Guido Culture and Italian American Youth, 1st ed. 2019 From Bensonhurst to Jersey Shore Italian and Italian American Studies Series

From Saturday Night Fever to Jersey Shore, Italian American youth in New York City have appropriated?and been appropriated by?popular American culture. Here, Donald Tricarico investigates how Italian ethnicity has been used to fashion Guido as a distinct youth style that signals inclusion in popular American culture and, simultaneously, the making of a new ethnic subject. Emerging from a wave of Italian immigration after World War II in outer borough neighborhoods such as Bensonhurst, the story of the Guido is an Italian American story, symbolizing the negotiation of a negatively privileged ethnicity within American society. Tricarico takes up questions about the definition of Guido, the role of disco, and the identity politics of Jersey Shore in order to reconsider the significance of Guido for the study of Italian American ethnicity.

1. Theorizing Italian American Youth Culture.- 2. A Local Italian American Youth Style Tradition: Anticipating Guido.- 3. The Turn to Disco and Other Subcultural Developments.- 4. Becoming Guido: Identifying a Youth Subculture.- 5. Performing Style.- 6. “It’s Cool Being Italian”: Fashioning an Ethnic Youth Style.- 7. The Local Struggle for Cool.- 8. GUIDOVILLE: Labeling Italian Americans Deviant.- 9. A Party Culture Becomes a Media Spectacle.- 10. Rethinking Italian American Ethnicity: A Middle Space.

Donald Tricarico is Professor of Sociology at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, where he has taught since 1977. 

The first book-length work about Italian American ethnicity and youth culture Elucidates a theoretical perspective—social constructionism and segmented assimilation—that can explain Italian American cultural and social forms as a youth subculture Situates Guido in urban Italian American culture as an adaption to New York City over time