Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, eds. The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003. viii + 346 pp. Notes, index. $79.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-275-97891-5; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 0-275-97892-3.
Reviewed by: Gary Roth, Provost's Office, Rutgers University at Newark.
Published by: H-ItAm (January, 2005)
Lost but not Forgotten
The Lost World is a collection of essays which explores the history of Italian-American radicalism from the early 1900s to the present. Collectively the essays provide a broad survey of the major events, trends, and individuals within the Italian immigrant community. It is a book full of potential.
The strongest essays center around the socialist and anarchist movements of the early 1900s and the appeal these found within communities of Italian immigrants, many of whom had come to the United States as socialists. "The Radical World of Ybor City, Florida" (by Gary Mormino and George El Pozzetta) provides a vivid account of an energetic and enthusiastic left-wing community. Other essays on anarchism and the Industrial Workers of the World (including that by Salvatore Salerno) and the influence of Italian immigrants within the trade union movement (by Calvin Winslow and Paola Sensi-Isolani) add to the sense of drama and promise which surrounded the history of the old labor movement. Nunzio Pernicone's fascinating essay about anarchist sectarianism describes the outright loathing which the hardcore anarchist movement had for the anarcho-syndicalist Carlo Tresca, perhaps the most influential Italian-American leftist and the radical everyone--anarchists and fascists alike--loved to hate. Another essay (by Jennifer Guglielmo) on the role of women within the anarchist community fills out the picture in still another direction.
The Lost World is also outstanding for raising important issues concerning the history of Italian-American radicalism. For all the militancy and wide-spread acceptance of radicals within the ethnic community during the early decades of the 1900s, the rise of fascism in the 1920s proved to be irresistible and is described in a terrific essay by Rudolph Vecoli. If Italian-American radicalism was eclipsed by the popularity of fascism, the inability of twentieth-century communism to continue the radical tradition was played out in the cold-war orientation of unions like the International Ladies' Garment Worker's Union. See the articles by Gerald Meyer and Charles Zappia.
Particularly for the earlier decades, The Lost World champions a novel approach for reconstructing the left's rather complicated history. Despite many excellent accounts of those years, the ever-changing mix of organizations, events, and ideologies has made it difficult to capture the full breadth and dynamism of a movement which burned its way rather haphazardly through society--before declining precipitously. How does one tell a coherent story about a movement which lacked coherence? This is the methodological issue to which The Lost World poses a solution. For the editors, the initial step is to examine how the left functioned within the relatively closed linguistic and cultural environment of Italian immigrants. Were this to be combined with other similarly structured accounts, we would have a multicultural retelling of the history with profound implications for our understanding of the ebbs and flows of the left in the United States. Such an approach would be just as useful for accounts of the working class, whose trajectory remains similarly befuddling because of the vast diversity of experiences and allegiances.
If this is the promise of The Lost World, the individual essays do not always live up to the standards set by the outstanding introductory essay by Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, and the equally outstanding concluding remarks by Donna Gabaccia. Much of the book fits together uneasily, such that the ethnic aspect of the book seems to provide more continuity than does the focus on radical politics. The editors themselves set the stage for this by positing a direct lineage between the socialist and anarchist activists of the early 1900s and Italian-American authors and activists of the pre- and post-WWII eras (Fred Gardaph, Mary Jo Bona, Edvige Giunta). In the earlier period, the radicals found a broad acceptance in the Italian immigrant community, whereas in the latter periods, the focus was on individual Italian-Americans who sometimes had little connection to the broader ethnic community except through their writings. This was true of the author and poet Rosa Marinoni (as demonstrated in the article by Julia Lisella), who was neither working class nor self-identified as a leftist, even though proletarian and progressive themes appear frequently in her writings. The otherwise fascinating accounts of Father Groppi (by Jackie DiSalvo) and Mario Savio (by Gil Fagiani) strike a similar chord. Father Groppi, who mobilized African-American youth in Milwaukee during the civil rights movement and then, after he married and was banished from the Roman Catholic Church, worked as a bus driver and activist in the city's transportation union, seems to have had no interest in or contact with the Italian-American community. Mario Savio, known for his role in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the mid-1960s, rediscovered his ethnicity a decade later, in middle age, when the "roots" phenomena swept the United States. His ethnicity was a recreated one. Both Father Groppi and Mario Savio were Italian-Americans who were also radicals, but unlike Italian socialists and anarchists of the early 1900s, the melding of ethnicity and radicalism was not what identified their politics. Much the same could be said for every essay in this collection which focuses on contemporary figures.
For the essays on the earlier part of the century, there is consequently a tone of left-wing nostalgia which mitigates against the book's strengths and interferes with the ability of the authors and editors to articulate a theme which can unify the entire volume. There is much bemoaning of the lack of attention to the history of Italian-American radicalism, but as many of the essays attest, there has not been much radicalism from within the Italian-American community since the 1920s. The delay in publication has not helped the book's difficulties. The individual essays stem from a 1997 conference, but in the six years it took to publish the volume the world has altered dramatically. No one addresses the obvious parallels between Italian-anarchist emigration a century ago and the dispersed communities of Arab- and Arab-American fundamentalists today; yet it would be very useful to hear discussions on just how far these two phenomena can be associated. Besides the obvious differences in political ideology, how else can we understand their dissimilarities? Was the fanatic and uncompromising commitment of Sacco and Venzetti, so captivatingly described by Paul Avrich, similar to today's suicide bombers? What about other similarities--for instance, the fact that neither the hardcore anarchists then nor the fundamentalists today created a comfortable place within their movements for women because of their fierce commitment to violence and the politics of masculinity which that implies?
All things considered, however, this volume is a welcomed contribution to our understandings of ethnicity, identity, and left-wing politics.
Citation: Gary Roth. "Review of Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, eds, The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism," H-ItAm, H-Net Reviews, January, 2005. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=255371121351768.
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