Six novels, written in English by Italian Americans and Greek Americans over the past forty years, are examined in pairs in the three main sections of this book, ‘the first comparative study of return works of the two literatures’ (xiii). While Italian American Studies (and surveys of this type of literature) are well advanced, Greek American Studies has ‘made slow but steady progress compared with the Italian American gallop’ (155). The novels deal with attempts by female and male protagonists ‘usually speaking for the authors themselves’ (xix) to achieve a sense of self which acknowledges the contribution of their ethnic heritage to that self-definition. In these attempts, actual or metaphorical journeys of return are undertaken, and myth, folklore and story-telling play a key role. Changing perceptions of ‘ethnic space’ over the forty years spanned by these novels are highlighted. By ‘ethnic space’ is meant ‘the spatial, geographical, and socio-cultural entity of the home country’, that is, the place from which the protagonists’ forebears emigrated, or which they themselves left.
It is important to note that the focus of the book is not so much on the novels themselves, but on the light they throw, comparatively, on the immigrant search for identity, in the light of ethnicity, gender, and the socio-historical contexts in which the immigrants live—economic and political aspects being crucial factors. Changes in their own perspectives on their identity are charted, from rejection (often in response to previous migrants’ stereotypes of their origins), to ‘mystification’ (xiv) of their ethnic heritage. The analysis employs theories of ‘literary and cultural criticism ranging from psychoanalysis to feminist theory, and postmodernist theories’ (xiii).
Other novels, discussed in the Introduction, provide context, as do sociological and historical studies of the immigrant experience. Although anthropological approaches are mentioned (xxi), in-depth studies of the areas from which Italians and Greeks migrated are not referred to, nor is a relevant discussion of ‘the position of [Greek] women: appearance and reality’ (Ernestine Friedl, Anthropological Quarterly 1967). Another possibly helpful source might have been Theodore Saloutos's They Remember America (1956), a study of repatriated Greek Americans; however, his book on the Greeks of the USA (1964) is mentioned.
Also relevant to Patrona's discussion is Margaret Mead's book on the America character (original title And Keep Your Powder Dry, 1942). Mead states that ‘in our behaviour, however many generations … in this country… we are all third generation, our European ancestry tucked away and half forgotten’. She argues that, as all Americans are immigrants, their families will have gone through the stages of leaving a ‘home country’ (first generation, who find that they have to be taught about their new land by their own children, attending local schools), of over-emphasising their assimilation to American values and ways of behaviour, rejecting their immigrant parents’ ways, even intolerant of ‘foreign-ness’ (second generation), and feeling that they have established membership, but maybe only just (third generation), and have to move ‘onward and upwards’.
The first pair of novels are by women and were published in the 1970s: Cora by Daphne Athas (1978) and Umbertina by Helen Barolini (1979). Both have the struggles of American feminism in the 1960s and 1970s as aspects of their context. The first part of Cora is written in the third person, about Don, a young American of Greek origin (Antonis), and about his relationship with the middle-aged Cora. Cora joins Don (whose character suggests aspects of Adonis) in his search for ‘the goddess’, and Cora feels that this might be part of her search for herself. They travel in Greece during the Colonels’ regime (1967–1974). The second part of the novel is written in the first person, as by Cora, and describes her ‘initiation into spirituality’ (26), as, like Persephone, she is first taken into an underworld and then returns from it, transformed. Unfamiliar with this novel, my own reaction to Patrona's summary and discussion of the narrative was one of distaste that the (relatively mild) incarceration of Cora (in a ruined fort in the Peloponnese) in 1971 (while her young lover is tortured), becomes the vehicle for her self-discovery. She experiences ‘tremendous changes’, Don only ‘minor ones’ (15), despite the brutality he has suffered in the torture chamber.
In the second novel of this pair, tracing the stories of four generations of Italian American women, and their reactions to return to their region of origin (on honeymoon, on holiday), the narrative is by no means chronologically straightforward (as Patrona's page references to the novel might suggest). The psychoanalytic sessions of Umbertina's grand-daughter, Marguerite, recounting her feelings about her mother and grand-mother, come early on and are used to place the reader in the context of the family story. Patrona remarks that Marguerite has to rely on her (male) psychoanalyst to help her, stating ‘Like another Persephone, a man has to salvage [save?] her from her imprisonment in this Shadowy Underworld’ (43). Ignoring the grammatical error that it is not a man, but Marguerite who is ‘like Persephone’, one wonders if Patrona realises that it was Demeter who secured the (partial) release of her daughter from the Underworld (although only after begging Zeus to intervene). Maybe the confusion is with Alcestis and Hercules? Or is the confusion Barolini's? In which case, Patrona does not point it out. However, Marguerite is unable to ‘transform’ herself, and it is not until the generation of her daughter, Tina, that this is achieved, in a slow process, through study, after a visit to the home country.
A significant symbol of the strength of women of this Italian American family is a rosemary root, brought from Calabria by Umbertina, the immigrant. At the end of the novel this is replicated by the same plant being placed in the earth at Cape Cod by Marguerite's daughter, Umbertina's great-grandchild and namesake, Tina (standing for Barolini herself). Although the symbolism of the planting is recognised, the link between rosemary and ‘remembrance’ is not stressed as much as is its signalling of a successfully transplanted and integrated ethnic identity.
The second pair of novels, also by women, come from the 1990s: The Priest Fainted, a first person narrative by an unnamed protagonist, by Catherine Temma Davidson (1998) and No Pictures in My Grave, also a first person narrative, of her own experiences, by Susan Caperna Lloyd (1992). In both these novels, cooking (‘ethnic cuisine’) features (although there is no reference to David Sutton's work on food and memory). The dish imam baϊldi (‘the imam fainted’ - some say because of the amount of olive oil used in the dish) provides the title for Davidson's book, while Lloyd's title comes from the custom of placing photos of living family members in the coffin of the deceased, who is believed to protect them.
Lloyd does not go to her father's hometown but to Sicily, where, on a second, solo, visit without her husband and family, she feels that the church of the Black Madonna at Tindari, built on the site of a temple originally dedicated to Cybele, will be the mythological source of empowerment for her. Taking a local, liberated woman as her model, she eventually takes part in a procession where the religious items are usually carried by men. Patrona notes that Lloyd is happy to take advantage of her American identity when it suits her, and to choose which aspects of her identity are of best benefit in various situations (for example, not cooking in the kitchen with other women but sitting at the table with the men to be served).
Of all the novels discussed, this pair is most strongly critiqued by Patrona for the authors’ ‘celebratory, self-gratifying, and pacifying’ tone and approach (148). Also, in all these four novels, these return visits, as Patrona points out, are made financially possible by the immigrant generations’ success in America, and also fuelled by the ‘massive marketing of the home country experience’ as a way to search for identity and achieve self-fulfilment (93), in response to postmodernist anxieties.
It is perhaps obvious that in women's searches for a sense of their own identities, drawing parallels and tracing patterns of similarity and difference with their female forebears, the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and the Great Goddess Cybele, should be major reference points. In contrast, the final pair of novels, one from the 1970s, the other from the 1990s, are by male authors: When the Tree Sings by Stathis Haviaras (1978) and In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu by Tony Ardizzone (1999). Haviaras left Greece in 1967 at the age of 32, at the beginning of the Colonels’ regime, so cannot really be fitted into the typology of later-generation immigrant writers; Ardizzone is ‘of Sicilian ancestry’. In both these novels, it is story-telling of an almost magical realist kind which is the mode through which the authors reach an understanding of their ethnic identities. Haviaras does not name the country in which his novel is located (but it is clearly Greece). The protagonist-narrator is introduced as a boy, traumatised by the atrocities of the Occupation and the Civil War, being brought up by his grandparents. He grows older as a series of episodic scenes unfold, as he reports tales told by a shadow-puppeteer, and by an old musician (characters who represent aspects of ethnic heritage). Many of the tales, and the remarks of the two men, have aspects of social and political critique, but the boy (and the reader) is left to work out the significance for himself/ herself of the messages in these tales.
Ardizzone's book consists of twelve tales, told by different first-person narrators, some of whom appear as actors in other tales. Magical tales set in the homeland shuttle back and forth with stories about the tough life of the migrant. It is worth noting that, like Haviaras, he uses story-telling and the worlds of magical folk beliefs in spirits and strange forces and does not have recourse to mythology as do the female authors. In one sense, his narrators are in the position that Haviaras found himself in when he fled to America, that is, a first-generation migrant.
In the Acknowledgements, Patrona expresses her thanks to Barolini, Athas, Ardizzone and Haviaras for their involvement in her project. She does not mention whether she contacted Davidson and Lloyd, but, given the critical tone of her comments on their books, it would not be surprising if she did not, or if they decided not to become involved once they knew the direction of her thoughts on their work.
Finishing this book, I was reminded of a remark about reading Proust's “Remembrance of Things Past”, that the reader should now begin all over again, reading the book with the knowledge of all it contains, reading it as the author wrote it, knowing the end when embarking on the beginning. Similarly, Patrona already knows the texts she is going to discuss in later chapters, but the reader may not. One needs to read the book again to understand, for example, the significance of the first two novels discussed in the context of later ones, to understand how the historical periods in which each was written inform and colour the style and narrative, and how the development of literary theory, of feminism, of post-modernism, also shapes Patrona's approach.
A few final points: while, consistent with current usage, the words ‘Italian American’ and ‘Greek American’ are not hyphenated (although some of the older authors cited do so) the title contains an ugly doubly hyphenated adjective, ‘late-twentieth-century’.
In one place the Greek adjective ‘porphyro’ in a title by Haviaras, is translated ‘purple’ (102, and in the bibliography), and in another as ‘scarlet’ (149, note 13). The title of Voulgaris's Psichi Vathia is not translated at all (118, note 5), and the name chosen by a woman ‘mountain fighter’, Andromache, is said to be ‘after the wise and modest Homeric heroine’ (113) but without giving the derivation of the name, from the Greek for ‘man’ and ‘battle’, which is surely highly significant? Odd word choices, even mis-spellings, and odd sentence structure, also impede the reader's enjoyment of the book: ‘ex-patriots’ for ‘ex-patriates’ (6). Nicholas Gage's book Eleni is described as unravelling ‘his mother's story of execution in the civil war’ (xxx), surely ‘the story of his mother's execution’ is meant? Athas's themes are described as ‘reinstating her allegiance among other writers of the 1970s’ (5), perhaps ‘allegiance to’? or ‘reinstating her place’? The protagonist of Davidson's novel is said to have been ‘misguided from her personal identity quest’ (98, note 16), perhaps ‘mis-directed’? One female protagonist is described as feeling ‘incorporated in the long concatenation of female figures’ (88), maybe ‘series’ is meant? For ‘fermentations’ (104), perhaps ‘ferment’? ‘For ‘indulge to’ (128) maybe just ‘indulge’; for ‘in the face of’ (129) something like ‘in the person of’ could be substituted.
The [Greek, although the country in which the tale is set is not named] puppet theatre is said to have ‘mocked and cauterized contemporary Greek reality’ (109): maybe ‘castigated’ is meant? Elsewhere ‘indigenous moral’ (112) must surely be ‘morale’? In several places ‘disinterest’ is used instead of ‘lack of interest’ or ‘uninterest’ (39), similarly ‘subsequent disinterestedness in socialist…issues’ (145-6). Huyssen is said to advance an ‘argumentation’ of the contemporary novel (117), maybe ‘critique’?
The final sentence of the book expresses hope that it may inspire others to find ‘their own niche in the bosoms of ethnic space’ (155). It should certainly encourage readers to read the novels discussed, and to consider seriously Patrona's attempt to compare them.
