Breaking Open: Reflections on Italian-American Writers Paperback - 2003

From the publisher

How does ones heritage impact creativity? Breaking Open explores the deep connection between prominent Italian American women writers, their heritage, and their writing. In-depth discussions of these writers' family traditions and memories of growing up in an American culture as an Italian child, including the difficulties of dueling dialects and dual cultures, explain how their unique cultural connections have impacted their work. For many of these writers, there has been a distinctive separation between their involvement with their families, immersed as they were in the culture the immigrants brought to this country, and their eventual rise to positions of prominence in academic or literary circles in the United States. While reading Breaking Open, readers are encouraged to determine for themselves whether or not this is the case. In trying to establish a unified identity, Italian American women writers face conflicting home values, those steeped in the traditions of the Italians (immigrants) and those values emerging out of a sense of what it means to be Italian-American. These differing views are further confounded by the beliefs of the overarching American society. As writers, they discuss the ways these conflicts are represented in their works and discuss the ways their childhood memories of immigrants and their practices have been a strong foundation for their creativity. In addition, five scholars in the field of Italian American literature critically analyze works by many of the creative writers in this anthology and discuss the future of the field.