The Italian American writer Robert Viscusi will be reading his poems at the Italian Cultural Center on March 2nd!

Like most Italian Americans born since the 1940s, Robert Viscusi grew up without being able to speak ten sentences in the native language of his grandparents and parents. The Second World War made it a dangerous thing for Italians in the United States to speak any of the many Italian languages they had inherited.

Viscusi's mother read him English poetry. Fine. Speak English and succeed as an American. But the echoes of who he might have become as an Italian continued to surround him. The conflict between these two persons, the one he was and the one he almost was, were entwined with the very nature of language itself. This conflict made him the writer he became.

Robert Viscusi, the author of "The Three Rules of IAWA," has published the novel Astoria (Guernica Editions, American Book Award 1996) and the performance poem An Oration upon the Most Recent Death of Christopher Columbus (VIA Folios). He has published numerous essays in books and journals on Italian American literature and culture.

Come and join us to hear his writing and to know more about his cultural heritage as an Italian American!

Saturday, March 2nd 2013 at 6:00PM
ICC - 1669 Columbia Street
RSVP by February 27 to info@icc-sd.org

* For additional information, please visit the event page. Thanks! *