Crossing Ocean Parkway / Marianna De Marco Torgovnick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Torgovnick, Marianna De Marco, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Torgovnick, Marianna, 1949-.

Torgovnick, Marianna.

American literature--Italian American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

Italian Americans--New York (State)--New York--Social life and customs.

Italian Americans.

American literature--Italian influences.

Italian Americans--Intellectual life.

Italian American women--Biography.

Italian American women.

Italian Americans in literature.

Bensonhurst (New York, N.Y.)--Social life and customs.

Bensonhurst (New York, N.Y.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2008]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Growing up an Italian-American in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of New York city, Marianna De Marco longed for college, culture, and upward mobility. Her daydreams circled around WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) heroes on television-like Robin Hood and the Cartwright family-but in Brooklyn she never encountered any. So she associated moving up with Ocean Parkway, a street that divides the working-class Italian neighborhood where she was born from the middle-class Jewish neighborhood into which she married. This book is Torgovnick's unflinching account of crossing cultural boundaries in American life, of what it means to be an Italian American woman who became a scholar and literary critic. Included are autobiographical moments interwoven with engrossing interpretations of American cultural icons from Dr. Dolittle to Lionel Trilling, The Godfather to Camille Paglia. Her experiences allow her to probe the cultural tensions in America caused by competing ideas of individuality and community, upward mobility and ethnic loyalty, acquisitiveness and spirituality.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

PART ONE. Crossing Ocean Parkway

PART TWO. Readings by an Italian American Daughter

Epilogue

Afterword

Note on the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226808307

0226808300

9780226148366

022614836X

OCLC:

861540001