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Summary
Summary
In the United States, African American and Italian cultures have been intertwined for more than a hundred years. From as early as nineteenth-century African American opera star Thomas Bowers--"The Colored Mario"--all the way to hip-hop entrepreneur Puff Daddy dubbing himself "the Black Sinatra," the affinity between black and Italian cultures runs deep and wide. Once you start looking, you'll find these connections everywhere. Sinatra croons bel canto over the limousine swing of the Count Basie band. Snoop Dogg deftly tosses off the line "I'm Lucky Luciano 'bout to sing soprano." Like the Brooklyn pizzeria and candy store in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever , or the basketball sidelines where Italian American coaches Rick Pitino and John Calipari mix it up with their African American players, black/Italian connections are a thing to behold--and to investigate.
In Flavor and Soul , John Gennari spotlights this affinity, calling it "the edge"--now smooth, sometimes serrated--between Italian American and African American culture. He argues that the edge is a space of mutual emulation and suspicion, a joyous cultural meeting sometimes darkened by violent collision. Through studies of music and sound, film and media, sports and foodways, Gennari shows how an Afro-Italian sensibility has nourished and vitalized American culture writ large, even as Italian Americans and African Americans have fought each other for urban space, recognition of overlapping histories of suffering and exclusion, and political and personal rispetto .
Thus, Flavor and Soul is a cultural contact zone--a piazza where people express deep feelings of joy and pleasure, wariness and distrust, amity and enmity. And it is only at such cultural edges, Gennari argues, that America can come to truly understand its racial and ethnic dynamics.
Author Notes
John Gennari is associate professor of English and critical race and ethnic studies at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics , also published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont, with his wife and their twin daughters.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this thought-provoking, academic, yet often lively study, Gennari, an associate professor of English and ethnic studies at the University of Vermont, explores the intersections between African-American and Italian-American culture. He notes, for instance, how men from both groups have been stigmatized as "dangerous public enemies" while black and Italian-American mothers, epitomized by Aunt Jemima and Mamma Mia, are sentimentalized "as crucial to the 'mothering' of a nation." Gennari also explores how Italian and black musicians, such as Enrico Caruso and Louis Armstrong, helped replace the U.S.'s Puritan mores with a new, more physically expressive and emotional popular culture. And Frank Sinatra, besides being a "state-sanctioned compulsory experience" for the author's Italian-American New Jersey relatives, was revered by rappers like Puff Daddy and Jay Z for his "stylish virility." In his analysis of Spike Lee's movies, especially Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, Gennari convincingly shows how the black film director, who grew up in a multiethnic Brooklyn neighborhood, adroitly captures Italian-American life. Whether he's discussing the relationship between Italian-American basketball coaches and black players or the importance of food to both cultures, Gennari shows that despite tensions between them, black and Italian-Americans have much in common and understand one another better than many outsiders realize. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
Gennari (English, race and ethnic studies, Univ. of Vermont) seeks to understand the symbiotic relationship of Italian Americans and African Americans in their respective creation (and re-creation) of racial and ethnic identity. He is particularly concerned with the "boundaries and edges" where the two cultures come together. Through the use of personal biography and "interlocking" case studies of music, film, media, sport, and food, the author explores the deep, complex, and often misunderstood historical and contemporary connections between Italian American and African American culture(s). Throughout the book, Gennari bolsters his theoretical suppositions with an encyclopedic range of vivid, carefully culled examples from pop culture spanning several decades. He weaves these examples together in a theoretical tapestry, engaging the reader throughout the process. Readers are left with a novel conceptualization of the ethnic identity formation process and the importance of the Other in this process. In sum, this is a well-written, thought-provoking, and well-researched work that is an important contribution in the areas of Italian American studies specifically, and race and ethnic relations and identity in general. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries. --John R. Mitrano, Central Connecticut State University
Table of Contents
Introduction: Who Put the Wop in Doo-Wop?" | p. 1 |
1 Top Wop | p. 25 |
2 Everybody Eats | p. 73 |
3 Spike and His Goombahs | p. 115 |
4 Sideline Shtick | p. 165 |
5 Tutti | p. 213 |
Acknowledgments | p. 243 |
Notes | p. 251 |
Index | p. 279 |