Italian Ties

Bill Tonelli’s anthology, The Italian American Reader, is just out in paperback and is (remarkably) the first collection of fine Italian American writing for the general public. It includes almost seventy pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by fine American writers with Italian roots such as Don DeLillo, Gay Talese, Camille Paglia, Mario Puzo, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Dana Gioia, Victoria Gotti, John Fante, and Helen Barolini.

Organized loosely under the topics of Home; Mom; Pop; Sex, Love, and Good Looks; Food; Death; Work; God; Each Other; and Everybody Else, some works embrace Italian culture, some ignore it. Some are recent, some go back to the ‘30s. Critic Harold Bloom called it “a comprehensive and poignant collection of a highly distinctive and valuable body of literary work,” and filmmaker Martin Scorsese praised Tonelli’s “verve, taste and humor” in its assemblage.

This reading features Tonelli and two other writers from that collection, Mary Caponegro, professor of writing and literature at Bard College, and Fred Gardaphe, professor of Italian American studies and director of SUNY Stony Brook’s American and Italian/American Studies programs.

Tonelli, from Ossining, is a journalist and a magazine editor who has worked at Rolling Stone, Esquire and Philadelphia Magazine. He is also the author of the 1994 nonfiction book, The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America.

Caponegro is the author of Tales From the Next Village, The Star Cafe, Five Doubts, and The Complexities of Intimacy, as well as Materia Prima, just published in Italian by Leconte Press. She has received the GE Award for Younger Writers, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy/Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Bruno-Arcudi Award.

Gardaphe’s books include Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative; Dagoes Read: Tradition and the Italian/American Writer; Moustache Pete is Dead! and Leaving Little Italy. He is co-founding/co-editor of VIA: Voices in Italian Americana and editor of the Italian American Culture Series of SUNY Press.

Mary Caponegro photo by Marcos Jorge

All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.

Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)

The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale Foundation; the David G. Taft Foundation; the Orchard Foundation; and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.

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