From Pioneer to Nomad: Essays on Italian North American Writing, and: Echo: Essays on Other Literatures, and: F.G. Paci: Essays on His Works (review)

Editors Joseph Pivato and Antonio D'Alfonso have served as midwives for the birth of Italian-Canadian literature at Guernica Editions. If Frank Paci is one of the fathers of Italian-Canadian literature, then Joseph Pivato is one of the founders of Italian-Canadian criticism. Canada's 'invisible novelist,' Paci has published eight novels since 1978 that deal with his immigrant background in Sault Ste Marie. Pivato's essays in Echo reinforce this notion of beginnings: 'Oral Roots of Italian-Canadian Writing' and 'First Essay on Italian-Canadian Writing' attest to the early stages of this body of writing. These overlapping essays deal with translation, feminism, family, and otherness.

In 'Hating the Self' Pivato usefully compares John Marlyn's Under the Ribs of Death and Frank Paci's The Italians. Occasionally he relies upon description rather than analysis, which reinforces the sense that this writing is in its early stages. More judicious editing could have avoided unnecessary repetition, while Pivato's heavy reliance on copula verbs prevents deeper analysis in the following passage: 'This guilt is common among the generation born in the old country but raised in the new. ... Ambivalence is a common condition of the Italian immigrant experiencing the Canadian duality. ... The myth of the rich man is a recurrent image in immigrant literature. ... There is no image of the rich man in either The Italians or Paci's Black Madonna. In Maria Ardizzi's novel, Made in Italy, the rich man is an image of a wasted life in the new land and ironic death in the old land. Great material success in the Promised Land is not a goal for these people.'

Pivato also examines the 'double' in Italo-Québécois literature. Although he alludes to Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of 'minor literature' and Linda Hutcheon's theories of postmodernism, his essentially thematic criticism fails to enter into more structuralist territory.

Pivato has also edited a collection of essays on F.G. Paci, whose first novel, The Italians, became a Canadian bestseller by 1979. Caterina Edwards discusses the style and lack of irony in two of Paci's novels, Black Blood and Under the Bridge. Roberta Sciff-Zamaro compares Paci's Black Madonna with Atwood's Lady Oracle and Anne Hébert's Kamouraska in their heroines' search for identity. Enoch Padolsky offers a more detailed comparison between Paci and Atwood ('a very "mainstream" ethnic writer).' Anna Carlevaris studies Paci's use of religious imagery, while Marino Trezi explores multiplicity and ironies of identity in Black Madonna. Gaetano Rando extends the comparatist mode to Australia in his analysis of the father figure in Paci's The Italians and Antonio Casella's Italian-Australian novel, The Sensualist (1991). The concluding interviews with Paci, Dino Minni, and Pivato focus primarily on family matters in the life and fiction of this writer. Pivato is to be congratulated for his pioneering effort in bringing to light the fiction of Frank Paci, who captures part of the essence of Italian life in Canada. They have paved the way for the next generation to establish a canon of Italian-Canadian literature that includes Nino Ricci, Mary di Michele, and Pier Giorgio Di Cicco.

Also in Guernica's series, Leonardo Buonomo's From Pioneer to Nomad covers earlier Italian literary history in the United States. He presents a document of imprisonment during the Civil War - Luigi Palma di Cesnola's 'Ten Months in Libby Prison' (1865). Born in Italy in 1832, Cesnola came to America in 1858 as a penniless aristocrat, joined the Union Army, and was captured by the Confederates and imprisoned in Virginia. He is appalled by the conditions in Libby Prison; although his abuse is milder than more recent atrocities, one nevertheless sees parallels to...