The collection of articles that constitute Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives began as a special issue of the journal Italian American Review, now out of print. (The journal, published by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, has recently returned from hiatus.) We are fortunate that Joseph Sciorra, editor of that issue, saw to its publication as a book, with additional articles of recent scholarship to complement the original contributions. Akin to other now classic collections on Italian American folklore such as Malpezzi and Clements (1992) and Del Giudice (1993), Italian Folk would be an excellent addition to the book shelves of scholars working in all disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities, as well as informed general readers interested in immigrant experiences and the development of ethnic identities in the United States. Some of these authors are well known to folklorists, some will be new; all of them are writers whose familiarity with and dedication to Italian American culture is persuasive and rewarding.
The collection consists of eleven articles, plus an introduction by Sciorra that succinctly frames the organizing theme of the book: una bella figura, a beautiful figure. This metaphor, drawn in correlation and opposition to una bruta figura, an ugly figure, is essential for understanding Italian American value systems and codes of interaction, even as their own expressive culture has historically been held with suspicion or disregard. Seen thusly, the entire collection comments as much on the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical as it does on that between marked and mundane performance or personal and group identity.
Simone Cinotto examines the evolution of Italian American food and Sunday dinners throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Against commonplace assumptions, he argues that such activity did not merely reflect Italian national practices and ideologies about the family carried to the United States, but was a contested negotiation formative of immigrant and second-generation identities. Drawing upon the behavioral method in folklore studies, John Allan Cicala focuses on a particular food event--a cuscuszu meal prepared by his grandmother—that occurred among estranged members of his family. Faced with problematic interpersonal exchanges within this performance, Cicala finds poignant struggles over values, artistry, and the very constitution of family and food themselves.
Lara Pascali considers the longstanding tradition of keeping a basement kitchen (in addition to an upstairs kitchen, which often functions as a “dream space”) among Italian Americans. Akin to her colleagues, she carefully deconstructs typical assumptions about this practice (such as practicality or domestic cleanliness), and weighs them against issues of women’s freedom and immigrant experiences. In his study of vernacular architecture in California, Kenneth Scambray analyses two stunning examples: the Underground Gardens of Baldassare Forestiere in Fresno, and the Watts Towers of Simon (Sabato) Rodia in Los Angeles. Scambray regards them as balanced between personal aesthetic taste and memories of Italian landscapes, and between expressions of the private and communal life.
Joseph J. Inguanti compares two types of Italian American residential landscapes: the highly ordered front-yard gardens in the New York City boroughs (especially Queens and Brooklyn) and the side or backyard gardens on Long Island and Connecticut. In their juxtaposition, he identifies two formations of aesthetic experience: “landscapes of order” and “landscapes of memory.” Joseph Sciorra addresses the poetry (oral and written) of Vincenzo Ancona, whose work expressed the often sorrowful experiences of his Sicilian immigrant community, including lament and protest over the need to emigrate, and the hybrid culture formed in the United States. Sciorra introduces the notion of redemptive nostalgia as a poetic tactic for redressing this pain.
Although much of this collection considers southern Italian immigrant experience, Marion S. Jacobson considers the contributions of northern Italians who established new musical expression with the accordion, Valtaro musette, especially in Manhattan nightclubs from the 1930s to 1950s. She demonstrates how these far-reaching developments reflect both shared roots in Italy and reinvention in the United States. Joan L. Saverino focuses on Italian Americans in Reading, Pennsylvania, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, when Columbus Day and summer "Italian Days" celebrations developed in full. She pays close attention to middle-class immigrants negotiating how to represent Italian American culture as a whole to the American public, especially as fascism intervened in that perception. Peter Savastano considers the festa and procession for St. Gerard Maiella in Newark, New Jersey. Through interviews with devotees who ritually cleanse and dress the saint’s statue at his shrine in St. Lucy’s Church, Savastano discusses bodily connection and historical consciousness, especially as gay members of the community redress conflict with Catholic doctrine through their devotion.
Luisa Del Giudice’s contribution begins as a commemoration of her brother-in-law, and develops into a complex family history that she characterizes as “an ethnographic voyage into death and cultural darkness”(189). Along the way, she reconsiders the understanding of roots within diasporic experience, the relationship between personal and ethnographic narrative, and the concept of faith healing. Finally, Sabina Magliocco examines the reclamation of traditional Italian American folk magic in contemporary Stregheria, or revival Witchcraft. In charting this evolution from immigrant to Neo-Pagan experiences, and in focusing on specific individuals guiding this movement both past and present, she considers historical stigmatization and recent innovation as contributing elements of ethnic political strategies.
It is rare to call a work of academic scholarship a page turner, but I think this collection is worthy of the honor (although each article obviously rewards slower digestion and multiple readings). One of the more compelling aspects is that each article resounds stylistically with its subject matter. The affective impact of Cicala’s description of his dysfunctional family, for example, may well make readers cringe, and the final paragraphs of Del Giudice’s contribution promise to send shivers up one’s spine. The musical quality of Jacobson’s study shows through page after page, just as the impious reverence of Savastano’s subject echoes in the writing. To put it bluntly, this collection is a joy to read.
These performative qualities also ask us to give pause to the current state of writing in folklore studies. Admittedly, all of the articles take the shape of traditional scholarship, but their engaging and embodied writing raises the question of future possibilities. Indeed, several contributions directly address the concerns about representing oneself and one’s culture. It is plausible, then, to see this collection as initiating a long-overdue conversation about folklorists embracing new and experimental forms of research, such as performance autoethnography established by Carolyn Ellis and Norman Denzin, or critical ethnography associated with Dwight Conquergood and D. Soyini Madison (among others).
Taking all of these articles together, Italian Folk is also a model of what a skilled editor can produce. The articles are arranged in a thoughtful manner so as to initiate the reader who may or may not have familiarity with Italian American culture. It begins with the arguably most common practice—food—and moves progressively to the ostensibly most esoteric—Stregheria. But one of the delights of this collection is how these vibrant studies and their ordering play with expectations and deconstruct stereotypes of Italian Americans. The result is that by the final pages, typical foods become defamiliarized and folk magic seems ordinary, and everything in between illuminates in surprising and commanding ways.
Just about halfway through the collection, Sciorra cites a line from Vincenzo Ancona: E batti lingua dunni denti doli! (The tongue is ever turning to the aching tooth!) (114). In my opinion, this raw sentiment may well represent the entire volume in its attention to the demanding aesthetics of everyday life. And in moving towards closure, I would like to suggest one aching tooth that deserves turning to in the future. Sciorra opens his introduction with a familiar epigraph from Antonio Gramsci—the one that identifies folklore as something to be taken very seriously rather than as an eccentricity (1). A lengthy footnote accompanies this quotation, explaining how Gramsci conceptualized folklore as something to be overcome (215). He invokes Gramscian lines of inquiry a few pages later (5), but other than a passing comment regarding false consciousness by Magliocco (212), Gramsci and Gramscian-inspired analyses are almost entirely absent from this book.
As someone who has argued that folklorists need to reconsider Gramsci in a much more rigorous way, I feel compelled to note this absence. My reasons for doing so are twofold. The first actually is to praise the manner in which all of the chapters of this book offer a challenge to unrefined critiques of folklore proper. In their rich appreciation of the aesthetic, ethical, and political complexities of vernacular expression, these authors push back against simple condemnations of folklore as erroneous or outdated modes of cultural practice. Such positive characterization is the stock of folklore studies, of course, but what is most impressive here is the unapologetic call for future scholarship of similar depth and beauty.
This promise leads me to the second reason for Gramscian concerns: namely, to recognize that there remain many problematic aspects of Italian American vernacular culture worthy of serious investigation and critique, still underrepresented in folklore studies. Hints of more malevolent expressions pepper this collection. Analysis of fascist ideology, for example, or of the cultural significance of the Mafia appear briefly, as in Saverino and Sciorra’s contributions. Some attention is given (as by Cinotto) to the ways Italian Americans turned against others—Puerto Ricans and African Americans especially—in the process of becoming white. A few other contributions glimpse institutionalized violence hidden in the guise of italianità. Homophobia, racism, classism, misogyny, gender inequity, patriarchy, hegemonic masculinity, and stifling religiosity are complicated and resisted throughout several studies, but never directly critiqued.
While many of these formations would not be thought of as folklore, they are pernicious traditional expressions that permeate Italian American vernacular culture and common sense. They are also issues which scholars of Italian American culture know well, and must often navigate in writing about one’s originating collective constitutions. Sciorra himself raises the specter of this turmoil in the acknowledgements by referencing
“those Italian Americans who routinely undermine a healthy exchange of ideas and a general climate of amity. Their provincial dispositions and obstinate reactions are cautionary examples of how not to operate in the ambit of Italian Americana” (ix).
Why should we folklorists not examine these less charitable expressions of identity? Robust attention to the bella of Italian American vernacular culture is rewarding and thought-provoking, but so too would critical analysis of the bruta be appropriate for a complete sense of the world our ancestors bequeathed to us and which we daily debate maintaining or letting go of for the sake of the future.
Furthermore, Gramscian approaches tend against compartmentalization between folklore and popular culture, preferring instead to demonstrate their interrelation, especially as a source of stereotypes about and participated in by Italian Americans. As such, I might mention that this collection offers some passing references to popular culture—for example, Mario Puzo, The Sopranos, the exchange of influences between Italian American gangster imagery and African American hip hop—but generally sticks to conventional notions of folklore and avoids media representations. Future work showing their shared relation would be a great benefit.
My point here is not meant as a criticism of this excellent collection, nor as an expectation that the authors become sharp critics of their own culture. I recognize with cautious admiration that folklorists tend to be celebratory rather than critical of vernacular expression and belief, especially if the history of a given people is marred by marginalization. I mention this concern, then, because I am inspired by these contributors and I would like to see them gather together again. What better reason than to tackle the problems of social injustice still haunting Italian American experience? We are fortunate to have this collection from these formidable scholars of vernacular expression; let us hope we are fortunate to learn soon enough that another is in the works.
Works Cited
Del Giudice, Luisa. 1993. Studies in Italian American Folklore. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Malpezzi, Frances, and William Clements. 1992. Italian-American Folklore. Little Rock: August House, Inc.
--------
[Review length: 1999 words • Review posted on December 17, 2013]