Rome If You Want to: The Currency of John Fante's Italy

Abstract

Sociologist Robert Orsi has described how Italian immigrants invented a homeland that never existed and used this invention as a fantasy to assuage their pain and as a stick to discipline their children. John Fante's fiction illustrates this pattern. In his first published novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, for example, the protagonist's grandmother condemns the United States and praises the values of her homeland while in the late novella My Dog Stupid Italy represents a sanctuary for the protagonist. When Fante journeyed to Italy his letters home demonstrate how important these trips were to him. Other Italian American authors such as Jerre Mangione, Helen Barolini, Jospeh Papaleo, and Maria Laurino have explored the contrast between Italy and America, have described the homeland as a paradise or as a cruel discipline. Fante's writing changes over time from depicting Italy as strap to Italy as sanctuary, from being driven from the homeland to being drawn to it. This shift demonstrates that the manufactured memories that Orsi described can be appropriated and utilized by the children of immigrants and that these constructions are mutable rather than rigid and that ethnic identification is an ever-evolving process.