Off-White: Yellowface and Chinglish by Anglo-American Culture Sheng-Mei Ma New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020 xi + 246 pp. £90.00 ISBN 978-1-5013-5220-1

2020 ◽  
Vol 242 ◽  
pp. 604-605
Author(s):  
Krystyn R. Moon
Author(s):  
Incoronata Inserra

This chapter illustrates the export of tarantella to the United States by focusing on the work of New York–based artist Alessandra Belloni, particularly her tarantella dance performance and her “Rhythm Is the Cure” dance workshop. The chapter examines Belloni’s work both within a world music framework and from a woman-centered, New Age perspective. This work includes a complex process of adaptation of the Southern Italian rhythms, since it enhances an exotic image of Italy as it often emerges in Anglo-American culture, while at the same time adding a woman’s perspective to it. Belloni’s reinterpretation of tarantella plays a particularly significant role within the Italian-American cultural scene. The second part of the chapter situates Belloni’s work within the larger process of post-WWII Italian migration to the United States, while also discussing larger issues of representation of (southern) Italian culture within the Anglo-American context.


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