An Annotated Bibliography of Italian American Studies

Fiction

Page 16:  from LaPolla to Manfredi

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La Polla, Garibaldi M. The Fire in the Flesh. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1931.
[An immigrant couple make their way in America as the wife uses her beauty and her unwitting husband.]
 
---. Miss Rollins in Love. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1932.
[An American school teacher falls in love with an Italian-American student and shows him the way to achieving the American Dream.]
 
---. The Grand Gennaro. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1935.
[The story of an Italian immigrant who rises to the head of a Little Italy only to be destroyed by a boyhood companion he had wronged along the way.]
 
La Puma, Salvatore. The Boys of Bensonhurst. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
[The collection won a 1987 Flannery O'Connor featuring stories that recreate pre World War II life in the Brooklyn neighborhood of his boyhood.]
 
---. A Time for Wedding Cake. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
[Recounts the story of two Bensonhurst brothers who return to the old neighborhood after serving in World War II. Mario, a war hero turned bricklayer and Gene, a medic turned school teacher.]
 
---. Teaching Angels to Fly. W. W. Norton, 1992.
[A literary flight out of the more traditional and folktale-like world of his earlier work. With this latest collection of fourteen stories La Puma successfully steers his talents into the larger and more complex world of contemporary literature.]
 
Lombreglia, Ralph. Men under Water. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
[A fine collection of stories that are indirectly ethnic if at all; most have appeared in national publications, some in collections of best American short stories.]
 
---. Make Me Work. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
[A superb collection featuring "A Half Hour With God’s Heroes," one of the great Italian-American short stories.]
 
Longo, Lucas. The Family on Vendetta Street. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1968.
[Gathered from the author’s experience as a New York social worker, this novel analyzes the pressures that precipitate violence in a Little Italy.]
 
Madalena, Lawrence. Confetti for Gino. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1959.
[A Sicilian-American from a San Diego fishing colony falls in love with a non-Italian girl.]
 
Mancini, Anthony. Minnie Santangelo’s Mortal Sin. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1975.
[A portrait of an immigrant woman solving the mysteries of modern life. ]
 
---. Minnie Santangelo and the Evil Eye. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1977.
[The further adventures of Mancini’s warm and wild immigrant woman.]
 
---. The Miracle of Pelham Bay Park. New York: Dutton, 1982.
[The 1941 appearance of the Madonna to a young girl shakes up a Bronx neighborhood.]
 
Manes, Rose Tavino. Prima Vera. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Ashley Books, 1991.
[A fictionalized version of the author’s life story spans eight decades and recounts the continuity and perpetual renewal of an Italian family and its American extensions through immigration.]
 
Manfredi, Renee. Where Love Leaves Us. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1994.
[Most of the stories in this Iowa Short Fiction Award winning collection are set in Pittsburgh’s Italian/American neighborhoods and revolve around relationships among fathers, mothers and their daughters]

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