When Italian Americana journal was founded in 1974, it took on the ambitious goal of presenting the riot of writers and poets who were paving the way towards a distinctively Italian-American literature. Now, more than thirty years later,... Read More

“There were fifty tents made of tanned hides, very bright red and white in color and bell-shaped, with flaps and openings, and built as skillfully as those of Italy,” described Don Juan de Onate in his report on a Spanish expedition... Read More

Has Kurt Vonnegut’s time come and gone? By the mid-1970s, after the successes of Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut was a major literary figure. No author of American fiction in that decade had more star power. While his... Read More

With illustrations as textured and brilliant as a child’s dream, this book introduces young readers to the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Gabriela Mistral, born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, was a poet and... Read More

In the past, when I’ve talked to audiences like this, I’ve often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who’s been nasty, greedy and unethical. But I’ve stopped that practice. I gradually realized that... Read More

If slavery is white America’s greatest crime committed against Black America, then “sundown towns” might be its best-kept dirty secret. Sundown towns are racist communities that prevented African Americans—by illegal regulations,... Read More

Popular culture—fact or fiction, highbrow or lowbrow—imprints indelible images in the minds and psyches of most individuals about life, society and, equally important, themselves. In many respects, popular culture defines a society... Read More

In a society that adores MTV, Paris Hilton, and Botox, it’s not hard to understand America’s obsession with the “new.” This culture is quick to throw out last season’s fashions and yesteryear’s furnishings, collectibles, and... Read More