The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America

SUNY Series in Italian/American Culture

by Joanna Clapps Herman

"I was born in 1944, but raised in the twelfth century." With that, Joanna Clapps Herman neatly describes the two worlds she inhabited while growing up as the child of Italian American immigrants in Waterbury, Connecticut, a place embedded with values closer to Homer's Greece than to Anglo-American New England, where the ethic of hospitality was and still is more Middle Eastern and North African than Anglo-European, and where the pageantry and ritual were more pagan Mediterranean than Western Christian. It was also a place where a stuffed monkey wearing a fedora sat and continues to sit on her grandmother's piano, and a place where, when the donkey got stubborn and wouldn't plow the field, her grandfather bit the animal in a fury. In essays filled with wry humor and affectionate yet probing insights, Herman maps and makes palpable the very particular details of this culture--its pride and its shame, its profound loyalty and its Byzantine betrayals.

258 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

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Reviews

[Amy Galloway · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt like I was reading my family's story as I read The Anarchist Bastard. Herman captures the nuances of southern Italian American life in the suburban 50's. She goes beyond the stereotypes to show generations of a loving but, at times, violent family, how events and superstitions shape their lives and what the current generation had to reconcile to live in " 'Merica". I suspect any one from an ethnic background can relate to this memoir of both preserving a heritage and overcoming its "15th century" mentality. Herman beautifully captures the spirit of each of her family members.
I also highly recommend Herman's latest collection of stories: No Longer and Not Yet.

[Fred Misurella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir that shakes you--at least it shook me--because of the violence of the men toward their wives and families, and because Herman's family comes from the same part of Italy as mine does--Basilicatta, the part of the country between the heel and the boot. Her journey from being a nice Italian girl from Connecticut to becoming a New York intellectual of considerable ability is a model of the American ethnic success story. It's full of anger, sadness, and humor, and in the end makes you aware of how much immigrants hurt inside as they make their way in the American world.

[Annie Rachele · Rating 5 out of 5]

brave words. one woman's take on her family, claiming what century she felt she truly grew up in. astute recall of the translation of southern italian cultural ways into American rural life. The narrator witnesses how tin foil changes the family's culture; how the family socializes at night and tries to say goodbye; what the very ancient roots of hospitality are. entertaining. a fun and provocative read.