| Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily Contributor(s): Messina, Maria (Author), Magistro, Elise (Translator), Gardaphé, Fred (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1558615539 ISBN-13: 9781558615533 Publisher: Feminist Press OUR PRICE: $17.96 Product Type: Hardcover Published: July 2007 Annotation: With an ear for dialogue that may be compared to Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, and Ernest Hemingway, Sicilian writer Maria Messina presents the captivating and brutal realities of women living in early-twentieth-century Italy in this first collection of her work available in English. Behind Closed Doors portrays the habits and gestures, the words spoken and those left unsaid, of individuals caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to ease the social restrictions in their lives. Messina's stories reveal a world in which women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, and working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. It is also a world of unstated privileges in which habits and implied commands perpetuate women's servitude. A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, this volume will appeal to millions of Italian descendants and readers everywhere fascinated by Italian history. Maria Messina (18871944) wrote short stories, children's tales, and novels about her native Sicily until she died of multiple sclerosis. In recent years, her work has been rediscovered in Italy, where she has been compared to Luigi Pirandello and Giovanni Verga. Fred Gardaphe is the director of Italian American Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the president of MELUS (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US). Elise Magistro holds a doctorate in Italian from UCLA and is a lecturer in Italian at Scripps College in Claremont, California. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Short Stories (single Author) - Fiction | Cultural Heritage |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2007003928 |
| Physical Information: 0.84" H x 5.72" W x 7.25" (0.66 lbs) 144 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Ten stories of impoverished Sicilian women in the early 20th century--"honed, polished, devastatingly direct . . . verismo at its unsentimental best" (Kirkus Reviews). The Sicilian writer Maria Messina's captivating and brutal stories of the women of her home island are presented in a "lyrical and immediate" English translation by Elise Magistro (Publishers Weekly). Messina, who died in 1944, was the foremost female practitioner of verismo--the Italian literary realism pioneered by fellow Sicilian Giovanni Verga. Published between 1908 and 1928, Messina's fiction represents the massive Sicilian immigration to America occurring at that time. The individuals in these stories are caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to move beyond them. Women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, left behind while working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, "Messina's words will leave their mark. Their power makes them impossible to forget" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). |