Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom [Hardcover]

Maria Laurino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2009

A warm, smart, and witty personal investigation of ethnicity and womanhood.

In the second-generation immigrant home where Maria Laurino grew up, “independent” was a dirty word and “sacrifice” was the ideal and reality of motherhood. But out in the world, Mary Tyler Moore was throwing her hat in the air, personifying the excitement and opportunities of the freedom loving American career woman. How, then, to reconcile one’s inner Livia Soprano—the archetypal ethnic mother—with a feminist icon?

Combining lived experience with research and reporting on our contemporary work-family dilemmas, Laurino brews an unusual and affirming blend of contemporary and traditional values. No other book has attempted to discuss feminism through the prism of ethnic identity, or to merge the personal and the analytical with such a passionate and intelligent literary voice. Prizing both individual freedom and an Old World in which the dependent young and old are cherished, Laurino makes clear how much the New World offers and how much it has yet to learn.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a memoir that combines the personal and the political, Laurino (Were You Always an Italian?) documents her journey from a childhood spent in the company of a traditional Italian family to becoming a mother herself and the many differences between her mother's life and her own. Laurino's mother, a stay-at-home mom, claimed that she was not like the other mothers—she didn't drive or participate in the school's PTA; she was superstitious and read omens from dreams into daily life, while keeping an overprotective eye on Laurino and her mentally disabled brother. Laurino's father believed in the power of education and supported Laurino through college, where she pursued her burgeoning interest in the feminist movement. She began her career in the early 1980s at the Village Voice and later became New York City Mayor David Dinkins's chief speechwriter. As she married and had a child, her worldview expanded to include that of a working mother, and she struggled to find a comfortable place for myself amid the hum of two dominant, divergent traditions. Laurino deftly tells her story, while succinctly expressing a feminist's perspective on motherhood and explaining how much further we have to go as a country in order to honor every woman's work. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

From Chaucer’s ribald “Wife of Bath” and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own to the portrayal of Tony Soprano’s mother in The Sopranos, academic Laurino looks at women’s roles through history, challenging in the process some feminist orthodoxies about the meaning of independence. She dramatizes the political issues through her personal story, from being raised in a southern Italian immigrant family in New Jersey with a mentally disabled brother through her current effort to balance the childcare of her young son with the demands of her job. Set against the sometimes slow-going discussions of gender sociology is Laurino’s wry, witty commentary about her push to assimilate (“I made the hyphen in Italian-American into an arrow”) and about the pressures of family, food, and fear versus science, freedom, and progress. Along the way, she raises essential identity issues: Is there a healthy side to dependency? Why does this nation of immigrants overglorify rugged individualism and freedom? Does feminism fail mothers and children? Sure to spark discussion. --Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393057283
• ISBN-13: 978-0393057287
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #731,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maria Laurino was born and raised in northern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she received a B.A. in English and government, and of New York University, where she received an M.A. in English and American literature. She began her career as a journalist for the Village Voice and later became the chief speechwriter to former New York City Mayor David N. Dinkins. Laurino examined ethnic identity in her first book, Were You Always an Italian?, which was published in 2000 and became a national bestseller. Her second book, Old World Daughter, New World Mother (2009), a meditation on contemporary feminism, describes the pull and tug of growing up in an Old World family that prized dependence even as she later embraced a New World feminism that championed personal autonomy. Laurino's journalism has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Salon.com, and The Nation, and her essays have been widely anthologized, including in The Norton Reader. She teaches creative nonfiction at New York University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but unfocused, July 11, 2009

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom (Hardcover)

At first I had trouble figuring out what this book was about. The title suggested a memoir about a mother-daughter relationship. The first part of the book describes Laurino' Italian upbringing and her relatives. She's the daughter. The second part of the book shows Laurino as a mom. However, it's not a memoir. Laurino doesn't recount events of her life in linear fashion. She includes opinions and interviews relating to feminism.

The theme of Laurino's book seems to relate to the contradictions of the promise of feminism. For instance, Jeane Kirkpatrick - Laurino's college mentor - becomes a UN Ambassador in the Reagan administration. Though she's the first female to hold an international position in the president's cabinet, Kirkpatrick was not recognized as a feminist.

Laurino defends the speech New York Times writer Joyce Purnick made at the Barnard College commencement. Purnick acknowledged that she could not have achieved her successes if she had a child. According to Laurino, the Barnard women were furious.

Laurino points out that Purnick was telling the truth, but she goes on to blame the United States failure to accommodate female biology. Other countries, she points out, give new mothers considerably more time off.

She describes a particularly horrific experience, involving women doctors and a midwife. When she started crying after being advised to have no more children, the female doctor directs her to, "Emote later."

"Emote later?" Laurino asks. "For this I had chosen a feminist practice and its band of caring midwives?" I don't understand why Laurino didn't write a complaint to the head of her managed care group, the hospital board and, if necessary, the state medical boards. If more people would speak up, these things would happen less often.

Laurino has been active in government. Mayor Dinkins officiated at her wedding. So perhaps it's natural for her to argue for legislation to address these challenges. On the other hand, not all women (or all feminists) are married with children.

On pages 211-212, Laurino describes another woman making another unfortunate speech, also at Barnard (which happens to be my own alma mater. This woman, an unnamed dancer, says she was advised to get a husband so she could have health insurance. Laurino says the audience was furious, but says dependency can be justified. Would it be better for this woman to work at a job she detests (because dancers don't earn much money instead of accepting support from a husband?

But here's where Laurino falters. It's not about dependency: it's about the opportunity to achieve and be single. After all, a man who wanted to take a series of low-level jobs would face the same problem: get married or take a part-time job to get insurance.

Ultimately I would have liked to see a more direct focus: more direct discussion of the ironies of contemporary women's experience and more specific episodes like the health care story. The old vs new world contrast wasn't especially strong and ultimately was less interesting than some of the other issues Laurino raises.

3.0 out of 5 stars Where have all the feminist gone?, July 31, 2009

By 

AKA "authorknows" (Cambridge, Ma United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom (Hardcover)

Old World Daughter, New World Mother: an Education in Love and Freedom by Maria Laurino. New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008.

Old World Daughter, New World Mother is a provocative meditation on feminism: a symphony of intellectual, historical, economic, political, social, emotional, and personal aspects playing their part in a final creation that holds together not only the story of Maria Laurino, but also other ambitious second generation immigrant women--perhaps Italian Americans in particular, but certainly not limited to that ethnic group.

Laurino, author of the best selling book, Were You Always an Italian, grew up in a traditional household that honored women who cared for their families, who sacrificed individual dreams for the well-being of the group. Her father, breaking the mold so many ethnic fathers broke in the 70s, encouraged his daughter to establish an independent life and a career. So off she went.

At Georgetown University, Laurino `assumed the identity of a girl reporter,' found a championing mentor--Jeane Kirkpatrick, ardent anticommunist and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, nonetheless--and began looking for answers to what became, for her, a lifelong question: female autonomy. Is it possible? Can autonomy create parity in a society built on competition and profit? Do women really want autonomy?

At this point in the book, Laurino pulls out her powerful writing skills and begins, like the master she is, to twirl, cut, expose, and cite literature as well as scientific reports that lead along the path to answering her question. At the same time, readers ascend the steps of her impressive journalistic career.

As she moves from the mice-infested, exciting and sexually polarized Village Voice office to New York City Mayor David Dinkin's money-laden digs, we hear from Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, phallocentric challenged French feminists, and young NYU students who can't define feminism. We learn about philosopher Eva Feder Kittay's concept that `everyone is some mother's child,' statistics from Australia's daycare system, a summary of British psychoanalyst's John Bowlbey's attachment theory, and the author's own Uncle Patsy who says `ev-ah-ree-tings-ah-boolsheet.'

Motherhood culminates the discussion of autonomy and equality. "The most enduring and difficult conflict for all women who want to combine motherhood with personal ambition has less to do with defined maternal roles than the absolute dependency of an infant," she writes.

To foster true feminist equality and autonomy, Laurino urges a defined chlid-caring partnership between parents, as well as for government to spend more on child care than on prisons, and that women's autonomy concerns gain top billing in political discussions.

As a mother, she can't help wondering if her fingers were stained by the grapes in her Old World? Genetic and ancestral patterns `hover about us throughout or lives.' Can family life possibly be a `joy-filled reality of attachment and dependency' and not a purposeful oppression of individual freedom?

The book surprised me. The cover and title promised a story about mothers and daughters, different, for sure, than what was delivered. As much as mothers and daughters, Laurino's meditation honed in on daughters and `feminist' fathers, sisters and successful brothers, the political dynamics of female and male co-workers, and the responsibility of wives and husbands.

Either way, as we read Laurino's book we ponder: who are we, where did we come from, where are we going? Like many Italian Americans of her generation, Laurino has done well in the New World; her heart, however, hovers in a More-Perfect World and her mind reaches out for the irretrievable Old World; the Old World of our common childhood, of our ancestors, of memory, of our sometimes ethnic self-consciousness, of our dependency on each other.

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting, June 25, 2009

By 

grumpydan (Andover, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom (Hardcover)

"Old World Daughter, New World Mother" focuses on Maria Laurino's experiences as a both a mother and daughter and the roles in today's society. She chronicles her life and compares what it was life for her mother and the role she played in their Italian family and herself; a working woman. Her amusing writing style and the questions she brings up makes this an interesting book for all those mothers and daughter facing the same dilemmas.