Reading between the lines: Learning the Italian culture through literature

Renowned science fiction author Ray Bradbury once said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” 

 

Bradbury may not have been Italian – and we can’t fault him for that – but he did have a point about the importance of books in culture. Intentional or not, every book carries echoes of the culture in which it was written, passing parts of that culture on to every single reader who picks it up. 

 

Playing its part in passing on the heritage and culture of Italy here in San Diego, the Italian Cultural Center (ICC) is hosting a quarterly book club at its Little Italy center. 

The book club, which has been offered by ICC for several years to its members, was restructured and reintroduced in October, expanding from just one meeting after members had completed the selected reading to a minimum of three meetings over the course of several weeks, allowing readers to share their thoughts, questions and opinions on the book with the instructor and other members as they read. 

 

The idea of the new structure for the book club, according to ICC’s director of Language Programs Rossella Broglia, is to “guide the students through the reading rather than talk about the book at the end of it only.”

 

The books are always in Italian and are carefully selected by ICC instructors and approved by Broglia. 

“It’s very difficult to find the right book,” Broglia says. “You really have to try to find the right balance between the topic…Italians are very straight-forward, even when they write, so they’ll really write about anything. So you don’t want to bring to class (books) that may be too controversial. You try to find something that teaches the language without being too personal as far as politics or religion and things like that.”

 

Instructors meet with Broglia and discuss at length the book they wish to present to the club before it is an approved selection. “We try to analyze the book together before we present it (to) the book club…We want to give our students a chance to improve their language and also learn more about the Italian culture, but in a way that is useful, meaningful rather than uncomfortable.”

 

Once a book is selected, Broglia and her team posts it on the Book Club section of ICC’s website along with the scheduled meetings to allow interested members to purchase the book and RSVP to the meetings. A reading schedule is handed out during the first introductory meeting of each quarter by the instructor. Students and instructors will then analyze and discuss the assigned readings at each subsequent meeting.

 

On Jan. 16, ICC launched the first book club meeting of 2014 by introducing Massimo Gramellini’s “Fai bei sogni.” According to ICC’s website, Gramellini’s book tells “the story of a secret hidden in an envelope for 40 years. It’s the story of a child first, and an adult then, who will learn how to confront the emotional pain deriving from the loss of his mother and at the same time, he will learn how to face the pain of living too.”

 

ICC members who may have the first meeting, still have time to catch up: You can receive the reading schedule by e-mailing info@icc-sd.org. Just make sure you’ve completed the assigned chapters by the next meeting, which will be held on Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. The book is available for purchase at www.amazon.com.