Armed with the Ammunition of Knowledge, the "Activists" do the "Grunt" work.  

That is EXCEPT for Italian Americans. The Italian Americans Academics and 
Writers (with a few notable exceptions) are either oblivious, in denial, or 
elitist.

The Majority of those I-A Academics and Writers, not only do not aid in the 
"Activist" battle,( which the Activists carry on Valiantly, grossly 
outnumbered and with so little assistance), but many of those same I-A 
Academics and Writers have additionally scurrilously derided and vilified 
that small band of Activists.    

Professor Misurella in his Op-Ed Piece in Today's "Christian Science Monitor" 
perhaps unwittingly, but undeniably, shows how those same Academics and 
Writers, although it has been obvious to everyone but them, are unknowingly 
also suffering great damage, from the torrent of I-A Defamation, (in the form 
of automatically equating Italian American = "Blood & Guts [Mafia]), which 
thereby renders their REAL work, no matter how talented, "meaningless" to 
publishers.

Will this be the "Moment of Enlightenment"? Will this be when I-A Writers 
say: I see Now, that this is MY Fight too. I am with you Activists. How can 
we work together, (not in lock step), but united in a common goal?!  
===================================================
Thanks to H-ITAM [Editor Prof. Ben Lawton]

TRUTH BEHIND THE FICTION OF ITALIAN -AMERICANS

Christian Science Monitor
By Fred Misurella 
Commentary / Opinion 
April 15, 2002 Edition 

EAST STROUDSBURG, PA. – A few years ago, a friend submitted a novel about 
working-class Italian-Americans to a New York publisher and found an 
Italian-American editor there who loved it. 

But alas, the novel, though very good, was never published. Not "enough blood 
and guts," a more senior editor said.
 
After no other house accepted the book, my friend broke it into stories and 
published them in literary magazines.

I tell this story because it relates to a major problem facing 
Italian-American writers. Editors, influenced by Hollywood, popular taste, or 
their own bias, expect goons in action in Italian-American stories. The 
writer with a thoughtful, literary turn of mind is unlikely to find a 
sympathetic audience among them.

Early modernist writers, from Henry James and E.M. Forster through Arthur 
Miller, portray Italians and Italian-Americans as violent, primitive, and, if 
educated, devious. For these writers Italians and Italian-Americans represent 
animal vitality, but they are clearly shown as brutal, morally stunted, or 
pathetic remnants of a fallen civilization.

In the end, Edward Gibbon's 18th-century classic "Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire," which reveals great love for empire but disdain for the 
multicultured Italy of its day, may be a more fundamental part of American 
bias against Italians and Italian-Americans than "Scarface," "The Godfather," 
or "The Sopranos." Call this the trickle-down effect of social prejudice in 
literature and entertainment.

In TV shows, advertisements, children's cartoons, and even some university 
programs emphasizing cultural diversity, that bias persists despite the 
Italian-American intellectual foundation on the grandeur of Dante, the 
stateliness of Virgil, the experimentation of Pirandello, and the 
metaphysical complexity of Petrarch and the Troubadours.

Italian-Americans are consistently portrayed as either loud or stupidly 
laconic. Yet their life has evolved from a thoughtful, realistic literary 
tradition whose strength (Boccaccio, Primo Levi, and Italo Calvino) derives 
from humor and intellectual analysis.

Italian-American writers have continued that powerful tradition, at times 
with Italian-American subjects, at others with purely American themes, as 
with Don Delillo and Richard Russo, whose novel "Empire Falls," evoking 
Gibbon but not Italy, won this year's Pulitzer Prize in literature, the first 
for an Italian-American.

While most readers have heard of Mr. Delillo and Mr. Russo, few will know 
Helen Barolini, the dean of Italian-American writers, whose "Umbertina," a 
novel, "Chiaroscuro," a book of essays, and "More Italian Hours," a recent 
collection of stories, form a triptych of Italian-American culture evolving 
through the 20th century.

Writers on Italian-American themes are important, too. Joseph Papaleo has 
published two novels and a story collection. Daniela Gioseffi, a visionary 
poet with a voice unlike any writer since Dylan Thomas, is also a novelist, 
story writer, and anthologist. Robert Viscusi's Canadian-published novel 
"Astoria" won an American Book Award in 1996.

Why have they been overlooked? Not because of bias against them as 
Italian-Americans, but because of blindness to the literary and commercial 
value of Italian-American subject matter that doesn't feature violence.

In "More Italian Hours and Other Stories" Helen Barolini has gathered 15 
elegant stories about Italians and Italian-Americans balancing on the 
delicate wire connecting their two worlds. Without sweat or the gunshots my 
friend's editor hankered for, Ms. Barolini portrays a class of professionals 
who earn a living with their minds rather than their backs, recognizing their 
commitment to the future while thinking of themselves as one with 
grandparents who escaped poverty.

Such illumination fills Barolini's writing and that of other Italian-American 
writers who mine their ethnic past. They substitute insight for physical 
action, illustrating Henry James's comment in "The Art of Fiction": "Try to 
be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost" – advice from a master that 
the New York editor and other readers ought to heed.
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• Fred Misurella teaches writing and literature at East Stroudsburg University.
http://www.esu.edu/english/faculty/misurella/misurella.htm