In By the Breath of Their Mouths, Mary Jo Bona examines the oral uses of language and the liberating power of speech in Italian American writing, as well as its influences on generations of assimilated Italian American writers. Probing and wide-ranging, Bona's analysis reveals the lasting importance of storytelling and folk narrative, their impact on ethnic, working-class, and women's literatures, and their importance in shaping multiethnic literature. Drawing on a wide range of material from several genres, including oral biographies, fiction, film, poetry, and memoir, and grounded in recent theories of narrative and autobiography, postcolonial theory, and critical multiculturalism, By the Breath of Their Mouths is must reading for students in Italian American studies in particular and ethnic studies and multiethnic literature more generally.

Mary Jo Bona is Professor of Italian American Studies at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. Her books include Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers; The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women's Fiction, Second Edition; and Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates, also published by SUNY Press.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Justice/Giustizia-Private Justice and the Folkloric Community in the World of Italian Americans

2. Faith/Fede-Plenty to Confess: Women and (Italian) American Catholicism

3. Story/Racconto-Una chiacchierata nel passato: Rosa and Marie of Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant

4. Land/Terra-Village People in Guido D'Agostino's Novels

5. History Singer/Cantastorie-Vernacular Voices in Paule Marshall's and Tina De Rosa's Kunstlerromane

6. Precursor/Precursore-Mother's Tongue: Italian American Daughters and Female Precursors

7. Death/Morte-What They Talk About When They Talk About Death

8. Revival/Risorgimento-Stories Continue: Shaping U.S. Italian American Writing

Notes
Bibliography
Index