Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily [NOOK Book]

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Overview

With an ear for dialogue that may be compared to Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, and Ernest Hemingway, Sicilian writer Maria Messina presents the captivating and brutal realities of women living in early-twentieth-century Italy in this first collection of her work available in English.

Behind Closed Doors portrays the habits and gestures, the words spoken and those left unsaid, of individuals caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to ease the social restrictions in ...

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Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily

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Overview

With an ear for dialogue that may be compared to Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, and Ernest Hemingway, Sicilian writer Maria Messina presents the captivating and brutal realities of women living in early-twentieth-century Italy in this first collection of her work available in English.

Behind Closed Doors portrays the habits and gestures, the words spoken and those left unsaid, of individuals caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to ease the social restrictions in their lives. Messina’s stories reveal a world in which women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, and working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. It is also a world of unstated privileges in which habits and implied commands perpetuate women’s servitude.

A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, this volume will appeal to millions of Italian descendants and readers everywhere fascinated by Italian history.

Maria Messina (1887–1944) wrote short stories, children’s tales, and novels about her native Sicily until she died of multiple sclerosis. In recent years, her work has been rediscovered in Italy, where she has been compared to Luigi Pirandello and Giovanni Verga.

Fred Gardaphe is the director of Italian American Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the president of MELUS (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US).

Elise Magistro holds a doctorate in Italian from UCLA and is a lecturer in Italian at Scripps College in Claremont, California.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

More than 60 years after her death, Sicilian realist Messina (1887-1944) gets her first English translation, 10 stories published between 1909 and 1928 that focus on the downtrodden, poor and middle-class women of her native island. Two stories, "America 1911" and "America 1918," explore immigration and emigration from expectant departure to unsettling return, while "Grandmother Lidda" takes the intimate perspective of an elderly mother left behind. In "Her Father's House," Vanna returns seeking refuge from her woeful marriage to a Rome lawyer, only to find she has lost her place in her family. Meanwhile, the deaf mute protagonist of "Ciancianedda" struggles to communicate with her new husband. Messina's raw and psychologically deft tales render these women's lives with pathos and dignity, and Magistro's lucid translation is at once lyrical and immediate. Absorbing and culturally rich, these stories should help secure Messina's place in Italian letters. (Oct.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Kirkus Reviews
Messina, who died in her late 40s in 1944, was a rarity, a woman from Sicily who wrote about the impoverished reality of Sicilian women's lives. From the evidence of this slim collection of ten stories, accompanied by an extensive introduction and afterword by translator Magistro, Messina aimed to capture with as much naturalism as possible the inner and outer landscape in which her female protagonists dwelled. The results are brief fragmentary slices of long, barely endurable lives. The opening story, "Grace," sets the tone, depicting the helplessness of a woman waiting in desperation for a worthless man she knows has strayed. Similar is the desperation of the deaf wife with a cheating husband in "Ciancianedda." Four of the stories deal directly with the flow of Sicilian men to La Merica, and the women they leave behind. In "America 1911," a wife trying to accompany her husband is rejected for health reasons and goes mad. In "Dainty Shoes," a woman whose fiance has gone to La Merica to earn enough money for their wedding is forced to marry another man to avoid starvation before her true love returns. When her son leaves for America, a mother has nothing to live for but her grandson, but then the son sends for him too ("Grandmother Lidda"). In one of the strongest stories, "America 1918," a husband returns after eight years to find his wife as changed and foreign to him as he has become to her. "I Take You Out" and "Red Roses" concern women of the middle class who are trapped into solitude by their families. Ironically, in "Her Father's House," an unhappily married woman who tries to return home realizes suicide is her only escape. In the unusually detailed "Caterina's Loom," a prettyyoung girl evolves under the pressures of her life into a resigned spinster. Individually slight, as a volume the stories give a pretty devastating picture of Sicilian life in the early 20th century.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781558616486
  • Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY, The
  • Publication date: 7/1/2007
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 144
  • Sales rank: 565,142
  • File size: 275 KB

Meet the Author

Maria Messina (1887-1944) was born in Palermo, Sicily. Messina taught herself to read and write, and eventually began a correspondence with Italian realist Giovanni Verga. She wrote novels, short stories, and children's tales, and later won the Medal of Gold for her story "America". During the 1920s, Messina was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which she died of. Elise Magistro holds a Doctorate in Italian from U.C.L.A. She has written and lectured on Italian women writers, the Sicilian literary tradition and the Italian American emigrant experience between 1880 and 1920. Her publications include critical essays on Sicilian writer Maria Messina and Sardinian Nobel Prize author, Grazia Deledda. Professor Magistro currently teaches at Scripps College. Gardaphé is now at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College. He is Associate Editor of Fra Noi, editor of the Series in Italian American Studies at SUNY Press, and co-founding co-editor of Voices in Italian Americana. He is current President of MELUS and author of Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian Narrative. Elise Magistro holds a Doctorate in Italian from U.C.L.A. She has written and lectured on Italian women writers, the Sicilian literary tradition and the Italian American emigrant experience between 1880 and 1920. Her publications include critical essays on Sicilian writer Maria Messina and Sardinian Nobel Prize author, Grazia Deledda. Professor Magistro currently teaches at Scripps College.
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Table of Contents

Grace (Grazia) 23

America 1911 (La Merica) 32

Dainty shoes (Le scarpette) 48

Grandmother Lidda (Nonna Lidda) 58

America 1918 (La Merica) 67

I take you out (Ti-nesciu) 78

Her father's house (Casa paterna) 84

Ciancianedda 106

Red roses (Rose rosse) 126

Caterina's loom (Il telaio di Caterina) 135

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