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Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American
In stories and poems that explore how our society shapes us, Identity Lessons features a wide array of ethnic perspectives on growing up in America. Leading the reader into the living-rooms, boardrooms, classrooms, and movie houses of America, distinguished writers from all points of the American ethnic landscape shed light on the space between conformity and difference, and examine the struggle between the need to belong and the pull of one's cultural roots. With insight, wit, and poignancy, the contributors to this anthology recall their attempts to reconcile family from the old country with the powerful messages about race, gender and class confronting them in their new surroundings. A collection of superb and moving writing, Identity Lessons deconstructs conceptions of personal and national identity, and forms an indispensable primer for understanding our cultural selves.
400 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1999
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About the author
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
43 books27 followersMaria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). Her latest book is What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (Guernica Editions, 2010).
She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY.
She has published twelve books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons (Cross-Cultural Communications), and Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, and Italian Women in Black Dresses (Guernica Editions). With her daughter Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin/Putnam) and Italian-American Writers on New Jersey (Rutgers).
Maria was born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Paterson public schools and is a graduate of Eastside High School. She now lives in Hawthorne, New Jersey.
She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY.
She has published twelve books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons (Cross-Cultural Communications), and Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, and Italian Women in Black Dresses (Guernica Editions). With her daughter Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin/Putnam) and Italian-American Writers on New Jersey (Rutgers).
Maria was born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Paterson public schools and is a graduate of Eastside High School. She now lives in Hawthorne, New Jersey.
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March 7, 2015
What an enjoyable collection of poetry and short fiction. Gillan and Gillan pulled together a delightful and rich collection of contemporary works by writers ranging from Sherman Alexie and Gary Soto to Grace Paley and Lesléa Newman. The book is grounded in a brilliant theoretical frame that serves to spotlight the many ways different elements in our lives serve to perpetuate and/or disrupt lines of division and community based on our chosen and ascribed identity markers. The book is easy to pick up and set down again as time permits, yet it's cohesively threaded together in a way that really encourages reflection on what it means to be an American in today's complexly diverse contexts.
Displaying 1 of 1 review