Synopses & Reviews
2006 American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus FoundationSouthern Italian emigration to the United States peaked a full century ago—;descendents are now fourth and fifth generation, dispersed from their old industrial neighborhoods, professionalized, and fully integrated into the “melting pot.” Surely the social historians are right: Italian Americans are fading into the twilight of their ethnicity. So, why is the American imagination enthralled by The Sopranos, and other portraits of Italian-ness?
Italian American identity, now a mix of history and fantasy, flesh-and-bone people and all-too-familiar caricature, still has something to teach us, including why each of us, as citizens of the U.S. twentieth century and its persisting cultures, are to some extent already Italian. Contending that the media has become the primary vehicle of Italian sensibilities, Ferraro explores a series of books, movies, paintings, and records in ten dramatic vignettes. Featured cultural artifacts run the gamut, from the paintings of Joseph Stella and the music of Frank Sinatra to The Godfathers enduring popularity and Madonnas Italian background. In a prose style as vivid as his subjects, Ferraro fashions a sardonic love song to the art and iconography of Italian America.
Review
"A fresh and lively treatise on the struggles of ordinary people who are making extraordinary contributions to the environmental and economic justice movement." - Robert D. Bullard, author ofDumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality
Review
"A thought-provoking analysis of how grassroots activism from people of color communities is transforming environmental politics. Such activism has brought an important infusion of energy and vision to the pursuit of environmental democracy." - Charles Lee, principal author of Toxic Waste and Race in the United States
Review
"Provides valuable and comprehensive analyses of the driving forces behind environmental injustices. Anyone wanting to know why an environmental justice movement has emerged in this country and what future direction it may take should read this book." - Paul Mohai, author of Black Environmentalism and Environmental Racism: Reviewing the Evidence
Review
"From the Ground Up presents the history of the environmental justice movement in the best possible way: through the retelling of the individual stories of local communities that have transformed the nation's environmental laws. Both descriptive and reflective, the book is wonderfully evocative of the passions that have maintained the environmental justice movement and that underlie its enormous promise for social change."
"A thought-provoking analysis of how grassroots activism from people of color communities is transforming environmental politics. Such activism has brought an important infusion of energy and vision to the pursuit of environmental democracy."
"A fresh and lively treatise on the struggles of ordinary people who are making extraordinary contributions to the environmental and economic justice movement."
"Provides valuable and comprehensive analyses of the driving forces behind environmental injustices. Anyone wanting to know why an environmental justice movement has emerged in this country and what future direction it may take should read this book."
"They assess the effectiveness of the organizing tactics employed, casting particular scrutiny on the courts as agents of social change...The authors have presented concrete examples, all the while making clear that there are no road maps for successful organizing."
Review
“Ferraro maintains a breezy, journalistic style that has produced an easy and entertaining read. His work may give hope to people of other ethnicities who presently suffer from isolation and alienation on the part of the general American public.”
-Multicultural Review,
Review
“Ferraro traces the 'evolution and persistence' of an identifiable Italian American identity, from the time of widespread Italian immigration in the late 1800s through popular mediated portrayals of Italian Americans such as those found in The Sopranos television series. The book is an important contribution not only to Italian American studies, but to the understanding of ethnicity in the 21st-century US.”
-Choice,
Review
“Feeling Italian is a smart book, one that makes the reader think beyond the usual ways of looking at whats Italian about the US.”
-American Book Review,
Review
“This inspired, sophisticated, provoking book should command the attention of anybody interested in American Italianness in particular or the cultural consequences of ethnicity in general. Joseph Stella and Frank Sinatra, Maria Barbella and Giancarlo Esposito, Madonna and the good people who brought you the Corleones and Sopranos—;they and others appear here, often seen in startlingly fresh ways, as creators and exemplars of the aesthetic Tom Ferraro calls ‘feeling Italian. Wise, funny, contagiously enthusiastic, Ferraro takes us far beyond the narrow pieties of the identity police or anti-defamation types as he traces the development of a widely accessible American cultural style that still bears the marks of distinctively Italian ways of making do and making sense.”
-Carlo Rotella,author of Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt
Review
“Original and deeply right. There is no other book that digs so deeply into the matter at hand, and does so with such eloquence and ferocity of intellect.”
-Jay Parini,author of Passage to Liberty: The Story of Italian Immigration and the Rebirth of America
Synopsis
When Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order on Environmental Justice in 1994, the phenomenon of environmental racism--the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, particularly toxic waste dumps and polluting factories, on people of color and low-income communities--gained unprecedented recognition. Behind the President's signature, however, lies a remarkable tale of grassroots activism and political mobilization. Today, thousands of activists in hundreds of locales are fighting for their children, their communities, their quality of life, and their health.
From the Ground Up critically examines one of the fastest growing social movements in the United States, the movement for environmental justice. Tracing the movement's roots, Luke Cole and Sheila Foster combine long-time activism with powerful storytelling to provide gripping case studies of communities across the U.S--towns like Kettleman City, California; Chester, Pennsylvania; and Dilkon, Arizona--and their struggles against corporate polluters. The authors effectively use social, economic and legal analysis to illustrate the historical and contemporary causes for environmental racism. Environmental justice struggles, they demonstrate, transform individuals, communities, institutions and even the nation as a whole.
Synopsis
A critical look at the movement for environmental justice
When Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order on Environmental Justice in 1994, the phenomenon of environmental racism--the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, particularly toxic waste dumps and polluting factories, on people of color and low-income communities--gained unprecedented recognition. Behind that momentous signature, however, lies a remarkable tale of grassroots activism and political mobilization. Today, thousands of activists in hundreds of locales are fighting for their children, their communities, their quality of life, and their health.
From the Ground Up critically examines one of the fastest growing social movements in the United States--the movement for environmental justice. Tracing the movement's roots, Luke Cole and Sheila Foster combine long-time activism with powerful storytelling to provide gripping case studies of communities across the US--towns like Kettleman City, California; Chester, Pennsylvania; and Dilkon, Arizona--and their struggles against corporate polluters. The authors use social, economic and legal analysis to reveal the historical and contemporary causes for environmental racism. Environmental justice struggles, they demonstrate, transform individuals, communities, institutions and the nation as a whole.
Synopsis
When Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order on Environmental Justice in 1994, the phenomenon of environmental racism--the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, particularly toxic waste dumps and polluting factories, on people of color and low-income communities--gained unprecedented recognition. Behind the President's signature, however, lies a remarkable tale of grassroots activism and political mobilization. Today, thousands of activists in hundreds of locales are fighting for their children, their communities, their quality of life, and their health.
From the Ground Up critically examines one of the fastest growing social movements in the United States, the movement for environmental justice. Tracing the movement's roots, Luke Cole and Sheila Foster combine long-time activism with powerful storytelling to provide gripping case studies of communities across the U.S--towns like Kettleman City, California; Chester, Pennsylvania; and Dilkon, Arizona--and their struggles against corporate polluters. The authors effectively use social, economic and legal analysis to illustrate the historical and contemporary causes for environmental racism. Environmental justice struggles, they demonstrate, transform individuals, communities, institutions and even the nation as a whole.
About the Author
Luke Cole is director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment.
Sheila Foster is Associate Professor at Rutgers University School of Law, Camden.