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WERE YOU ALWAYS AN ITALIAN?

Name: WERE YOU ALWAYS AN ITALIAN?
Author: Maria Laurino
ISBN: 0-393-04930-2

ANCESTORS AND OTHER ICONS OF LIFE IN ITALIAN AMERICA

by Maria Laurino ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2000

Other hyphenated Americans who have experienced discrimination and confusion about their heritage will find this often funny...

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Three generations in America doesn’t necessarily take the sting out of being an immigrant, as described in this appealing and sometimes thought-provoking memoir that moves from suburban New Jersey to Italy’s southern provinces.

The title question was posed by former New York governor Mario Cuomo as journalist Laurino was interviewing him on his own roots. Laurino’s honest answer was no, as she recalls her adolescent efforts to distance herself from her Italian heritage. They began in earnest when a classmate characterized her as “the smelly Italian girl”: assured by friends that she did not have an odor, Laurino nevertheless began to understand that, despite her wardrobe from Saks, her darker skin and the vowels at the end of her name put her on a lower rung of the social ladder than the WASPs or JAPs who were the popular cliques at her high school. Broadening her perspective, Laurino examines the stereotyping of Italian-Americans via Mafia movies and a visit to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst (where gold-chained “guidos” and big-haired “guidettes” mark one very visible end of Italian-American rankings). Laurino blends personal experience and academic research in examining class bigotries not only in America, but also in Rome and Milan (where she found the northern Italian contempt for southern Italians as powerful as the prejudice against African-Americans in the US). When she and her husband finally visit what is left of the family in southern Italy (on the ankle of the boot), she finds them poor, hardworking, and closely knit, as they were when her grandparents sailed for America. Their habits and concerns resemble those of Laurino’s mother (in her work rituals, for example, or in her inclination to hoard any luxury), leading the author to speculate that her own tendency to hoard “may have been born in the fields of abject poverty.”

Other hyphenated Americans who have experienced discrimination and confusion about their heritage will find this often funny and graceful book simpatico.

Pub Date: July 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-393-04930-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.