Feeling Italian

Thomas J. Ferraro is Associate Professor of English at Duke University. He is the author of Ethnic Passages and editor of Catholic Lives, Contemporary 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." (Multicultural Review) "Feeling Italian is a smart book, one that makes the reader think beyond the usual ways of looking at whats Italian about the US." (American Book Review) "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." - Jay Parini,author of Passage to Liberty: The Story of Italian Immigration and the Rebirth of America "This inspired, sophisticated, provoking book should command the attention of anybody interested in American Italianness in particular or the cultural consequences of ethnicity in general. Joseph Stella and Frank Sinatra, Maria Barbella and Giancarlo Esposito, Madonna and the good people who brought you the Corleones and Sopranos;they and others appear here, often seen in startlingly fresh ways, as creators and exemplars of the aesthetic Tom Ferraro calls & feeling Italian. Wise, funny, contagiously enthusiastic, Ferraro takes us far beyond the narrow pieties of the identity police or anti-defamation types as he traces the development of a widely accessible American cultural style that still bears the marks of distinctively Italian ways of making do and making sense." - Carlo Rotella,author of Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt "Ferraro traces the 'evolution and persistence' of an identifiable Italian American identity, from the time of widespread Italian immigration in the late 1800s through popular mediated portrayals of Italian Americans such as those found in The Sopranos television series. The book is an important contribution not only to Italian American studies, but to the understanding of ethnicity in the 21st-century US." (Choice)

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Feeling Italian 1. Honor: Friday Bloody Friday 2. City: New York Delirious 3. Job: Close to the Flesh and Smell and Joy of Them 4. Mother: The Madonnas of Tenth Avenue 5. Song: A Punch in Everyman's Kisser 6. Crime: La Cosa Nostra Americana 7. Romance: Only a Paper Moon? 8. Diva: Our Lady the Dominatrix of Pop 9. Skin: Giancarlo and the Border Patrol 10. Table: Cine Cucina Conclusion: The Art of Ethnicity in AmericaNotes Narrative Bibliography IndexAbout the Author