The North American Italian Renaissance: Italian Writing in America and Canada

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish Studies at Laurentian
University.

The 33 previously published reviews that make up this slim volume
provide a broad impression of the range, talents, and activities of
Italian writers on this continent. There are a number of troubling
issues, however. The first is that these book reviews are misleadingly
called “essays.” This is not to say that the reviews are not
insightful nor informative: they are. But they do not offer the depth of
critical analysis that one expects from an essay. Scambray’s
introduction, on the other hand, is more like it: a brief examination of
the historical situation faced by ethnic literature on the battleground
of the “culture war” in America, and an overview of the particulars
defining Italian writing in Canada and the United States.

The reviews are grouped into 10 sections. Although each section is
dictated by a common theme (e.g., “The Italian Autobiography”), one
wonders why Helen Bartolini, Theresa Carilli, and Tina De Rosa are
included in the broad category of narrative rather than in “Discovery
and Definition: Italian American Women Writers,” especially since an
anthology edited by Bartolini is one of the two works featured in the
section on women writers. The section on Italian Canadians includes only
four authors, inadvertently and misleadingly suggesting that there
isn’t much more activity north of the border. A brief introduction to
each section to deal with issues such as these would have been helpful.
Finally, without any indication of the publication dates of the works
reviewed, there is no sense of the chronology of the North American
Italian renaissance.

Flaws aside, as an indication of the variety and richness of writing by
Italians in Canada and the United States, this collection is a good
beginning.