Resembling a memoir in its early pages, Hidden turns out to be about nothing less than a man’s search for God. As such, it belongs to a literary tradition that encompasses St. Augustine, Dante, and Thomas Merton. Author Richard Giannone knows these authors well. He began teaching English at Notre Dame in the early 1960′s. In 1967, he moved to New York to take a position at Fordham, where he is now a professor emeritus.

The move to New York placed him at the center of gay liberation and launched his internal struggles as a gay Italian-American with a Catholic upbringing and a promising academic career. Like Augustine in Confessions, he was burning with lust: “The pagan in me pitched a tent in the freewheeling sensual fray.” But not for long. A near-death experience with hepatitis B caused him to give up sex and to turn away from close human relationships for more than a decade. Later, the love of another man, caring for his dying mother, and the AIDS epidemic would bring him back to a “meaningful gay life”–and put him on the path to faith.

As an adult, Giannone did not consider himself religious, but he never stopped thinking about his relationship with God. He faced the dilemma of those who cannot surrender to religious dogma but still feel what he calls “spiritual desire.” The issue was deeper than a gay man rejecting a homophobic church; it was the challenge to discover a grounding for faith in the actual experiences of his life. For years Giannone walked twelve blocks from his apartment to evening Mass at St. Joseph’s Church. There, though he could not pray, he took part in the Lord’s Supper. These physical acts–walking, taking the host, drinking the wine–were the closest he could come to faith.

In 1981, some friends introduced him to Frank, a good-looking, brawny Italian-American man who had recently left the priesthood. The two walked through the Village getting to know each other. Frank’s “natural emotional intelligence” brought Giannone out of his isolation. Falling in love with this man taught him that “being gay and seeking God are inextricably bound at the generative vortex of one’s nature,” and the two men became life partners. Giannone makes it clear that their relationship has been one of struggle and growth, but that story is not the focus of the book, and after a powerful chapter on their meeting, Frank recedes into the background.

A large part of Hidden is devoted to Giannone’s “mothering journey,” an account of how for 28 years he took a bus from the Village to his family home in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, where he cared first for his mother Nellie and then for his sister Marie in their long, terminal illnesses. The physical journey was also a spiritual journey. The qualities that made him a successful academic were not the ones that would enable him to care for old women whose minds were slowly slipping away. Caring for the dying requires humility and acceptance, the ability to sit silently with another person. Giannone struggled with his impatience and a desire to control, and came to understand that the way Nellie pulled him away from himself and into her needs was like “bumping into God.”

Giannone believes that his mother and other old women in his Italian-American community had a “quality of knowing” that surpassed his understanding and enabled them to face death with grace. Since these women are mostly silent figures whose thoughts we never know, there is a risk here of appropriating their lives for his own purposes. By the time Nellie was in the final stages of her illness, AIDS was running rampant in New York and Giannone knew many who were dying. He links AIDS to the spiritual journey he was on with his mother. Writes Giannone: “Disfigured seekers encircled us at the weekday liturgy. I could not help but have faith in the prayer of the stigmatized.” Here the appropriation may go too far. Those who suffer may or may not have faith, but they do not suffer so that others may benefit in their search for faith.

Hidden is strongest when Giannone explores his own transformations. He had an “evolution of the heart” after he met Frank, and caring for his mother made him aware of a “gender fluidity” as he assumed traditionally female functions. This ran counter to the Italian immigrant mores in which he was raised, but not to his nature as a gay man. Giannone describes the powerful bond that can exist between a gay man and his mother with great feeling. Nellie, whose formal schooling ended early, shared in the education of her gifted son until he moved beyond her ability to keep pace.

When he returned to the family home to care for her, he wanted to know this woman, whose life would be forgotten after her death, as a person. Thus he called her Nellie instead of mother. At the end of the book Giannone meditates on his own impending death. His faith still knows doubt and uncertainty, but, he declares, “God will have to take me as I am.” These words are a worthy summation of this thoughtful and gracefully written book.

Daniel A. Burr is assistant dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, where he also teaches in the medical humanities program.

We reviewed our internal structures to ensure that we are using the technologies already in place to our very best advantage, and to determine short and long term areas for investment and improvement. One large scale change on the University level that the Press is eagerly anticipating is the email migration to Gmail. With increased functionality for scheduling meetings this is one change that will not be difficult to make. In addition, FUP is excited to kick off the launch of our new website this summer. With a user-friendly interface and enhanced search functionality, we are certain that scholars and readers will be able to find what they are looking for with ease. (Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks!)

Helping to support the mission,our staff continues to grow and expand. This year our editorial program took on a new summer intern, Brian Earl. Brian, a student at Northwestern University, will be assisting the Editorial Director, Helen Tartar and her assistant, Tom Lay, in transmitting manuscripts, acquiring permissions, and creating book plans. Stephen Gan, a Fordham junior also joins the staff to aid in the daily processes of the Press with Fordham senior, Ben Sicker. With interns changing from one academic year to the next, and the continually changing publishing landscape, we are forced to revisit and rethink our daily routines and overall strategies.

Coincidentally, our Fall 2012 list touches on this concept as well. The Sentimental Touch: The Language of Feeling in the Age of Managerialism by Aaron Ritzenberg touches on managerial capitalism in the United States. He points out that most powerful businesses ceased to be family owned. Instead they became sprawling organizations controlled by complex bureaucracies. Sentimental literature—work written specifically to convey and inspire deep feeling—does not seem to fit with a swiftly bureaucratizing society. Surprisingly though, sentimental language has persisted in American literature, even as a culture of managed systems threatened to obscure the power of individual affect.

Although this retreat was an exercise in management systems, we strive to take a very human approach. With a smaller workforce that is deeply interconnected, we are made up of individuals that have deep feelings about their work. No amount of management can strike that out. But then again, that is why we are publishers—the maker of books—the gatekeepers of ideas.

Hidden: Reflections on Gay Life, AIDS, and Spiritual Desire

By Richard Giannone

In this brief but expressive memoir, Giannone (English, emeritus, Fordham Univ.; Flannery O’Connor: Hermit Novelist) discusses his experiences as a closeted gay man, a Roman Catholic, an academic, and a caregiver. In large part about difficulty and pain, this is a work that resists easy or tidy conclusions. While caring for ailing female relations, Giannone rediscovered a spirituality inspired in part by the desert fathers and mothers of the third century and in part by his scholarly work on Flannery O’Connor. Although more of a life story than a reflective or spiritual autobiography, his work captures two important historical points: the impact of AIDS on gay life and the experience of baby boomers as caregivers. VERDICT Although Giannone does not fully integrate his difficult experiences into a cohesive work or really succeed in seeing them as aspects of larger forces, his memoir will be of interest to social historians and many gay and lesbian readers.

Published 3/1/12

In the next few months we will publishing Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics by Yvette Christiansë and I am reminded of the Contemporary American Fiction Class I took with Professor Jonathan Levin where I read Song of Solomon as a junior.

I unearthed my essay on Song of Solomon that I had long since forgotten. In it I stressed that Song of Solomon is a novel that stresses the importance that a traditional past has on a contemporary American. Morrison creates a novel that is filled with largely religious references that form a commentary on contemporary American society, which appears to be moving towards secularization. However, the main character, Milkman takes a journey that shows the reader that a contemporary individual cannot break with their religion any more than Milkman can break with his cultural and religious past because it is the past that completes him. Milkman takes a leap at the end of the novel in which he lives life to the fullest, because in that second between life and death, he is free. A beautiful and painful concept.

I think that Song of Solomon may be the only work I have read by Toni Morrison. There is a copy of Paradise sitting on a bookshelf. With our upcoming publication, I just might dust both off and immerse myself in the writings of Toni Morrison, with Professor Christiansë as my guide.

Katie Sweeney

Author Jonathan Boyarin at the Angel Orensanz Center

As absorbing as a good cinema verité documentary, Boyarin’s personal ethnography may make Lower East Side tourists of many readers hooked by its abundant charm.–Booklist

Releasing last week, at the Angel Orensanz Center, an enthused Jonathan Boyarin thanked some of the familiar faces from the Shul and read a few excerpts from the book.

Booklist gave this favorable review.

Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side
Boyarin, Jonathan (Author)
Nov 2011. 208 p. Fordham, hardcover, $24.95. (9780823239009). 296.097.

Academic Boyarin goes popular with a journal of the 12 weeks in 2008 that he faithfully attended morning prayers at the 90-plus-year-old synagogue—the shul—of his Modern Orthodox home congregation on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Besides the daily suspense over whether enough men for a minyan will show up, he records the regulars and others who do; their personalities, concerns, relations, and life in the congregation; the congregation’s history, relations with other Orthodox synagogues and institutions, and efforts to keep its historic character and building intact; and the ever-changing face of the neighborhood, now as obviously part of Chinatown as it once was a locus of East European Jewish immigrants. He mentions his dreams, as long as they’re pertinent to the shul, and family events within the context of shul life. The big congregational to-do during the period is over one rabbi’s departure and the search for his successor. As absorbing as a good cinema verité documentary, Boyarin’s personal ethnography may make Lower East Side tourists of many readers hooked by its abundant charm.–Ray Olson

Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life says, “This book pays artistic tribute to the existence of great bridges—a wonderful achievement.”

We may be biased, but we’re certain this beautiful book is on everyone’s holiday wish list!

“Scare Tactics is that rare academic work that’s accessible rather than purposefully opaque, and it has much to offer readers interested in American literature, gothic fiction, or uppity women.”—Bitch Magazine

The notion of “the Gothic” permeates our society’s art forms, conveying the darkest of possible tones. It is this sense of discomfort, this sudden acquaintance with the disturbing and the uncanny, which draws us towards this type of literature time and time again.

Scare Tactics, written by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, explores the women authors who contributed to this strangely intriguing literary field. Between the end of the Civil War and roughly 1930, hundreds of uncanny tales were published by women in the periodical press and in books. These include stories by familiar figures such as Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as by authors almost wholly unknown to twenty-first-century readers, such as Josephine Dodge Bacon, Alice Brown, Emma Frances Dawson, and Harriet Prescott Spofford. Focusing on this tradition of female writing offers a corrective to the prevailing belief within American literary scholarship that the uncanny tale, exemplified by the literary productions of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, was displaced after the Civil War by literary realism.

To read Chapter 1, “The Ghost in the Parlor: Harriet Prescott Spofford, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Anna M. Hoyt, and Edith Wharton”, click here.

For a 20% discount off Scare Tactics, go to www.fordhampress.com. Use Promo Code SCARE at checkout.

In a city of over 8 million people, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that there is often little time for contemplation on the history of our roads and bridges and the cultural changes they have created. But today, the George Washington Bridge celebrates 80 years. To honor the engineering feats that created bridges and revolutionized the commerce of New York, the country, and the world, I will offer a short meditation on the “bridge.”

Bridge [brij] noun, verb, bridged, bridg•ing, adjective*

noun
1. A structure spanning and providing passage over a river, chasm, road, or the like.

The best part of the Henry Hudson Parkway is the view. Leading up to the George Washington Bridge is a winding view of trees and river. The Hudson river, which the GWB spans, is breathtaking in all seasons. From the summer when the palisades are ruddy and dry to the fall when the trees burst forth in colors, the sight is not to be missed. As a small child I would strain to see the river itself, full of tugboats and sailboats as we crossed over the bridge.

2. Connecting, transitional, or intermediate route or phase between two adjacent elements, activities, conditions, or the like: Working at the hospital was a bridge between medical school and private practice.

Even though the lives we lead can seem harried or fast-paced, we sometimes need to take time out to focus internally on our well-being. The yoga pose of Setu Bandha Sarvangasana or “Bridge Pose” helps me form an actual bridge of my body to wind down my yoga practice and metaphorically gives me a “bridge” into a calmer place. In our lives, it is just as important for reflection, as well as action.

3. Nautical
a. a raised transverse platform from which a power vessel is navigated: often includes a pilot house and a chart house.
b. any of various other raised platforms from which the navigation or docking of a vessel is supervised.
c. a bridge house or bridge superstructure.
d.a raised walkway running fore-and-aft.

A bridge can refer to the power center of the boat. It is a place to chart and set a course. Often these types of bridges are present on war ships. Not too far from the George Washington Bridge is one of New York’s unique museums. Housed on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, The Intrepid, Sea, Air, and Space Museum has a range of activities, exhibits, and events. The museum also hosts the annual Fleet Week in Manhattan.

4. Anatomy. the ridge or upper line of the nose.

I find this definition applicable to the George Washington Bridge because my mind makes the leap from the George Washington Bridge to another inspiring engineering feat where George Washington is present—Mount Rushmore. The same engineers that made bridges had to have the imagination to see what could be created in a space that nature fully inhabited.

5. Dentistry. an artificial replacement, fixed or removable, of a missing tooth or teeth, supported by natural teeth or roots adjacent to the space.

While this meaning of the word “bridge” does not seem applicable to the bridge that lends itself to transporting the masses, I think it is necessary to note the second half of the definition “supported by …roots adjacent to the space.” It is the roots of immigrant history that have in fact made bridges like the GWB and the Tappan Zee possible.

New York’s Golden Age of Bridges by Antonio Masi and Joan Marans Dim traces the roots of New York’s bridges, but also the stories behind the people who made them possible. Antonio’s grandfather, Francesco Masi, an Italian immigrant helped build the 59th Street (the recently renamed Ed Koch Queensboro) Bridge. Fascinated with bridges his entire life, Antonio has been capturing bridges with his brush for over a decade. Antonio’s work speaks to me, as it may speak to many others. Growing up, I was taught that my great-great grandfather, an Italian immigrant went to Cooper Union and became a painter. His paintings hung in our home, a constant reminder of the roots we have. I think Antonio and Joan’s narrative, accompanied by striking paintings will resonate with many others whose roots lie in a unique, yet collective American experience.

–Katie Sweeney

*Courtesy of Dictionary.com

Peale’s striking portrait captured the imagination of James H. Johnston, an attorney and journalist in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Johnston went on to research Yarrow and his descendants, finding that his relatives were notable in their own right. Yarrow’s son married into the Turner family, and the farm community in western Maryland called Yarrowsburg was named for Yarrow Mahmout’s daughter-in-law Mary “Polly” Turner Yarrow. The Turner line ultimately produced Robert Turner Ford, who graduated from Harvard University in 1927. Their fascinating stories are told in Johnston’s forthcoming book, From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family.

The portrait was painted by Peale in 1819 and is the earliest known portrait of a practicing American Muslim.

Besides reconstructing the true story of an African American family in Maryland over six generations, Johnston puts a face on slavery and paints the history of race in America. Still fascinating Americans today, the portrait of Yarrow Mahmout is not just an historical artifact, but a journey that continues.

For more on Yarrow Mahmout’s journey, look for From Slave Ship to Harvard by James H. Johnston / 9780823239504 / $29.95 / MAY 2012

Gothamist sits down with author, Mark Naison, to talk about the gentrification of the Bronx.

Notorious PhD

Click here to hear the entire interview and Mark’s latest rap song, “Not in the Bronx”: Notorious PhD

Mark Naison is the co-author of The Rat That Got Away, a memoir that tells the incredible story of one man’s journey from the Patterson projects to the upper tiers of European Banking.

By Allen Jones, with Mark Naison