Download or read book Italian Women and Autobiography written by Fabiana Cecchini and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-18 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays included in this collection examine issues such as identity and ideology which are at play in the female autobiography practice, along with the problematicity that these trigger in terms of self-representation and traditional formal boundaries. The women writers analyzed here through mainly historical, literary, feminist and psychoanalytic lenses cover a long period in the history of Italy, spanning from the Fascist era to our time. In an attempt to organize and connect these texts which are chronologically far apart, we have divided our contributions into two main parts. The first, “Shapes of Ideology,” includes authors interacting primarily with political ideology in a way that eventually entails the challenge of the official “technologies of gender” (De Lauretis, 1987) and implicitly, a reflection on the gendered identity. In the second part, “Reconsidering ideology, negotiating autobiography,” while the political ideology is not completely excluded, it becomes however something more internalized and relevant to the writers’ quest for identity. Such process bears consequences with respect to the canon of autobiography, as authors experiment with new forms of autobiographical narratives and readers become more and more an integral component of this personal endeavor.
Download or read book Public History Private Stories written by Graziella Parati and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important volume, Graziella Parati examines the ways in which Italian women writers articulate their identities through autobiography - a public act that is also the creation of a private life. Considering autobiographical writings by five women writers from the seventeenth century to the present, Parati draws important connections between self-writing and the debate over women's roles, both traditional and transgressive. Parati considers the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman - Camilla Faa Gonzaga's 1622 memoir - as her beginning point, citing it as a central "pre-text". Parati then examines the autobiographies of Enif Robert, Fausta Cialente, Rita Levi Montalcini, and Luisa Passerini. Through her discussion of these women's writings, she demonstrates the complex negotiations over identity contained within them, negotiations that challenge dichotomies between male and female, maternal and paternal, and private and public. Public History, Private Stories is a compelling exploration of the disparate identities created by these women through the act of writing autobiography.
Download or read book When I Am Italian written by Joanna Clapps Herman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "My ancestral Italian village in America was in Waterbury Connecticut." In this sentence, Joanna Clapps Herman raises the central question of this book: To what extent can a person born outside of Italy be considered Italian? The granddaughter of Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, Herman takes a complicated and nuanced look at the question of to whom and to which culture she ultimately belongs. Sometimes the Italian part of her identity—her Italianità—feels so aboriginal as to be inchoate, inexpressible. Sometimes it finds its expression in the rhythms of daily life. Sometimes it is embraced and enhanced; at others, it feels attenuated. "If, like me," Herman writes, "you are from one of Italy's overseas colonies, at least some of this Italianità will be in your skin, bones, and heart: other pieces have to be understood, considered, called to ourselves through study, travel, reading. Some of it is just longing. How do we know which pieces are which?"
Download or read book L Is for Lion written by Annie Rachele Lanzillotto and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Memoir/Biography Category presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation This vivid memoir speaks the intense truth of a Bronx tomboy whose 1960s girlhood was marked by her father's lullabies laced with his dissociative memories of combat in World War II. At four years old, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto bounced her Spaldeen on the stoop and watched the boys play stickball in the street; inside, she hid silver teaspoons behind the heat pipes to tap calls for help while her father beat her mother. At eighteen, on the edge of ambitious freedom, her studies at Brown University were halted by the growth of a massive tumor inside her chest. Thus began a wild, truth-seeking journey for survival, fueled by the lessons of lasagna vows, and Spaldeen ascensions. From the stoops of the Bronx to cross-dressing on the streets of Egypt, from the cancer ward at Memorial Sloan-Kettering to New York City's gay club scene of the '80s, this poignant and authentic story takes us from underneath the dining room table to the stoop, the sidewalk, the street, and, ultimately, out into the wide world of immigration, gay subculture, cancer treatment, mental illness, gender dynamics, drug addiction, domestic violence, and a vast array of Italian American characters. With a quintessential New Yorker as narrator and guide, this journey crescendos in a reluctant return home to the timeless wisdom of a peasant, immigrant grandmother, Rosa Marsico Petruzzelli, who shows us the sweetest essence of soul.
Download or read book An Italian Affair written by Laura Fraser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2002-05-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, and discovers not only a lasting sense of pleasure, but a more fully recovered sense of her emotional and sexual self. “Sweet, smart. We are smitten from the start.” —O: The Oprah Magazine When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco. Each encounter is a delirious immersion into place (sumptuous food and wine, dazzling scenery, lush gardens, and vibrant streetscapes) and into each other. And with each experience, Laura brings home not only a lasting sense of pleasure, but a more fully recovered sense of her emotional and sexual self. Written with an observant eye, an open mind, and a delightful sense of humor, An Italian Affair has the irresistible honesty of a story told from and about the heart.
Download or read book The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories written by Jhumpa Lahiri and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Rich. . . eclectic. . . a feast' Telegraph This landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century. Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events. This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.
Download or read book Mapping Lives written by Peter France and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-23 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays on the problems and functions of biography - particularly those of writers, thinkers and artists - investigate a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture.
Download or read book Autobiography of a Generation written by Luisa Passerini and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-25 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 1968 is symbolic in Italy of a decade of struggles by students, women, workers, intellectuals, and technicians. This work documents the intricate web of individual and communal experiences in the political movements of the 1960s. Passerini alternates chapters based on her diaries with interviews of other participants.
Download or read book Bella Figura written by Kamin Mohammadi and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “My ideal type of armchair travel: immersive, insightful, seductive. In Bella Figura, Kamin Mohammadi takes us to the year in Florence that changed her life, and gives us the tools to bring the grace of the Italian lifestyle to our own lives.” —National Bestselling Author Stephanie Danler “She walks down the street with a swing in her step and a lift to her head. She radiates allure as if followed by a personal spotlight. She may be tall or short, slim or pneumatically curvaceous, dressed discreetly or ostentatiously—it matters not. Her gait, her composure, the very tilt of her head is an ode to grace and self-possession that makes her beautiful whatever her actual features reveal.” This is the bella figura, the Italian concept of making every aspect of life as beautiful as it can be, that Kamin Mohammadi discovered when she escaped the London corporate media world for a year in Italy. Following the lead of her new neighbors, she soon found a happier, healthier, and more beautiful way of living. The bella figura knows: • That the food that you eat should give you pleasure while eating it. Pause for meals, and set a place, even if you are eating alone. • To seize any opportunity to get moving—be it taking the stairs, doing a coffee run at work, or dancing with abandon. • To drink a spoonful of excellent-quality extra-virgin olive oil four times a day. • To seek out nature, be it a city park, a tree on your street, or some wild place. • And to love yourself. The bella figura—occupies her space, emotionally and physically, with style and entitlement.
Download or read book The Lost Wave written by Molly Tambor and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first women entered national government in Italy in 1946, and represented a "lost wave" of feminist action. They used a specific electoral and legislative strategy, "constitutional rights feminism," to construct an image of the female citizen as a bulwark of democracy. Mining existing tropes of femininity such as the Resistance heroine, the working mother, the sacrificial Catholic, and the "mamma Italiana," they searched for social consensus for women's equality that could reach across religious, ideological, and gender divides. The political biographies of woman politicians intertwine throughout the book with the legislative history of the women's rights law they created and helped pass: a Communist who passed the first law guaranteeing paid maternity leave in 1950, a Socialist whose law closed state-run brothels in 1958, and a Christian Democrat who passed the 1963 law guaranteeing women's right to become judges. Women politicians navigated gendered political identity as they picked and chose among competing models of femininity in Cold War Italy. In so doing, they forged a political legacy that in turn affected the rights and opportunities of all Italian women. Their work is compared throughout The Lost Wave to the constitutional rights of women in other parts of postwar Europe.
Download or read book Hollow Heart written by Viola Di Grado and published by Europa Editions UK. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this courageous, inventive, irreverent, and shrewd novel, Viola Di Grado tells the story of a suicide and what follows. She gives voice to an astonishing vision of life after life, portraying the awful longing and sense of loss that plague the dead, together with the solitude provoked by the impossibility of communicating. The afterlife itself is seen as a dark, seething place where one is preyed upon by the cruel and unrelenting elements. Hollow Heart will frighten as it provokes, enlighten as it causes concern. If ever there were a novel that follows Kafka’s prescription for a book to be an axe for the frozen sea within us, it is Hollow Heart. In this, Di Grado’s second novel after 70% Acrylic 30% Wool, the twenty-seven-year-old prodigy gives proof of her reputation as a singular and explosive talent.
Download or read book Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society written by Letizia Panizza and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An impressive collection of 29 essays by British, American and Italian scholars on important historical, artistic, cultural, social, legal, literary and theatrical aspects of women's contributions to the Italian Renaissance, in its broadest sense. Many contributions are the result of first-hand archival research and are illustrated with numerous unpublished or little-known reproductions or original material. The subjects include: women and the court ( Dilwyn Knox, Evelyn S Welch, Francine Daenens and Diego Zancani ); women and the church ( Gabriella Zarri, Victoria Primhak, Kate Lowe, Francesca Medioli and Ruth Chavasse ); legal constraints and ethical precepts ( Marina Graziosi, Christine Meek, Brian Richardson, Jane Bridgeman and Daniela De Bellis ); female models of comportment ( Marta Ajmarm Paola Tinagli and Sara F Matthews Grieco ); women and the stage ( Richard Andrews, Maggie Guensbergberg, Rosemary E Bancroft-Marcus ); women and letters ( Diana Robin, Virginia Cox, Pamela J Benson, Judy Rawson, Conor Fahy, Giovanni Aquilecchia, Adriana Chemello, Giovanna Rabitti and Nadia Cannata Salamone )."
Download or read book Italian Women s Autobiographical Writings in the Twentieth Century written by Ursula Fanning and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical volume offers an overview and close analysis of Italian women's autobiographical writings from the twentieth century, engaging with issues of form and content and identifying recurring paradigms. It will be of interest to students of Italian literature and culture, autobiographical studies, and gender studies.
Download or read book Love Italian Style written by Melissa Gorga and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Real Housewives of New Jersey star Melissa Gorga shows you how to love your man and keep him happy, satisfied, faithful, and devoted to you. What you see is what you get with Melissa Gorga. On Real Housewives of New Jersey, she's that beautiful, ambitious woman with a successful career who puts her family first. In fact, her stable yet sexy marriage to lovable Joe is a welcome antidote to the constant fighting and backbiting on the show. Despite the pressure of life in the spotlight, she makes marriage look easy. How does she do it? Melissa's overriding principle: Treat your husband like a king! And in return, you'll be treated like a queen! In Love Italian Style, Melissa shares her (and his) secrets to relationship success—generations-tested old-fashioned values served up with a modern, sexy twist. To her, the four tenets to a happy marriage are respect, honesty, loyalty, and passion (underscore passion). By sharing her and Joe's life together—from the story of their first date to how they still keep it hot in the bedroom a decade later—Melissa admits that, yes, marriage has been a lot of work, but the rewards are ten-fold. With her time-tested strategies, you can "Gorganize" your own relationship, strengthen your bond, and amp up the passion for lifelong bliss. Some of Melissa's how-to's: · Dress to impress your man. · Flirt with your hubby. · Cook Italian style. · Fight right. · Keep the romance alive and the home fires burning. · Raise little princes and princesses. This playful guidebook promises to make any marriage better—the Gorga way!
Download or read book An Italian Affair written by Caroline Montague and published by Orion. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love. War. Family. Betrayal. Italy, 1937. Alessandra Durante is grieving the loss of her husband when she discovers she has inherited her ancestral family seat, Villa Durante, deep in the Tuscan Hills. Longing for a new start, she moves from her home in London to Italy with her daughter Diana and sets about rebuilding her life. Under the threat of war, Alessandra's house becomes first a home and then a shelter to all those who need it. Then Davide, a young man who is hiding the truth about who he is, arrives, and Diana starts to find her heart going where her head knows it must not. Back home in Britain as war breaks out, Alessandra's son Robert, signs up to be a pilot, determined to play his part in freeing Italy from the grip of Fascism. His bravery marks him out as an asset to the Allies, and soon he is being sent deep undercover and further into danger than ever before. As war rages, the Durante family will love and lose, but will they survive the war...? 'Thoroughly engrossing' - Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey 'Enthralling...An Italian Affair snares us in an ever-tightening circle of love and despair, secrets and forgiveness' - Joanna Lumley
Download or read book Partisan Diary written by Ada Gobetti and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the entry of the Germans into Turin on September 10, 1943 to the liberation of the city on April 28, 1945, Ada Gobetti, translator, educator, and resistance activist, recorded an almost daily account of her life in the resistance movement against the fascist government and the Nazis. Part diary, part memoir, Gobetti's Diario partigiano (Partisan diary) provides a firsthand account of who the anti-fascist partisans in the Piedmont region of Italy were and how they fought.
Download or read book Our Italian Summer written by Jennifer Probst and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three generations of women in the Ferrari family must heal the broken pieces of their lives on a trip of a lifetime through picturesque Italy from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of her life except one: family. She struggles to make time for her relationship with her teenage daughter, Allegra, and the two have become practically strangers to each other. When Allegra hangs out with a new crowd and is arrested for drug possession, Francesca gives in to her mother's wish that they take one epic summer vacation to trace their family roots in Italy. She just never expected to face a choice that might change the course of her life. . . Allegra wants to make her grandmother happy, but she hates the idea of forced time with her mother and vows to fight every step of the ridiculous tour, until a young man on the verge of priesthood begins to show her the power of acceptance, healing, and the heartbreaking complications of love. Sophia knows her girls are in trouble. A summer filled with the possibility for change is what they all desperately need. Among the ruins of ancient Rome, the small churches of Assisi, and the rolling hills of Tuscany, Sophia hopes to show her girls that the bonds of family are everything, and to remind them that they can always lean on one another, before it's too late.
