The Italian-American Experience in Fiction
A Kiss from Maddalena, by Christopher Castellani. Algonquin
Books of Chapel Hill, 2003.
During the spring of 1943 as the war is closing
in on Santa Clara, Italy, young Vito Leone, who is still living safely at home
while his peers have left to fight, courts Maddalena Piccinelli, the 15-year-old
daughter of the region's most successful merchant.
The Saint of Lost Things: a Novel, by Christopher Castellani.
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005.
In this follow-up to his debut novel, A Kiss from
Maddalena, Castellani picks up Maddalena Grasso's story in 1953, when she
is seven years settled in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Queen of the Big Time: a Novel, by Adriana Trigiani. Random
House, 2004.
Set in early 20th-century, this novel explores the rigors of farm life and
the trials of romantic and familial relations of Nella Castelluca.
Lucia, Lucia: a Novel, by Adriana Trigiani. Random House,
2003.
Looks back on the experiences of the beautiful daughter of an Italian-American
family in Greenwich Village in the early '50s.
I Love You Like a Tomato, by Marie Giordano. Tom Doherty
Associates, 2003.
ChiChi Maggiordino will do anything to get God's attention. When her grandmother
teaches her how to use the Evil Eye, telling her it's how Jesus Christ made
his miracles and how the Italians got rid of Mussolini, ChiChi realizes it's
what her prayers have been missing.
The Sisters Mallone:
Una Storia Di Famiglia, by Louisa Ermelino. Simon & Schuster, 2002.
This is the story of Frankie
Merelli who marries into an Italian family in the 1950’s. Mary, Helen
and Gracie are sisters raised in a non-traditional family and are closer than
close.
In Revere, in Those
Days: a Novel, by Roland Merullo. Shaye Areheart Books, 2002.
Set in the 1960’s when
11-year-old Anthony Benedetto's parents die in an airplane crash. He is saved
by the loving presence of his extended Italian family in this charmingly written
coming-of-age novel.
The Black Madonna, by Louisa Ermelino. Simon & Schuster,
2001.
Forget the Mafia; it's the
mamas you have to look out for. At least that's what author Louisa Ermelino
would have you believe in her feisty debut novel about life in New York's Little
Italy, an old-fashioned neighborhood, from the '40s through the '60s.
I Don't Want to Go
to Jail: a Good Novel, by Jimmy Breslin. Brown and Company, 2001.
Fausti "The Fist"
Dellacava, a gangster's gangster, is an old school tough guy and a tyrant who
uses his Mafia power to indulge a variety of desires. His nephew and namesake
on the other hand decides that the threat of jail is a steep price to pay for
a mobster's life of leisure and tries to establish himself beyond the Mob.
Sometimes I Dream
in Italian, by Rita Ciresi. Delacorte, 2000.
A collection of bittersweet
stories chronicling the lives of sisters Angelina and Lina Lupo, the daughters
of Italian-American immigrant parents, as they grow up in '60s and '70s New
Haven, Connecticut, dealing with their overbearing, unhappy mother and overworked
father, a soda delivery man.
Blue Italian,
by Rita Ciresi. Ecco Press, 1996.
The marriage of Rosa Salvatore,
a Roman Catholic Italian, and Yale law student Gary Fisher, the only child of
prosperous Jewish parents (he himself is an atheist) in Long Island, comes to
a sad end, but not in the way Rosa had feared.
The Godfather,
by Mario Puzo. Putnam, 1969.
Puzo's landmark saga of a New York Mafia family headed by Don Vito Corleone
as he struggles to control the dangerous criminal underworld. By the same author:
The Last Don (RH, 1996) and Omerta (RH, 2000).
Read also: The Godfather
Returns (by Mark Winegardner, RH, 2004).
Rococo,
by Adriana Trigiani. RH, 2005.
It is a dream job for successful
New Jersey interior designer Bartolomeo di Crespied--redecorating Our Lady of
Fatima church. Determined to bring talent, sophistication, and his aesthetic
vision to his hometown, he recruits Rufus McSherry, a strapping, handsome artist,
Pedro Allercon, a stained-glass artisan, and a host of other colorful characters
to bring new life to the old church. But how will he cope when the project's
primary benefactor suddenly pulls out? And will "B" finally find true
love?
Vita, by
Melania G. Mazzucco. FSG, 2005.
In this fictionalized narrative of the arrival of the author's family in America,
12-year-old Diamante and 9-year-old Vita make the long and arduous journey from
Italy to Ellis Island and then struggle to survive in the Land of Opportunity
amid the poverty and crime of Little Italy.
Selected & Annotated by Dana Mottola
Sachem Public
Library
150 Holbrook Road
Holbrook, NY 11741
631 588-5024
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