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Italian Canadian Writing: Then and Now By Joseph Pivato
An explosion of new books have come from Italian / Canadian writers across the country. Let us go to the obscure origins of this writing. aterina Edwards has produced the powerful memoir, Finding Rosa (2008), and Mary di Michele has recreated C the life of Caruso in Tenor of Love (2005), Licia Canton has debuted with a moving collection of short stories in Almond Wine and Fertility (2008), Delia De Santis is full of surprises in Fast Forward (2008), and Nino Ricci is forever ambiguous about his Italian origins in The Origin of Species (2008). These must-read books emerge from the literary context of over thirty years of immigrant writers struggling to make their voices heard above the cacophony of EnglishFrench disputes over language and culture. Let us go to the obscure origins of this writing. From its misty beginnings in the 1920s ItalianCanadian writing has existed in English, French and Italian. Liborio Lattoni wrote in Italian while Francesco M. Gualtieri published in English. La Ville sans femmes (1945) by Mario Duliani appeared in French and Italian. Gianni Grohovaz, Elena Randaccio and Guglielmo Vangelisti (Gli Italiani in Canada, 1956), who published in the 1950s in Italian, were followed by younger authors who actively participated in both the growth of Canadian literature and the flowering of multiculturalism, thus making an impact on mainstream English and French Canadian writing. The breakthrough came with Roman Candles (1978) a poetry anthology edited by the enigmatic Pier Giorgio Di Cicco. The bilingual tradition continued with Alexandre Amprimoz’s Selected Poems (1979), Sur le damier des tombes (1983); Filippo Salvatore’s Suns of Darkness (1980) and La Fresque de Mussolini (1985); Romano Perticarini’s Quelli della fionda (1981); Maria Ardizzi’s Made in Italy (1982); and Antonio D’Alfonso’s The Other Shore (1986)and L’autre rivage (1999). Poets outnumbered novelists in the 1980s and received awards and recognition through inclusion in major antholo-
gies. The narrative verse of Pier Giorgio Di Cicco’s The Tough Romance (1979), Mary Di Michele’s Mimosa and Other Poems (1981), George Amabile’s The Presence of Fire (1982), Len Gasparini’s Breaking and Entering (1980); Gianna Patriarca’s Italian Women and Other Tragedies (1994) show strong autobiographical elements. Diverse themes began to appear in the books of younger poets: Pasquale Verdicchio (The House Is Past, 2000), Mary Melfi (Stages: Selected Poems, 1998), Dore Michelut, Loyalty to the Hunt (1986), Sante Viselli, and Genni Gunn. All are fascinating authors of intriguing books. In fiction, authors focused on chronicling the immigrant experience and beyond. F.G. Paci’s Black Madonna (1982) and Under the Bridge (1992) are novels in the realist tradition. Caterina Edwards’s The Lion’s Mouth (1982), Island of the Nightingales (1994); and Marisa De Francheschi’s Surface Tension (1994) explore women’s views on ethnic identity. When Nino Ricci won the Governor General’s Literary Award in fiction for Lives of the Saints (1990) many Italian-Canadian writers began to receive more attention. Anecdotal stories by Dino Minni (Other Selves, 1985), Darlene Madott (Bottled Roses, 1985, Joy, Joy, Why Do I Sing, 2004), Michael Mirolla (The Formal Logic of Emotion , 1991), Genni Gunn ( On the Road, 1991), Delia De Santis (Fast Forward, 2008), and Licia Canton (Almond Wine and Fertility, 2008) highlight the ironies and joys of life on the margins of mainstream society. In Peter Oliva’s Drowning in Darkness (1993) the narrators experiment with magic realism. There are plays by Caterina Edwards, Homeground , Marco Micone, Addolorata , Vittorio Rossi, Frank Canino The Angelina Project , and Tony Nardi that critiqued the immigrant experience.
In Quebec, Italian writers are identified by their diversity. Tonino Caticchio’s poems in Roman dialect; Dominique De Pasquale’s French plays; Bianca Zagolin’s French novels; Elettra Bedon’s Italian stories; Lisa Carducci’s poems in French and Italian; Marco Fraticelli’s English haiku poems; Corrado Mastropasqua’s Neapolitan poems; and Camillo Menchini’s histories in Italian. The two most successful writers are Fulvio Caccia who won a Governor General’s Award for French poetry with Aknos (1994) and is also known for his short stories and essays; and Marco Micone who has won awards for his plays, Gens du silence (1982) and Addolorata (1984). Carole David and Antonio D’Alfonso both experiment with French prose-poems and poetic narratives. D’Alfonso also founded the vital bilingual press Guernica Editions. Italian-Canadian literature became recognized through the critical attention it received in literary studies: Contrasts (1985), Echo (1994) by J. Pivato, Devils in Paradise (1997) by P. Verdicchio, work by Francesco Loriggio and anthologies by C.M. Di Giovanni, F. Caccia, M. De Francheschi and V. Fazio. The Association of ItalianCanadian Writers was founded in 1986 by a number of the writers listed above. In academia they do not know what to do with this writing. Enoch Padolsky from Carleton calls it ethnic minority writing while George Elliott Clarke in Toronto calls it post-colonial literature. JOSEPH PIVATO teaches literature at Athabasca University and has published: Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing (1991), Echo: Essays on Other Literatures (2002), and The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing (1998). v
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