This collection reads like a memoir, detailing the life of a family across generations and giving us a moving and haunting portrait of the Italian mother who is the centre around which this family revolves. The mother's stories and words shape the lives of her daughter and granddaughter, but this book is about much more than ethnicity. Gillan's work succeeds in transcending any single identity category and explores instead the multiple ways in which each of us learns to identify him or herself.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"It proves that the human story (regardless of era, locale or nationality) is worth recounting nationwide." -- Home News Tribune
"She finds small words to describe huge truths." -- The Record
"She finds small words to describe huge truths." -- The Record
About the Author
Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the director of the poetry center at Passaic County Community College. She is the author of Where I Come From and Things My Mother Told Me.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry that offers a window into a woman's life,
By A Customer
This review is from: Italian Women In Black Dresses (Essential Poets Series 116) (Paperback)
This is such a brilliant, risk-taking moving book, I can only recommend that you read it immediately.You won't be sorry.Here we have poems about growing up, incidents in high school and grammar school. the life of an ethnic Italian neighborhood policed by the old ladies in their black dresses. The book traces this woman's life through girlhood, the books she read like Nancy Drew and the stars she admired like Doris Day to a time when her husband of many years becomes critically ill with Parkinson's Disease. I don't know how anyone could put his down without wanting to return to it again and again. Beautiful!!!!Also read Maria Mazziotti Gillan's other books. She is a poet who transforms the ordinary, sees below its surface, and allows us to see as well.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Provincial but Moving Poetry, Good in Heart, Not in Craft,
By A Customer
This review is from: Italian Women In Black Dresses (Essential Poets Series 116) (Paperback)
Though this poetry is provincial in form and content, it has a heart and its content often transcends its craft. Still, its the sort of poetry that the average reader who is not in love with the craft and knowledgeable about it will enjoy. What it lacks in sophistication, it often makes up for in feeling and insight into the human family in its everyday life--especially the Italian American family of New Jersey. A pleasant and easy read, if not terribly original in style.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
I dress now all in black like the old ladies of my childhood, the old ladies who watched our movements and reported to our mothers if we did anything wrong. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
metal bed Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Donna Laura, New Jersey, Herman Westfall, River Street, Zia Rosa, Zio Guillermo New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
I dress now all in black like the old ladies of my childhood, the old ladies who watched our movements and reported to our mothers if we did anything wrong. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
metal bed Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Donna Laura, New Jersey, Herman Westfall, River Street, Zia Rosa, Zio Guillermo New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 4
books:
1
book
cites this book:
- The Air Force (Defending the Nation) by John Hamilton on page 87
- Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American by Maria Mazziotti Gillan in Back Matter
- Alexander Hamilton by S.G. Brown on page 87
- Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry by Maria Mazziotti Gillan in Back Matter
- Good Poems for Hard Times by Garrison Keillor in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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