Customer Reviews

Growing Up Italian in Chicago

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This wonderful autobiography is a success story. It began as a memoir-writing workshop exercise, and evolved into a wonderful visit to an early twentieth century Chicago immigrant family, rich in love, tradition, and food.
It reminds one of "I Remember Mama," the Scandinavian version of newcomers to America, or the recent movie "In America," an Irish family's beginnings in the New World.
It is rare to read today a book without typos or misspellings and so well-written that you immediately become absorbed into the author's life in "ghetto" Chicago. It was a shock to the author to discover in a college sociology textbook describing the part of Chicago she lived in as a "slum." There was no crime, starvation, or abject poverty in her neighborhood, just hard-working people, mostly immigrants, living in well-maintained apartment buildings.
The book is also a success story of a young girl whose first language was Italian, learned English in kindergarten, and eventually became a professor of Literature at a western Massachusetts college after raising a family of five children as well as the premature death of her husband. It is a well-told, inspiring story.

An interesting but disappointing account of an individual Italian family in the old neighborhood. My family lived in the same area (1100 block of Larrabee Street) but moved one block away from Riverview Park along with several other relatives where the author says she also visited. My grandfather had his burial plots at Mt. Carmel Cemetery too. My mother, uncles and aunts are now buried there along with my grandmother and grandfather. He never had a car (or truck for that matter) but did take a train that paralled Jackson Blvd. all the way out there. That's why Mt. Carmel was so accessible to the Italians without other transportation. We called the streetcar to get to Riverview the Roscoe-Western streetcar which took Clybourn to Damen to Roscoe to Western. (She could have written about those wonderful red cars with the reversible wicker seats.) And the author never mentions the Italian feast either that we went to yearly on Larrabee Street (just like in The Godfather including the little angel strung on a high wire and the Virgin Mary with money pinned on her image by the loyal parishioners) up until the late 1950's (when the area was really a slum) even though Cabrini Green had replaced most of the old neighborhood. This really was a big deal for all Italians from that area even though most of them had moved (with the exception of my one uncle) because of loyalty to the old church. An interesting read but I wish it had more substance regarding the great city we grew up in along with all the wonderful people and experiences outside her immediate almost isolated experiences. I am an only child too. So that has nothing to do with feeling there should have been more to this memoir.