The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil (Critical Studies in Italian Migrations) - Softcover

Riccò, Giulia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1531512259 ISBN 13: 9781531512255

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2025

Synopsis

Winner, 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies, Modern Languages Association
Introduces a way to study migration that privileges literary analysis over and against sociological data and insists on the importance of culture in the production of political identities
This book argues that Italians first became racialized as white in São Paulo, Brazil, at the turn of the twentieth century. Whereas Italians in the United States struggled with xenophobia and were often not fully acknowledged as white, in São Paulo, due to a series of social, economic, and cultural factors, Italians became closely associated with ideas of whiteness, modernization, and civilization. This book brings to light how the overlooked experiences of Italians in Brazil complicate conventional narratives about the racial ambiguity and oppression of Italians in the Americas, on the one hand, and the conflation of Italians with cultural and economic backwardness in Europe, on the other.
In the book, close readings of a wide array of texts—the travel writings of Gina Lombroso Ferrero, the short stories of Antônio de Alcântara Machado, the columns of José Correia Leite, the political essays of Miguel Reale, and the memoirs of Zélia Gattai—trace a "New World Italian discourse," or the overlapping narratives about Italian racial, economic, and cultural superiority which constructed and maintained Italians' status as a model minority in São Paulo. These discursive practices represent essential antecedents to the racial nationalism that reared its ugly head in Italy throughout the twentieth century and remain central to contemporary debates about national identity in the Italian public sphere.
The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

About this title

About the Author

Giulia Riccò is an assistant professor of Italian at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1531512259
• ISBN 13: 9781531512255
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240