A Circular Journey (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "James Street, where I lived from infancy through my twenty-second year, begins in downtown Syracuse at Clinton Square, continues a straight course eastbound reaching an..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, James Street, Italian American (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

". . .Suceeds as a unified work that takes the reader on a stimulating and satisfying voyage."

Product Description

A Circular Journey collects for the first time in one book the essays that most powerfully define the unique gifts of one of America’s most distinctive voices.

These fifteen pieces, tracking some thirty years of a writer’s life, come together to illuminate the stages and themes and places that mark Helen Barolini’s art. Divided into three closely linked sections—"Home," "Abroad," "Return,"—the essays move through Barolini’s worlds. Her love of literature began when, as a child growing up as an avid reader in Syracuse, New York, she was presented with a diary and told to write in it. Returning to the heritage of her Italian immigrant grandparents, she moved to Italy as a young writer. There she lived for many years, becoming acquainted with the brightest of Italy’s literary lights. The accomplished poet, novelist, and critic she became now lives at home in two nurturing cultures, America and Italy both.

The essays are memoirs of her house on a street named for Henry James’s grandfather, tales of literary journeys from Taos to Taormina, and Paris to Rome, as the young bride of a poet from the Veneto and, later on, as a distinguished writer whose explorations of identity and dislocation took her back to Italian inspirations.

From a delightful account of a writing fellowship in an exquisite villa overloo king the Italian lakes to her first trip back to discover distant family roots in the hills of Calabria, Barolini moves lyrically through the generations of her life, giving form to the influences that shaped her art and her sense of self—as an American, a woman, and a gifted daughter of the two cultures she has so powerfully imagined.

Praise for Helen Barolini

"An impassioned and magnificent contribution to our knowledge of what it has meant and means still to be an ethnic American and woman . . . . a book of heroic recovery and affirmation."—Alice Walker (on The Dream Book)

"Large in scope, in depth, and in the gift of narrative."—Cynthia Ozick (on Umbertina)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; First Edition edition (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823226158
• ISBN-13: 978-0823226153
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,784,327 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A distinctive journey through the phases and transformations of life reflected in literary art, September 10, 2006

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

A Circular Journey by novelist, critic, and poet Helen Barolini is a collection of fifteen essays drawn from her life memories, and her acclimation to the best of two worlds - the distinct cultures of America and Italy. From early childhood to her marriage to a poet to her experiences as a writer which connected her to Italian inspirations through themes of identity and dislocation, A Circular Journey traces each step with wisdom, heart, acknowledgment, gratitude, and optimism. A distinctive journey through the phases and transformations of life reflected in literary art.