A Local Italian American Youth Style Tradition: Anticipating Guido

Abstract

This chapter places Guido in the even more remarkably spare scholarly research on Italian American youth especially as actors performing ethnicity in youth social and cultural spaces. Several patterns emerge in the literature for youth peer group relationships: (1) they are stunted by the family as the central institution of ethnic Italian life; (2) they have a deviant orientation; (3) American popular culture has assimilation outcomes. There is little mention of a youth formation at the intersection of ethnicity and American popular culture and there is no sign of an Italian American subculture, a youth formation with clear defined boundaries. The second part of the chapter fills in the gaps in New York City historically, delineating a local youth style tradition leading up to the coalescence of Guido in the 1970s.