Angelenos? What’s That? Young Italians in Los Angeles in the Fiction of John Fante, Andrea De Carlo, and Chiara Barzini

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the complex and varied history of Italian migration to the United States, the Californian experience has stood out for the original dynamics of its mobility, especially in relation to the transit of Italians to Los Angeles. This article investigates three descriptions of the Italian experience in Los Angeles in different moments in the city’s history as provided by three authors who embody different transnational Italian perspectives, namely John Fante’s Ask the Dust (1939), Andrea De Carlo’s Treno di panna (1983) and Chiara Barzini’s Things that Happened before the Earthquake (2017). This article explores how these representations of the Los Angeles experience have contributed to broadening the representation of Italian youth abroad. At the same time, my analysis identifies how the Italian experience has expanded the prism of literary interpretations of the city and deepened the knowledge of the metropolis and its dense stratification of ethnic communities and cultures.