Volta : An Italian-American Reckoning With Race

In Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning with Race, author Michelle Reale embarks on a brave and unflinching journey to the roots of racism as she knows it. Starting with the town she was raised in, Reale examines several cultural touchstones within the Italian-American community, along with local and national flashpoints in Italian-American and African-American relations, and subjects such as Columbus Day, Frank Rizzo, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and how Italians became ‘White’. In examining these issues, Reale challenges the reader and points them towards the lifelong process of racial reckoning.

The style of reckoning here is straightforward and brutally honest, with no apologetics, making this book unique in contemporary anti-racism literature. While the author looks through the lens of her own culture, she argues for the "self-implicative" nature of reckoning – that one cannot point the finger of blame in any direction other than oneself. Her account shows how our acculturation of racism is both conscious and unconscious, and that only way to face it is head on.

Along with general reader, this book will appeal to college students of all levels, anti-racism educators, Whiteness scholars, high-school students, and those interested in the intersectionality of racism and culture.

"Anti-racist action begins with the self. It entails the difficult work of acknowledging the prejudices we carry and the harm we have caused. In Volta, Michelle Reale maneuvers adeptly through her own racial reckoning and Italian-American history to offer an invaluable model for the reflective praxis essential to transformative change."

—Christopher Allen Varlack, Executive Director, Center for Antiracist Scholarship, Advocacy, and Action

"In Volta, Michelle Reale uses autoethnographic and poetic strategies to look critically at her own upbringing and how racism extends through generations in a culture. Her vibrant narrative and poetic skills forge bonds between theory and an examined life. This unflinching inquiry provides a valuable model for anti-racist work."

—Anne McCrary Sullivan, Author of Learning Calabar: Notes from a Poet’s Year in Nigeria