.::DICEMBRE 2005::.

Italian-American Women Writers

Breaking a Silence

by Teresa Maria Russo

From the time of the first chronology of Italian-American writing by Olga Peragallo in 1949 and the publication of Francis Winwar, the most famous, albeit unidentifiably Italian-American female writer in the first half of the twentieth century, until the mid-1970s, the Italian-American female voice was virtually absent from American literature altogether. During the post World War II economic boom of the conservative 1950s and the social and political upheaval of the 1960s, Italian-American women remained silent. While they began to break their silences after the Woman’s Movement and become published authors, their work was largely unrecognized and this was due in large part to American society’s unwillingness to accept Italian-American women as writers and intellectuals. Throughout the 1980s, while they developed and published their writings, Italian-American women received almost no recognition as ethnic American writers. This unwillingness to acknowledge Italian-Americans as intellectuals was born from an anti-intellectual sentiment that surrounded them and continues to surround them in mass media and popular culture. The realities Americans have created for themselves regarding the figure of Italian-American women do not actually represent any heterogeneous population. They have been fabricated through images based on stereotypes that have been exaggerated and transformed to ensure public appeal. Thus, it has been the responsibility of Italian-American women to question their representation and to continue to pursue the literary position that remains elusive to them. Added to the historical situation of these women, these social challenges provided yet another obstacle for Italian-American women writers to overcome. However, overcome them they did. 

Two contemporary Italian-American women, Helen Barolini and Rita Ciresi, have expressed in their works very different Italian-American voices, exemplifying the respective times in which they wrote. On the one hand, Barolini’s first novel and groundbreaking work for Italian-American women, Umbertina, exposes the internal struggle for empowerment women of her heritage endure, while exemplifying the fact that Italian-American women lost their autonomy and independence they had known in nineteenth century southern Italy. Barolini chooses to expose the isolation from literature of Italian-American women and the writers they produce by giving a voice to generations of women who will forever remain silent. On the other hand, contemporary writer Rita Ciresi amplifies the isolation that Barolini addresses in her work. There is a certain developmental writing process that occurs in order for ethnic American writers to be able to utilize their ethnicity creatively while still applying it to more universal themes. For this to occur, writers have to look past their ethnicity as a limiting force of their writing and instead view it and use it as a platform from which they can develop perspectives on more universally applicable issues. Recognizing this process that ethnic writing must perform in establishing itself, I noted how the late development of Italian-American women writing causes contemporary authors to experience a certain anxiety in relinquishing their ability to write about the cultural conflicts they and those that have come before them have faced. Ciresi writes about the elements of cultural conflict and assimilation that plagued millions of Italian-Americans in the 1950s in a 1980s setting. Her works, primarily published after 1996, exhibit a certain inauthenticity in that there exists a certain tension between the nostalgic elements of Italian culture she employs and the extent to which Italian-Americans have assimilated into American society in 2005. This is a symptom of Italian-American women writers’ unwillingness to see beyond their ethnicity as a constraining power, which is a direct result of their late coming to writing. Collectively, their works reveal a narrative of Italian-American women authors that deserves a larger reception that what it has been granted. 

Theirs is a literature that exposes the feminine side to an Italian-American narrative, a feminine perspective that has defined great odds in establishing itself. Italian-American women did not have the mastery of the English language that African-American women obtained, nor do they have the self-confidence and education Jewish women were granted. While they identify most with Chicanes, as women and as writers, they have not suffered the oppressive discrimination that has plagued the Latina culture for years, allowing Latina women to forge a certain supportive camaraderie. Nor have Italian-American women integrated into Anglo-American culture to the degree that would eliminate their identifiable ethnicity. They were the only immigrants who did not have a unifying language, neither in their native country, nor in America . As women, they grappled with resolving roles of Italian-American wives and mothers and independent women of the United States . As writers, until the last decade of the twentieth century they remained isolated from literature and trapped between two cultures without support.  This lack of a sense of belonging, both personal and professional, resounds in the writings of Italian-American women.