Recovering Italian Ancestry in the Work of Italian American Poets

Abstract

Poems written by Italian American poets included in Unsettling America, an anthology of ethnic poetry edited by Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan in 1994, focus on a common theme, the sense of otherness felt by these poets when they were young in school and even within their own Italian American families. These poets confess to the psychological abuse they suffered that caused them to hate their Italian selves as well as the Italian language and force them to shed the parts of themselves that other people found offensive. The poems, however, also testify to the poets’ awareness of what was lost as these poets embark on a journey of self definition to recover their own Italian identities and the Italian language that they were forced to shed.