In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, & Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen

MARY JO BONA is professor and chair of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Stony Brook University with her affiliated department in English. Bona’s expertise in feminist literary studies examines the nexus between gender and ethnicity, with transnational migratory identities, material cultures, and Italian diaspora studies as primary intersections. Her authored books include Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary; By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America; Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers, and a book of poetry, I Stop Waiting for You. Bona is also editor of The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women’s Fiction and co-editor (with Irma Maini) of Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates.