Review of Carol Bonomo Albright & Joanna Clapps Herman’s anthology, WILD DREAMS: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press)

     Capturing the essence of a wild dream is like trying to hold onto a butterfly.  Wild dreams exhilarate as they surprise us with their magic.  They take us on surreal journeys as we sleep and when we wake, their elusiveness tantalizes and we can only dare to hope to dream again.

     Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana, an anthology of Italian American prose and poetry edited by Carol Bonomo Albright and Joanna Clapps Herman, possesses that quality as it chronicles the drama and whimsy of the unique Italian-American experience in all its literary manifestations.   Choosing the best from Italian Americana, a journal by and for Italian Americans established in the mid 1970s, Albright and Herman bring together over 60 pieces of literature ranging from fiction, memoir, poetry, story and interviews that are thematically arranged in five sections engagingly entitled: Ancestors, The Sacred and the Profane, Love and Anger, Birth and Death, Art and Self.    

      Unlike our dreams that remove us from reality, here we have the written testimony of Italian Americans across the decades, from the early authors who unhesitantly embrace their Italian identity to today’s authors struggling to recover its meaning as it is transformed by the New World.  What all these writers have in common is their search for italianità or the essence that somehow defines what makes them Italian.  In Wild Dreams, we are able to savor the power of their written words, to meditate upon them and to allow their wisdom to take us on unexpected journeys of the mind.

       Tony Ardizzone’s Lamb Soup is a fable of heroic proportions where the stirrings of the lower classes and the voice of the female heroine emerge through the dialect, humor, and traditions of the southern Italian folktale. This story resonates with the author’s warmth, respect and love for his Italian heritage.

       Was it a wild dream or reality when Nonna Nedda, the toothless blind old grandma, foretold little Agneddina’s (little lamb in Sicilian) marital future, informing her mamma that this peasant child of 14 was destined to marry a man riding a dappled horse?  The only man who rode a dappled horse was the most evil man in the village whose living heart Agneddina knew had turned to leather.  Hoping this prophecy would prove untrue, reality set in 4 years later when Agneddina was forced to sacrifice herself in order to save her father’s life.  As in all folk tales, good ultimately triumphs over evil and Agneddina is more than saved, she saves herself through her own determination, intelligence and independent spirit. After vanquishing the evil overseer, Luigi, riding on a dappled horse, comes to claim her and Nonna Nedda’s bold prophecy comes true.

     In Antonio Costabile’s That Winter Evening, another folktale in which the author’s love for his country never wavers, the narrator gives testimony of this love by telling us from the start this story may or may not be true and is only a pretext to allow him to remember a life in a “remote, never forsaken corner of the world” that shall never be forgotten where he spent the most beautiful years of his life.

     In the unusual reality of that poor, old, faraway corner of the world, in a bare, wretched house with no electric lights, lit only by the flames of the fireplace or by the light of the moon, lived Mecca and her daughter Maddalena. Mecca, forlorn and forsaken, her husband Caniuccio imprisoned for many years and more to come, allows the unreality of that winter evening, as the snow quietly falls without interruption for hours, to possess her. Recognizing her loneliness in the flames of the fire that illuminate her dreams, she prepares the steaming pot of minestra for her daughter and her daughter’s fiancé, Rocco.   “Without sparing the rich tomato conserva, or the pecorino cheese . . . or the hot pepper, that aphrodisiac which makes one restless…” Costabile writes, Mecca pours for them all from the towering double handled jug of good wine and sets the scene for the unimaginable.

     Was it real or a wild dream many hours later, when Rocco said he must leave, Mecca allowed him to stay and all three slept together in the only bed in the house?   Did the unthinkable occur and did both mother and daughter become pregnant that night? Tormented not by the deed but the person who had no fear of him, Caniuccio vowed to murder them all. Was it real or a dream that when he is released from prison and comes home, the scoundrel is incapable of shedding blood?   The shock and disbelief of the villagers who had prepared for a massacre changes to acceptance and relief when Caniuccio emerges holding the son of his wife in one arm and the son of his daughter in the other “like two victory trophies” thus ending the nightmare.  Irrational as it seems, we accept that all things are possible in this folktale and that this strange happy ending somehow renews our spirit.

     As the Italians emigrate from the Old World to the New, from the villages to the cities, the stories they write take on a different, more somber tone. Against Gravity by Albert Di Bartolomeo, for example, tells the tale of Vincent who is infatuated with his friend’s mother and during a family cookout in New Jersey, decides he will fulfill his dream of kissing her before the night is over.  Though only 13 and she is 30, Vincent believes Lillian is in love with him too.  No wine, no moonlight, no firelight, no snowstorm, or “minestra,” only the pitch darkness of the night enshrouds him as he follows her from the house beyond the front porch to the yard. Only then does he learn that what he had perceived, the warmth in her glance, the intensity of her gaze, were not directed to him but to his father who is waiting for her outside.  Vincent overhears a conversation between them that changes his life forever – they are lovers; his father is dying.   There is pain, anger, disillusionment.  Vincent cannot forgive, cannot accept, not until long after his father’s death.

     From among the many beautiful poems, “Why I Drive Alfa Romeos” by Kevin Carrizo di Camillo stands out for me as vividly summing up the spirit of wild dreams that runs throughout this collection:


Why I Drive Alfa Romeos
Because most people think it’s the name of an Italian
Clothier, or they spell the first part in Greek
and pronounce the latter in Shakespearean.
Because Alfas have the aura of a priceless antique.
Because the gauges read wrong and commit sins
of inaccuracy every other day of the week.
Because the logo is inscrutable:  a man
swallowed by a snake and a cross, red as a cherub’s cheeks.
But mainly because I drove an Alfa
around Nantucket this past summer.
Roads smoked with sand, Maria was with me.
Listened to the only music: Verdi’s operas.
Engine kept tempo like an unflagging drummer,
driving towards the sun, ocean, and Italy.

      There are many more poems and stories, some sad, some funny, many more dreams and nightmares.  I have chosen only a sampling of the richness this anthology has to offer to whet your appetite in the hope you will read them all.