvige Giunta, in 1999.
Taking Back My Name, by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, 1991, Lincoln
Springs Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ. First Edition 1991 published by
Malafemmina Press, San Francisco, California, reprinted with the permis-
sion of Maria Mazziotti Gillan.
Winter Light, by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, 1985, Chantry Press, Mid-
land Park, NJ, reprinted with the permission of Maria Mazziotti Gillan.
“Bicentennial Anti-poem for Italian-American Women” used by per-
mission of the author Daniela Gioseffi, from Word Wounds and Water
Flowers, l995, VIA Folios/ Bordighera at Purdue University West
Lafayette, IN. Poem retitled “For Grandma Lucia LaRosa.”
“Tablecloth,” used by permission of the author, Maria Fama, from Iden-
tification, copyright 1996, Allora, Philadelphia. Identification was first
published in 1991 by Malafemmina Press of San Francisco, California as
Chapbook 2 in the Italian-American Women’s Poetry Series.
For my parents, Pasquale Vigilante and Marion Mercaldo Vigilante
For my children, Robert John Mannino and Jennifer Elaine Mannino
Epigraph
The saying is that in the house where rosemary thrives, the women of that house
are its strength.
Helen Barolini Umbertina
The tapes he left for his autobiography are for both of us to discover our roots, he
says, the ways Jews and Blacks are doing. “It’s time for us immigrant guineas to
tell our story of struggle and prejudice, too. I’m so damned tired of Hollywood
stereotype, the damned Mafia media blitz. Very few of us are the way Hollywood
says!”
Daniela Gioseffi One Minute to Midnight
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1. Finding Roots 13
2. Crossing Borders 47
3. Relating to Others 69
4. Thinking Back Through Our Grandmothers 97
5. Envisioning a Feminist Grandmother 129
6. Celebrating the Mestiza Consciousness 157
Works Cited 175
Index 195
Introduction
Italian/American women writers form their identity out of the conflict
created when the culture of the Italian immigrants, who arrived in the
United States between 1880 and 1924, came into direct contact with an
opposing culture, the enlightenment-centered Anglo-American social mores
that frame the dominant American ethos.1 The main difference between
the two societies with which the immigrants grappled and their descen-
dants, the Italian/American women writers, try to negotiate a peace is
the value each culture places on individual autonomy. For the Italian peas-
ant fleeing la miseria, extreme poverty and lack of opportunity of any
kind that was experienced in Italy, individual autonomy meant death. A
peasant’s only hope for survival had been in community, specifically, the
supportive network of the family. On the other hand, the Anglo-Ameri-
can at the turn of the century worshiped the notion of the individual’s
self-reliance which flourished in isolation. Its icons were the cowboy, the
pioneer, and the self-made man. American culture was, and still is, based
on the liberal philosophy of the enlightenment while the southern peasant
society was a pre-enlightenment one.2
In his 1974 text, Blood of My Blood, Richard Gambino delineates the
characteristics of la via vecchia, the value system the southern peasants
of the Great Migration brought with them to America. He explains that
“all obligations, feelings, or rights of radical individuality were repressed
by any good father or mother” (Gambino, 3). What was important was
the family which was composed of all of one’s blood relatives. According
to la via vecchia, each person had absolute responsibilities within the
family. Gambino tells us that “the only system to which the contadino
paid attention was l’ordine della famiglia” (3). In Mary Jo Bona’s discus-
sion of Tina De Rosa’s novel Paper Fish, she too recognizes that the
primary cultural difference between southern Italian and American self-
