Mary Jo Bona
BornChicago, Illinois
NationalityAmerican
EducationPh.D., American literature
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin

Mary Jo Bona is an American literary scholar who has written extensively on Italian-American literature and its history. She is professor of Italian American Studies and chair of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University.[1]

Bona was born in Chicago and earned a Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Wisconsin.[2] After serving for several years as an associate English professor and chair of the Women's Studies department at Gonzaga University,[3] she received a stipendiary award and admission to the Academy of Teacher Scholars at Stony Brook.[1]

She has authored and edited several scholarly works, including The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women's Fiction (1993). Critic Kenneth Scambray calls The Voices We Carry "a significant contribution to Italian American and women's studies";[4] Fred Gardaphé calls the anthology "a major step in the development of Italian/American literature";[2] and Anthony Tamburri writes that the anthology "blazed a trail."[5] Bona's reviews, articles, and poetry have appeared in American Literary History, Italian Americana, MELUS, NWSA Journal, The Women's Review of Books, and other journals. She published a volume of poems, I Stop Waiting for You, in 2014.[6]

Bona first became interested in Italian-American women's literature in the late 1980s after reading Helen Barolini's influential anthology, The Dream Book.[3][7] She formerly served as president of the Italian American Studies Association, and served on the board of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) for six years.[1]

Books

Author:

  • Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary (2016)
  • I Stop Waiting for You: Poems (2014)
  • By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America (2010)
  • Italian American Literature (2003)
  • Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers (1989)

Editor:

  • Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates (2006)
  • Italian Americans and the Arts & Culture (2005)
  • Through the Looking Glass: Italian & Italian/American Images in the Media (1996)
  • The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women's Fiction (1993)

Contributor:

  • "Afterword," The Right Thing to Do by Josephine Gattuso Hendin (1999)
  • Taking Parts: Ingredients for Leadership, Participation, and Empowerment (1993)

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Mary Jo Bona, Professor and Chair". Stony Brook University. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  2. 1 2 Gardaphé, Fred L. (1996). "Bona Fortuna: Mary Jo Bona". Dagoes Read: Tradition and the Italian/American Writer. Guernica Editions. pp. 44–48. ISBN 9781550710311.
  3. 1 2 Romano, Anne T. (2010). "Mary Jo Bona". Daughters of Italy: The Journey of Italian American Women Writers. XLibris. pp. 64–65. ISBN 9781453547823.
  4. ↑ Scambray, Kenneth (2000). "Review of The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women's Fiction by Mary Jo Bona". The North American Italian Renaissance: Italian Writing in America and Canada. Guernica Editions. pp. 96–98. ISBN 9781550711073.
  5. ↑ Tamburri, Anthony (2013). Re-reading Italian Americana: Specificities and Generalities on Literature and Criticism. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 150. ISBN 9781611476552.
  6. ↑ Femiani, Jessica (2016). "Review: I Stop Waiting For You by Mary Jo Bona". Paterson Literary Review. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  7. ↑ "Faculty Spotlight: Mary Jo Bona". The Statesman. February 26, 2004. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
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