Title

Ethnie Regionalism In American Literature: The Case Of Sicilian/American Writers

Keywords

Ethnic; Identity; Italian; Italian-American; Jerre Mangione; Literature; Regionalism; Sicilian; Sicilian-American; Sicilianamericanità

Abstract

Throughout the 1900s, the sense of a distinct Sicilian-ness manifested itself in a corpus of texts by Italian authors such as Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello, Leonardo Sciascia, Vincenzo Consolo, and Andrea Camilleri, just to mention a few. Interestingly, a parallel phenomenon seems to have emerged in the United States. While attempting to redefine the concept of Americanness and expand the canon of American literature so that it embraces articulations of ethnic identities, many Sicilian-American writers have turned their works into Iiterary manifestations of ethnic regionalism. In this essay, I have tried to answer questions such as: Why and how have many Sicilian and Sicilian-American writers engaged in Iiterary regionalism? How did a sense of Sicilian-ness develop in the US, and turn into Sicilian Americanness, or as I have called it sicilianamericanità? Ultimately, I suggest that the construction of a regional ethnic identity in American literature functions as a discourse that aims to question the reduction of the complex fabric of a population to a homogenous version of national identity, be it "American" or "Italian." Seen from this perspective, a seemingly particularistic study on sicilianamericanità could provide scholars of literary studies with precious insights about the meaning of cultural constructions of national identities and literatures.

Publication Date

12-1-2007

Publication Title

Tamkang Review

Volume

38

Issue

1

Number of Pages

117-143

Document Type

Review

Personal Identifier

scopus

Socpus ID

42949130088 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/42949130088

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