An Annotated Bibliography of Italian American Studies

Non-Fiction and Autobiographies

Page 24: from Lloyd to Panunzio

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Lloyd, Susan Caperna. No Pictures in My Grave: a Spiritual Journey in Sicily. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1992.
[The story of an award winning flimmaker’s trips to Trapani, Sicily which began out of curiosity and ended with her finding a lost part of herself and a new home inside Sicilian culture.]
 
Mangione, Jerre. The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project 1935-1943. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1972. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
[Because of his previous experience in the publishing field, Mangione was offered a job in the Federal Writers' Project as National Coordinating Editor. Mangione's experience in the Federal Writers' Project is documented in this rich social history of America in the thirties.]
 
---. An Ethnic at Large: a Memoir of America in the Thirties and Forties. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania P, 1983.
[Early portions of the book involve a retelling of the experiences in Mount Allegro, but now these events appear from an even greater distance both in time and space. Mangione, at age sixty-nine, re-examines his life from childhood through age thirty-five. Structured chronologically, it charts the development of Mangione's career as a writer and Federal civil servant and dramatizes the cross-cultural experiences he encounters in America.]
 
---. Mount Allegro. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
[Mount Allegro has remained in print most of the years since its first appearance , a feat which required six publishers to date and prompted Malcolm Cowley to write in a personal letter to Mangione: "Mount Allegro has had more lives than any other book of our time." An American-born son of Sicilian immigrants, Mangione grew up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Rochester, New York.]
 
--- A Passion for Sicilians: the World Around Danilo Dolci. New York: William Morrow, 1968. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985.
[The story/report of Mangione's study of the methods and actions of Italian social activist, Danilo Dolci. Supported by a Fullbright Fellowship, Mangione and his wife Patricia traveled to Sicily in 1965 to observe Dolci's work. He joined Dolci's staff and came in contact with supporters as well as enemies of Dolci's radical methods of empowering the people.]
 
---. Reunion in Sicily. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
[The reunion that he experiences in Sicily goes beyond the strengthening of ties between families in two worlds. The book reveals the important process of self-reintegration. Structured as a personal travelogue and political report (ten years after his first visit) Mangione’s memoirs look at post-war life in Italy and document the transition from dictatorship to self-government. Mangione’s second trip to Sicily was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.]
 
Marchiello, Maurice R. Crossing the Tracks. New York: Vantage Press, 1969.
[Vignettes, many of which appeared in the early issues of the Fra Noi, recount Marchiello’s life’s progress from Southern Illinois coal mining town to big city Chicago in the 1940s and 50s.]
 
Marzani, Carl. The Education of a Reluctant Radical: Roman Childhood, Book 1. New York: Topical Books, 1992.
[The first installment of a planned multi-volume series, Roman Childhood covers Marzani's life from his 1912 birth through his immigration to America in 1924. Marzani, proud of his Roman heritage, which he can trace back through twenty-seven generations, uses family photos, proverbs, song lyrics, to document life in pre-fascist Italy and the rise of Mussolini which forced his family to immigrate to America.]
 
---. The Education of a Reluctant Radical: Growing up American, Book 2. New York: Topical Books, 1993.
[From immigration to America through graduation from Williams College, this volume captures the transformation of Marzani from Italian/American greenhorn to Oxford scholar. Besides formal schooling, Marzani supplemented his education with a cross country hitchhiking trip during the height of the Depression.]
 
---. The Education of a Reluctant Radical: Spain, Munich and Dying Empires, Book 3. New York: Topical Books, 1994.
[Marzani recalls his student days in 1936 at Oxford University. Out of curiosity and a strong anti-fascist beliefs, the young scholar visits Spain and finds himself fighting fascism alongside the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return to Oxford he reluctantly joins the Communist Party. And while those actions would later become the foundation for Marzani’s persecution, the bulk of this installment is devoted to an incredible honeymoon-hitch-hiking tour of Nazi controlled Germany, Eastern Europe, Syria, India, Laos, China and Japan in which Marzani and his bride meet Ghandi, Nehru, Chinese generals and Japanese secret police.]
 
Mazzuchelli, Samuel. The Memories of Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, O.P. Chicago: The Priory Press, 1967.
[These memoirs of life in the Dominican Order are among the first written by an Italian American.]
 
Montana, Pietro. Memories: an Autobiography. Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1977.
[A native of Sicily comes to the U.S. and becomes an award-winning painter and sculptor.]
 
Morreale, Ben. Down and out in Academia. New York: Pitman Publishing Corp., 1972.
[Morreale’s account of the frustration of his early years in higher education is a biting criticism of campus politics--which kept him one of the lowest paid professors in the SUNY system, as well as an account of early 1960s American intellectual subculture.]
 
Napoli, Joseph. A Dying Cadence: Memories of a Sicilian Childhood. W. Bethesda, MD: Marna Press, 1986.
[The reminiscence of an orphan who was adopted by Sicilian parents. The story travels from his childhood, through his parent's lives and ends with his experiences during and after World War II.]
 
Panunzio, Constantine. The Soul of an Immigrant. New York: Macmillan, 1921.
[Panunzio's autobiography contains two stories of conversions both of which relate to his Americanization: The first , from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism, the second from Italian to American citizenship. His use of selections from English and American poetry to introduce each chapter provides evidence that he has come to understand and accept "the genius of the Anglo-Saxon mind and character of the soul of America."]

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