Upon visiting Rome, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley described two Italies--one "sublime" and the other "odious." That contradiction is the driving force behind Joseph Luzzi's compelling historical memoir. Luzzi (Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy) believes "two Italies" reside inside himself: his childhood experience as an Italian American whose family immigrated from the south of Italy, and his adult devotion to studying the cultural realm of northern Italy. Duality shapes the author's impressions of the north-south Italian divide, the poor and the powerful, morality and corruption, hunger and satiety (literal and figurative) and love and hate.
The story examines the origins of Luzzi's poor, Calabria-born parents, their dramatic exile and immigration to the U.S. and the author's childhood, in which he longed to assimilate. Luzzi later developed a fervent desire to study all aspects of Italy in order to understand his family's history--and to reconcile personal tragedy in his own life. Throughout the narrative, he delves into the works of Dante and Botticelli, and politicians like Mussolini and Berlusconi. He compares these icons to contemporary depictions of Italians (e.g., Jersey Shore, The Sopranos) to round out his portrait of Italian culture, past and present, which made--and often unmade--his family. "Our pride in our ancestors grows with the distance we set between them and ourselves," Luzzi writes. "I was Italian and American--a little of each, yet not fully either." The complicated relationship of the "old country" contrasted against the modern world will enlighten readers to an Italy glimpsed with passion and sensitivity from the inside out. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines