Ethnicity, Gender, and Culture in Garibaldi M. Lapolla’s "Miss Rollins in Love"

Published in 1932, "Miss Rollins in Love" was the second novel by the Italian American author, educator, and culinary enthusiast Garibaldi M. Lapolla, whose name and contribution to the literature of the United States regrettably remain largely unknown outside Italian American scholarship. "Miss Rollins in Love" attracted little attention and, like the two other novels Lapolla published in his lifetime, "The Fire in the Flesh" (1931) and "The Grand Gennaro" (1935), soon disappeared from the literary scene. Lapolla was a very accomplished fiction writer, who captured the voices, manners, and ambience of the Italian community in Harlem at turn-of-the century and in the early twentieth century. In his novels, Lapolla delved into complex questions of cultural assimilation and identity construction that continue to be relevant in the United States today and wherever people of different origins and backgrounds co-exist. As this essays tries to argue, "Miss Rollins in Love" is long overdue for a critical reappraisal.