Feeling Italian The Art of Ethnicity in America [Paperback]

2006 American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation
Southern Italian emigration to the United States peaked a full century ago—descendents are now fourth and fifth generation, dispersed from their old industrial neighborhoods, professionalized, and fully integrated into the “melting pot.” Surely the social historians are right: Italian Americans are fading into the twilight of their ethnicity. So, why is the American imagination enthralled by The Sopranos, and other portraits of Italian-ness?
Italian American identity, now a mix of history and fantasy, flesh-and-bone people and all-too-familiar caricature, still has something to teach us, including why each of us, as citizens of the U.S. twentieth century and its persisting cultures, are to some extent already Italian. Contending that the media has become the primary vehicle of Italian sensibilities, Ferraro explores a series of books, movies, paintings, and records in ten dramatic vignettes. Featured cultural artifacts run the gamut, from the paintings of Joseph Stella and the music of Frank Sinatra to The Godfather’s enduring popularity and Madonna’s Italian background. In a prose style as vivid as his subjects, Ferraro fashions a sardonic love song to the art and iconography of Italian America.

Ferraro maintains a breezy, journalistic style that has produced an easy and entertaining read. His work may give hope to people of other ethnicities who presently suffer from isolation and alienation on the part of the general American public. Feeling Italian is a smart book, one that makes the reader think beyond the usual ways of looking at whats Italian about the US. Original and deeply right. There is no other book that digs so deeply into the matter at hand, and does so with such eloquence and ferocity of intellect. Ferraro traces the 'evolution and persistence' of an identifiable Italian American identity, from the time of widespread Italian immiló7