Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

"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.

My background and experience are very similar to Maria Laurino's, in that I am a woman; all four of my grandparents were born in Italy (Sicily and Naples); I grew up in an Italian-American enclave (Brooklyn, not New Jersey); I went on to attend elite schools and became an "American" professional; my husband is not Italian; and, when our son was a little kid attending summer day-camp at a NYC independent school, I made Italian box lunches for him each day. (My husband laughed out loud when I described Laurino's ricotta crackers, well-remembering the roast chicken legs w/olive oil and oregano, with a side of mozzarella.) Also, like Maria's friends, now that my son is a college student living at home and attending a local college (yes, he didn't leave -- not yet), each time he goes out, I say "Have fun!" when I really want to say "Be careful!" ("Why are you always worrying, Mom?") The fruit does not far fall from the Sicilian tree.

Laurino has a larger point, however, and one with which I strongly agree. She sees Italian-American culture as signifying the "caring" point of view that regards inter-dependency and nurturing at the basis of human development. Americans, and particularly our generation of feminists, thought that work should be at the center of women's lives. Laurino's point, learned as she reconciled her American values with the culture of her grandparents, is that autonomy is not the road to fulfillment. The fruit does not fall far from the tree because the tree and fruit are connected. A forward-thinking feminism, Laurino suggests, would find life-style solutions that would permit women (and men) to work while at the same time recognizing that family, and personal connections, are essential for the health of all.

I have often said that the moment that I held my son in my arms, I was magically transformed into my mother. That's because, at some level, I recognized that her love and support, and the values of my childhood, had made everything that I'd achieved possible. Laurino has transformed this recognition into a program for change. Brava -- bravissima! -- from one Italian-American mamma to another.

Maria Laurino's book is part memoirs and part analysis of feminism in practice.

The book begins with stories of her Italian American grandparents and the lives that they built for themselves in New Jersey. Sharing anecdotes from her mother's childhood of how her maternal grandfather who came to the US at the turn of the century and created his own construction company. Growing their own vegetables and flowers, making their own wine in the basement of their home, maintaining many of their traditions and habits of the lives that they'd had in Italy. In the stories of her family, Maria Laurino shares the roles that women have held and how each generation of women would balance the expectations and needs of their families with their own needs.

She writes about feminism in the context of her own life and her identity as Italian American. "I explained how my father wanted me to attend any college that I chose and always supported my living away from home to pursue a career...[the journalist] had no idea how radical the concept of establishing an independent life was for a daughter in a traditional Italian-American family."

Laurino discusses how motherhood affected her understanding of everyday feminism. She also analyzes how feminism is regarded by college women and recent college graduates insofar as anecdotal research shows that less women seem to describe themselves as feminists while they have a deep commitment to gender equality in practice.

Overall, I found Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom to be an interesting read.

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (April 13, 2009), 224 pages.

Courtesy of Bostick Communications and the author.

To appreciate where I am coming from it helps to know I am 100% pure wild west woman, and my family has been in California since the early 1800's, so the fact I loved this book so much speaks well for the author.

Am so glad I read this book, both because its a treat to hear about someone else's upbringing and the priceless lessons learned from grandparents an parents, but because the author writes in such a unique and refreshing way, so that you actually visualize what she is describing. The book made me laugh, cry, wince and think.

Cannot recommend the book enough. And will never ever look at another homemade bottle of wine the same after reading of enema bags, a young boy, empty wine bottles and wine made in the basement.

It amazes me that a woman in her mid fifties could have published 2 books about herself. Connections perhaps? This book is so self indulgent as she struggles to find out what motherhood is all about and then tries to make it seem all scholarly by making literary allusions. Her husband took a lower paying job to help out with the baby? Gee, I remember the New York Times story about him being fired by Gov Paterson. A little misleading like the entire book that is self aggrandizing and frankly, dull. Do we really need the narcacistic ramblings of this nobody to teach us anything. I was given this as a gift and would have preferred the money instead!

Like many women of her generation, Maria Laurino got burned on 1970's feminism after she had her own family and child. So she did what a lot of her contemporaries did: she turned to her heritage and reevaluated what a full, happy life would look like. The result is this book, a manifesto for a new, nurturing feminism that rewards women (and men!) for acknowledging how we are dependent on everyone around us.

Laurino mixes social criticism, activism, wry humor, intellectual insight, and paesano playfulness to create a product unlike anything I've seen in a long time. She starts with a memoir of Italian-American family life. Her ancestors were working people, close to the land and tied to family alliances running generations deep. But American-born Laurino wanted the feminist promise of finding herself outside the home, so she hustled off to college, a journalism career, and a stint as a staffer in municipal New York politics.

Many feminist tracts start with massive declarations about what it is to be a woman, and turn from there to the specific. Most feminists treat the old and the young, the black and the white, the American and the international as identical women everywhere. Not so Laurino. She starts with a specific woman, herself, and uses her own hard-won experience to say what it is like to be a specific kind of woman.

Due to that outlook, and reliance on her Italian heritage, Laurino creates a feminism that accepts domesticity and nurturance. Her feminism lets women be individuals, because she doesn't tell women what they need, allowing them to make that choice themselves. Her feminism is humane and supportive, recognizing that women deserve fulfillment, which she concedes may come from adopting certain traditional feminine roles.

Though Laurino confronts attitudes Americans take for granted, anyone can read her opinions and see she feels them deeply. She challenges us to see ourselves in a new way. Who knows, maybe she'll lead men and women alike to live in a world where we share our lives, and our spaghetti alla pomodoro, the way her mamma nurtured her so many years ago.

This thoughtful and beautifully written book raised important questions for me about my own role as a mother and daughter. Laurino uses her own personal experiences as well as reporting from all kinds of different places to challenge our thinking about the roles of women, families and society today. For me, her contrast between the "old world" of our ancestors (though I am not Italian, so much of what she said holds true for my own relatives), where dependency is a good thing, and the "new world" of the kind of feminism I was raised to believe in, was a perspective I never thought of. It helped me understand my own family better, and gave me some new ideas about what our country should be doing to help women like us, trying to balance the needs of our kids and aging parents with our own careers and identity. Fascinating, original, filled with humor and emotion, I recommend this book to any woman struggling to manage these issues