Periodicals: newspapers and magazines
Title
Description
As Francesco Durante rightly observed in Italoamericana, understanding the contribution of journalism among Italian Americans - almost solely in Italian at the outset - to the community life, as well as to the culture of the immigrant community, is central to understanding that community.
Virtually all of the writers whose book-length works we see and celebrate in the collection, whether political or not, began their writing careers with newspaper or magazine writing. Some even immigrated to the U.S. precisely to do just that, but those were exceptional.
The politics of the magazines and newspapers ran the gamut from left to right, and some - e.g., Il Messaggero della Salute - were not really political in that sense at all. The separation often observed between the political and the literary sections of the magazines is surprising and deserves examination all by itself: one can find the stories of Clara Vacirca, married to and sharing the political leanings of the socialist Vincenzo Vacirca, published in the right-wing Il Carroccio, and less overtly political writers like Salvatore Benanti and Federico Mennella often contributed literary pieces to leftist periodicals like La Follia di New York. For example, Mennella wrote the dialect column for La Follia for some time. The catholic nature of the magazines in the literary culture of the Italians reflected one of its strengths.
Whatever the mixture of news from Italy and from America, whether "news events," or political or cultural commentary, short stories or poems, whether from Italians still in Italy or immigrants in the U.S. or translated from German, French. English or Russian - all of which were quite prevalent - or elaborations of philosophies of living, sometimes imported but sometimes "home-grown" in the U.S., the magazines and newspapers provide a rich insight into this world.
Beyond the articles themselves were, in many cases, letters to the editors and lists of new subscribers (and the cities and towns they lived in), both of which enlarge our understanding of what parts of the immigrant community were reached and affected by the printed word.
This, too, is a subject that deserves close examination, and has been discussed recently, for example, in a fine essay by historian Adam Quinn discussing whether the Cronaca Sovversiva of the anti-organizational anarchist Luigi Galleani was a "seditious rag" or a community newspaper - or both. Quinn clearly concludes that it was both. The same can be said for Il Martello, La Follia di New York, Il Carroccio and many of the other political magazines - they were part of the "glue" that held together the Italian community quite beyond their immediate political messages.
Collection Items
Eresia: di oggi e di domani, per l'affrancamento dell'individuo [Heresy: of Today and Tomorrow, for the Liberation of the Individual]. Bronx, April 1928 - October 1931.The Collection includes:Eresia, No. 1 - Aprile [April] 1928, Eresia, No. 2 - Maggio [May] 1928, Eresia, No. 3 - Luglio [July] 1928, Eresia, No. 4 -…
Il Solco: rivista mensile di cultura popolare [The Furrow: monthly review of popular culture]. New York: Il Solco Publishing Co., January - September 1927. A monthly periodical edited by Vincenzo Vacirca. Contains part of novel Il rogo [The Pyre] by Vacirca; according to Durante, Il rogo continues into…
La Strada, rivista mensile di cultura popolare [The Street: monthly review of popular culture]. New York: La Strada Publishing Co., September 1937 - October 1938.For biographical information on Vacirca, see entries for La Russia in fiamme and Il solco - the general entry for Jan.-Sept. 1927.The collection…
Quaderni italiani [Italian Notebooks]. New York, 1942-1944. Other editors include Renato Poggioli and Enzo Taglicozzo (Silvio Carli); the collection has Vol. 3 in two formats, one like other numbers, and an odd…
Vita: rivista dei nostri giorni [Life: magazine of nowadays]. New York: Vita Publishing Co., September - October 1915.Managed by Flavio Venanzi. An extremely uncommon and short-lived radical journal, edited (and with numerous contributions by) the important IWW…
Zarathustra. New York, 15 May 1925 - 15 June 1926.A monthly magazine edited by Ernesto Valentini. Copies of this magazine are one of the "holy grails" of Italian American collecting: of Zarathustra,…
Controcorrente [Countercurrent]. Boston, 1959-1965.Controcorrente, Vol. XVI, No. 2 - Sept./Oct. 1959 Controcorrente, Vol. XVI, No. 3 - Nov./Dec. 1959 Controcorrente, Vol. 18, No. 1 - July/August…
La Parola del Popolo [The Voice of the People]. Chicago, 1972-1976.The Collection includes issues from the very late years of this publication, which began in 1908 under the name of La Parola dei Socialisti, and took…
L'Adunata dei Refrattari [The Call of the "Refractaries"]. New York, 1945-1961.The collection includes:L'Adunata dei Refrattari, Volume XXIV, Numero 7 - February 17, 1945L'Adunata dei Refrattari, Volume XL, Number 8 - February…
La Follia di New York [The New York Folly]. New York: Marziale Sisca; The Italian National Magazine Company, 1935-1977.The Collection includes only a few issues of this long-lived important literary and political magazine:La Follia di New York, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 1 -…
Nazioni Unite [The United Nations Weekly of the "Mazzini Society"]. New York, 1942-1943.The collection includes:Nazioni Unite, Anno I, N. 1 - 5 Marzo [March] 1942Nazioni Unite, Anno I, N. 2 - 12 Marzo [March] 1942Nazioni Unite, Anno I,…
La Legione. New York, 1942-1943.The collection includes:La Legione, Vol. I, No. 4 -December 2, 1942 La Legione, Vol. I, No. 5 - December 17, 1942La Legione, Vol. II, No. 1 - January…
Divagando. New York, 1943-1951.Divagando was a stylish monthly magazine, nearly all of whose articles were in Italian, begun in 1942-1943. Each issue contained a mix of essays,…
Il Martello [The Hammer]. New York: Casa Ed. "Il Martello," 1918-1943.Carlo Tresca was the editor-in-chief (or equivalent) at several radical newspapers over his career, but the one that he founded and ran for decades —…
Il Messaggero della Salute: rivista mensile d'igiene, di terapia fisio-psichica e di cultura eclettica [The Messenger of Health: a monthly review of hygiene, of physico-psychiatric therapy, and of eclectic culture]. Chicago: Italian Labor Publishing Co., Gennaio [January] 1924 (Vol. 6) - Dicembre [December] 1929 (Anno XI).Just when you thought you could put all Italian American newspapers or magazines into "boxes" labelled one of the following, namely, (1) "Bourgeois-…
La Controcorrente: organo d'agitazione e di battaglia contro il fascismo /The Countercurrent: against all fascism everywhere. Boston, 1940-1946.Aldo (Aldino) Felicani, a typographer and anarchist who started newspapers in Cleveland and elsewhere in the U.S. and who was intimately involved in…
Il Proletario [The Worker]. Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1923-1924.The I.W.W. Italian language newspaper, Il Proletario, has a glorious and lengthy history of many decades and almost unique importance in the Italian…
Umanità Nova: periodica libertario. Brooklyn, 7 Febbraio [February] - 1 Maggio [May] 1925.A Milanese socialist newspaper founded in 1920, but then shut down by the fascists in 1921 following fascist reprisals in the aftermath of the bombing…
Vita: satirico settimanale [Life: satirical weekly]. New York: E.M. Grella, 1929-1930. Two issues of the heavily-illustrated satirical weekly magazine, the covers each displaying a political caricature in addition to the magazine’s…
L'Asino: è il popolo, utile, paziente e bastonato [The Donkey: is, [like] the people, useful, patient and beaten]. Roma and New York, 8 Gennaio [January] 1905 - 28 Novembre [November] 1909.The collection includes:Italian imprint:L'Asino, Anno 14, No. 2 - 8 Gennaio [January] 1905 L'Asino, Anno 14, No. 3 - 15 Gennaio [January] 1905…
Il Carroccio (The Italian Review): rivista di coltura propaganda e difesa italiana in America. New York: Il Carroccio Publishing Co., 1915-1932.The tone and political ideology of this long-lived magazine was always nationalistic (from inception, in 1915) and later (beginning in 1922, with the…
Il Solco: rivista mensile di cultura popolare [The Furrow: monthly review of popular culture], Anno 1, No. 9. New York: Il Solco Publishing Co., September 1927.Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Jan. - Sept. 1927) are in the collection; these issues contain part of Vacirca's novel Il rogo [The Pyre]; according to…
Il Solco: rivista mensile di cultura popolare [The Furrow: monthly review of popular culture], Anno 1, No. 8. New York: Il Solco Publishing Co., Agosto [August] 1927.
Il Solco: rivista mensile di cultura popolare [The Furrow: monthly review of popular culture]. Anno 1, No. 6. New York: Il Solco Publishing Co., Giugno [June] 1927.
Il Solco: rivista mensile di cultura popolare [The Furrow: monthly review of popular culture], Anno 1, No. 5. New York: Il Solco Publishing Co., Maggio [May] 1927.
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