Theodora Patrona, Return Narratives. Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature

Theodora Patrona, Return Narratives. Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017. Pp. 209. ISBN: 9781611479959 Sostene M. Zangari In his poem “Heritage,” Countee Cullen articulates the cultural void affecting African-American intellectuals who, denied direct access to their ancestral home, were not able to turn its culture and traditions into that ‘usable past’ that could provide the foundations for construct..

“Things Change but the Amerecano Is Here to Stay”: America in Italian Popular Movies of the 1980s

Sostene M. ZangariUniversity of MilanItaly“Things Change but the Amerecano Is Here to Stay”: America in Italian Popular Movies of the 1980sThe article focuses on a number of film comedies of the early 1980s. In different ways, the movies rearticulate the relationship between Italy and the United States. In showing how Italians can beat Americans at sports, how they can indulge in conspicuous consumption and finally how even the United States are not alien to provincialism and backwardness, these movies express a new mood of confidence that was widely felt in Italian society at the time. However, these movies came at a moment when the Italian film industry was on the verge of its decline. Starting from the 1980s, in fact, American movies and distributors would colonize the Italian movie market and depress the Italian movie industry