| Cu tìa avissi avutu furtezza e Casteddu: With You I Could Have Had Fortress and Castle: A Life in Poetry Contributor(s): Galante, Carmela (Author), Pleva, Hildegard Nimke (Editor), Massi, Fulvia (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1944037861 ISBN-13: 9781944037864 Publisher: Epigraph Publishing OUR PRICE: $21.95 Product Type: Paperback Published: February 2018 * Not available - Not in print at this time * |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | European - Italian |
| Physical Information: 0.43" H x 5.51" W x 8.5" (0.56 lbs) 158 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Italy |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Carmela Galante, motherless within a month of her birth and orphaned at nine years, lost the comforting familiarity of her native place at the age of eleven only to be torn from family and detained alone for two weeks on Ellis Island at Thanksgiving time, 1921. Loss and emotional abandonment emerge as life themes in a cache of poetry styled in the age-old manner of Sicilian story telling. Products of a creative gush in 1964, the poems are an autobiographical explosion of reflection. In the face of a diagnoses of terminal cancer, her poetry was an effort to leave her story to future generations. She died four years later at the age of 58. The poems express nostalgic desire, the pain of death and illness, strength derived from religious faith and the common wisdom of a true daughter of Sicilian culture in the seaside town of Castellammare del Golfo, west of Palermo. Her opus, previously published in Italy by the National Association of Families of the Emigrated (ANFE), appears here as a bilingual presentation including English prose renditions of the poems and a biographical essay accompanied by commentary from both literary and psychological points of view. Her life achievements and loving relationships in spite of persisting psychological pain are amplified by inclusion of archival documents and photographs. Carmela's unexpected creation contributes personal context to discussion of the current moment of new mass migration. |
Contributor Bio(s): Pleva, Hildegard Nimke: - The child Carmelina was born in 1910 in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily west of Palermo, daughter of a prosperous captain engaged in Mediterranean shipping. A month later her mother was dead. By 1916 her father was also dead. Rescued from poverty by her sister's marriage to a fellow countryman already a U.S. citizen, she was plucked from her familiar home to the alarmingly strange scenes of New York City in 1921. Her solitary detention on Ellis Island for two weeks became the stuff of family legend. Without any schooling she joined in the work sweatshop girls. Early marriage was followed by disappointment and illness render her barren. The first months of the Great Depression marked the premature death of her sister who left behind an infant and small child. Yet, in the midst of great hardship she rose through garment industry ranks, became an arbiter of style and propriety, gaining reputation as homemaker, cook, and unparalleled friend to many. Plagued by illness but sustained by faith, she faced death at an early age. The urge to leave behind her story gave birth autobiographical poems in her native dialect, flowing like lava from an emotional volcano in 1964. Just before her death in 1968 at the age of 58, she entrusted the loose leaf manuscript pages to the hands of her grandniece Hildegard Nimke Pleva who has honored her memory in their publication in the current moment of a new wave of mass migration.Galante, Carmela: - Hildegard Nimke Pleva, daughter of immigrants, student of history, retired school librarian and former contemplative nun, brings broad life experience and academic study to her blog ContemplativeHorizon and essays published in journals as diverse as Arba Sicula and Cistercian Studies. She holds master degrees in education, library science and religious studies. Her book presenting and amplifying cache of Sicilian dialect poetry, a moving autobiographical creation of her grandaunt, is an effort to communicate contextual reality for the immigrant experience at a moment of new mass migration. As the mother of three sons and grandmother of five she continues to tell multi-cultural stories of hardship, achievement, and integrity to new generations. |