Using his sharpened tools of literary criticism and theory, Pardini works through novels, movies, and music and shows how, in the days before the (still incomplete) assimilation of Italian Americans into “white” culture, a constellation of writers, intellectuals, musicians, and activists in both communities found rewarding interpenetrations of their constructed identities.

After more than 140 years, the image of the Italian in North America has evolved from the lusty Italophobic caricatures of the first half of the twentieth century to today’s condescending flattery.