Thomas J. Ferraro
“After reading Pardini, you will never again look at the black/Italian interface interface as only a matter of ‘how the guineas got white’: here our first ex-colored men are the pezzonovanti of the Italian gangster classes; the great theoreticians of Italian race and sex are African-American literati at mid-century; and the true subversives of America’s still-brutal color line are those women of the shadows—the displaced Marias from the Italian South. Bruce and Clarence’s ‘soul kiss’ rocks!”
Janet Zandy
“In the Name of the Mother liberates modernist preconceptions of home—coming and going. Mediterranean humanism, invisible blackness (of Italians), and an ethos of sharing are the structural frames for Pardini’s interracial probing of literature, film and music. A major achievement, a fluid, ceremonial alternative to cultural, political, and gender bifurcation. This book insists on the reciprocity of beauty—perceived, made, and embraced. Imagine—the working-class, uneducated mother centered as intellectual. Me and My Shadow, indeed!”
Frank Lentricchia
“A landmark of cultural criticism, linking Italian-American and African-American cultures. The dialogue that it created between the two cultures is original and daring . . . his various readings are carried out with blunt force and with the skill of a narrative artist . . . All who write on the subject henceforth will need to stand on his shoulders.”
