When you think of giving a gift to your loved ones, consider a book of Italian American Heritage. A book informs, educates, entertains, and is enduring.
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"Italian American Writers on New Jersey: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose", edited by Jennifer Gillan, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, and Edvige Giunta, published by Rutgers Press.

The book is divided into four parts: “Looking Back,” “Blending In,” “Crossing Bridges,” and “Changing Directions.”

Among the many writers featured are Gay Talese, Diane di Prima, Maria Laurino, Pietro di Donato, Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci, the editors, and a delightful host of others.

It is the definitive book of the New Jersey Italian experience that readers have been anxiously awaiting.

The authors tell their stories straight from the heart. We read how their fathers and mothers and grandparents lovingly raised them with pride in the same family values which they had brought with them from Italy.

The word pictures they paint are a far cry from the Italian American caricatures depicted by the media these too many years. We see honest flesh-and-blood people, not buffoons acting in a commercial.

We see sensitive men and women who came from the Old Country to build the new America, not destroy it. We see stories of heroism and sacrifice, poems with feelings deep enough to move us to tears.

Each selection is a reaffirmation that Italian Americans have much to be proud of, despite the tireless efforts of the media machine to churn out that same old nonsense about “gangsters, bimbos, and foul-mouthed goombahs.”

Here is a book every Italian American should own. According to the editors: “It features writers who are natives or residents of New Jersey or whose writings focus on Italian American life and the distinctive culture of the Garden State, which has long been home to a large and vital Italian American community.”

This anthology gathers fiction, poetry, memoirs, oral histories, and journalistic pieces by some of the best writers to chronicle the Italian American experience in the Garden State. These works focus on ethnic identity and the distinctive culture of New Jersey, which has long been home to a large and vital Italian American community.

Filled with passion, humor, and grace, these writings depict a variety of experiences, including poignant but failed attempts at conformity and the alienation often felt by ethnic Americans. The authors also speak of the strength gained through the preservation of their communities and the realization that it is often the appreciation of their heritage that helps them to succeed.

Although presented from the vantage point of only one ethnic group, this book addresses in microcosm the complexities of American identity, depicting situations and conveying emotions that will resonate with people of all immigrant ancestries.

A reader wrote: I have just finished reading Italian American Writers on New Jersey, an amazing collection of works--works previously almost entirely unknown to me, yet in their themes as familiar to me as my own face.

The anthology teems with people and places from the past and present; people and places that, despite their imperfections, I remember and revere; people and places who have never before, I think, been given such broad and fair-minded treatment.

As I read each page, I laughed, I cried, I winced at the marvelously crafted stories they told. I wanted the book to go on forever....