| Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors 2002 Edition Contributor(s): Giunta, Edvige (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0312294697 ISBN-13: 9780312294694 Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan OUR PRICE: $52.24 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2002 Annotation: "Writing with an Accent" explores the variety of uses of ethnic voice in the narratives of contemporary Italian American women. Writers such as Mary Cappello, Louise DeSalvo, Agnes Rossi, Helen Barolini, Tina De Rosa, and Sandra M. Gilbert enact, in their works, a self-silencing of ethnic voice, critically modifying accepted representations and mythologies of Italian American culture through distinct and inventive narrative inflections. Accent, that which emphasizes and alters language, functions as the cultural and metaphorical lens through which Giunta reads a rich body of work that is still awaiting widespread recognition. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - Literary Criticism | Women Authors - Literary Criticism | European - General |
| Dewey: 810.992 |
| LCCN: 2001048209 |
| Physical Information: 0.63" H x 5.54" W x 8.26" (0.56 lbs) 203 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Italian - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Mary Cappello, Louise DeSalvo, Sandra M. Gilbert, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Carole Maso, Agnes Rossi. These are some of the best-known Italian American writers today. They are part of a literary tradition with mid-twentieth century roots that began to develop, in earnest, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During those decades, a number of Italian American women, such as Helen Barolini, began to publish books that depicted their perspectives on life through the critical lenses of gender, class, and ethnicity. At the end of the twentieth century, this literature finally blossomed into a fully fledged cultural movement that also took into account issues of sexuality, age, illness, and familial and societal abuse. Writing with an Accent takes a look at this vibrant literary movement by discussing those first writers of the 1970s and 1980s as well as later authors. At the center of Edvige Giunta s Writing with an Accent is the literal notion of accent, the marker of linguistic and cultural difference that separates and identifies recent immigrants to the United States. In this study, an accent symbolically embodies the differences and creative strategies through which contemporary Italian American women writers engage Italian American culture in works of fiction, poetry, and memoir. Giunta also looks at the links between the literature and art, music, film, and video produced by contemporary Italian American women. The literature of the Italian American women in Writing with an Accent is shaped by the complicated connections these authors maintain with their cultural origins, but also, and perhaps more importantly, by their feminist consciousness and politicized sense of ethnic identity. Writing with an Accent celebrates and explores a group of authors who characteristically mix the joy and pain of Italian American life to paint a multifaceted picture of Italian American women and their complex place in U.S. culture. |