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2008-2009
Writers Read
Monday, September 15, 2008
Karen Tintori reads from her memoir Unto the Daughters: The
Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family (St.
Martins Press. 2007).
Unto the Daughters
is a historical mystery and family story that unwraps layers of family,
honor, memory, and fear to reveal an honor killing in Detroit at the turn of the 20th
century. The book began with a genealogical quest that led to a reluctant
revelation about Frances Costa, Karen Tindori’s
great-aunt who had been systematically eradicated from family history. Frances emigrated from Sicily
with her parents and siblings who worked together to create a new home for
themselves in industrial Detroit.
At age sixteen Frances
fell in love with a young barber but her father had arranged for her to marry
an elderly mafioso so as to help his sons with
their mob connections. When Frances
eloped with her lover in 1919, her fate was sealed. Tindori
traces the history of her Sicilian immigrant past to expose the fetid secret of
Frances’s
brutal murder at the hands of her own brothers fiercely guarded for nine
decades.
Podcast available
“Tintori refused to allow the truth to remain forgotten.
This is a book for anyone who shares the conviction that all history, in the
end, is family history.”
— Frank Viviano,
author of Blood Washes Blood
Monday, October 27, 2008
Marisa Labozzetta reads from At
the Copa (Guernica,
2007).
With
humor and poignancy, these stories expose the social and sexual turmoil of
men and women in “the old age of youth.” In “The Knife
Lady,” a seemingly happily married suburbanite receives a jolt of
sexual panic with the visit of a woman selling knives. The husband in
“Future Games” encourages his wife to have an affair with another
man to save their floundering marriage, and the resulting drama is parsed
through the uncomprehending eyes of their young daughter. A restless dentist
on a visit to a bizarre charlatan discovers an unlikely cure to what’s
ailing him. These are a few of the stories whose primary fault zone is the
seemingly stable, often secretly troubled, middle-class marriage seen
from various views.
“Labozzetta infuses her stories with a wry wit and a
subtle, nuanced feel for the shifting emotional currents underlying seemingly
placid lives.”
— Kirkus
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Suze
Rotolo
reads from A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in
the Sixties (Broadway Books, 2008)
A
Freewheelin’ Time
is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand account
of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and
her relationship with Bob Dylan. Rotolo grew up during the Cold War and McCarthyism
as the daughter of Italian working-class Communists from Queens.
As a teenager, she met new friends in Greenwich Village
who, like her, were interested in the arts and politically active. Then in
July 1961, 17-year-old Rutolo met 20-year-old Dylan, a rising young musician.
While they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer
into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation. Rotolo recounts the story of her sweet
but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the
pressures of growing fame. She also writes about her involvement with the
civil rights movement and the sometimes frustrating experience of being a
woman in a male-dominated culture. A Freewheelin’ Time is a
vibrant, moving memoir of the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young
love, and of a vital subculture at its most creative.
“A
welcome, page-turning perspective conspicuously absent from the plethora
of books on Dylan and the folk era of the 1960s: that of a woman
witnessing it all from its cultural and political epicenter.”
—Todd Haynes, director of I’m
Not There
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Robert Tinnell presents his graphic novel Feast of the Seven
Fishes (Allegheny Image
Factory, 2005)
A
2006 Eisner Award-nominee for “Best Graphic Album: Reprint,” Feast
of the Seven Fishes is hardcover collection of the online strip
serialized in 2004-2005 by writer Robert Tinnell and artists Ed Piskor and Alex Saviuk. A
romantic comedy, the Feast
storyline revolves around an Italian-American family’s celebration of
the traditional Christmas Eve dinner. The time is 1983 and one of the younger
members of the family, who reside in a north-central West Virginia mining and mill town, brings
home a blonde, blue-eyed Protestant girl to share in both the cooking and
eating. Their path to romance, however, is not an easy one. This collection
incorporates recipes from the families of Tinnell
and his wife, Shannon.
“This Feast is bound to serve up entertainment... [a] charming comic-strip tale of life, love, and baccala. . . . ”
— The
Boston Globe
Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 6 p.m.
Carl Capotorto reads from Twisted Head: An Italian American Memoir (Broadway Books, 2008)
Twisted Head is a witty and poignant memoir of a young man growing up in a working-class Italian-American family in the Bronx during the 1960s and 1970s. Author and actor Carl Capotorto describes a cast of New York characters that include customers at his family’s pizzeria, public school teachers and mates, parish priests and nuns, and neighborhood residents. Capotorto’s father is a loving yet obsessive and controlling patriarch who concocts grand schemes for developing his pizza parlor and renovating his house to the dismay of all the family members. Out of youth’s frustration and anger, Capotorto emerges not only as a grounded adult but also as a gifted writer.
“Twisted Head is a memorable portrait of a sweet and awkward boy growing up on the sometimes mean streets of the Bronx, struggling with his imposing father, brutal peers, inattentive teachers, and his own sexual identity. Not since Mario Puzo’s novel The Fortunate Pilgrim, have readers been treated to such a sweet and sour tale of growing up Italian-American and of coming to appreciate the sturdy rock that is family.”
—Ken Auletta, author of Backstory: Inside the Business of News
Thursday, March 12, 2009, 6 p.m.
Justin Catanoso reads from My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family, and Miracles (William Morrow, 2008)
My Cousin the Saint charts the parallel history of two relatives, Justin Catanoso’s grandfather, Carmelo, and his canonized cousin, Father Gaetano. Carmelo emigrated from the town of Chorio di San Lorenzo (Reggio Calabria province) to pursue work in Philadelphia and New Jersey, while the cleric remained to aid the poor of the Mezzogiorno. In 2001, Catanoso discovered his distant relative, a Vatican-certified miracle worker who Pope Benedict XVI canonized four years later. When his brother falls ill with terminal cancer, Catanoso questions the value of prayer and confronts his own tenuous spiritual moorings. In so doing, the author embarks on a quest to connect with his extended family relatives in southern Italy and reunite the two halves of his sundered family, ultimately awakening his quiescent faith in the process.
“A glorious book! Part spiritual journey, part detective story, part travelogue, Justin Catanoso’s engrossing new memoir shows how discovering God always leads to discovering yourself. His quest to learn about his saintly cousin leads him to a fuller and richer understanding of his faith, his family, and, ultimately, himself.” —James Martin, S.J., author of My Life with the Saints
Monday, April 6, 2009, 6 p.m.
Laura Schenonereads from The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (W.W. Norton, 2007)
In The Lost Recipes of Hoboken, Laura Schenone undertakes a quest to retrieve her great grandmother’s ravioli recipe. In lyrical prose and delicious recipes, Schenone takes the reader on a journey from New Jersey’s postindustrial landscape and its suburbs’ disposable, fast-food culture to the family’s ancestral home on the Ligurian coast, with its pesto, smoked chestnuts, and beloved ravioli. Schenone discovers the persistent importance of identity and place, all the while pursuing the perfect circle of filled pasta.
“A triumph of culinary sleuthing that takes award-winning Laura Schenone deep into the interior of her ancestral Liguria in a quest for a grandmother’s secret, but that takes, her, unexpectedly, deep into the mysteries of the human heart.”
— Louise DeSalvo, author of Vertigo: A Memoir
Monday, May 4, 2009, 6 p.m.
Camilla Trinchieri reads from The Price of Silence (Soho Press, 2007)
Having taken a young Chinese woman under her wing, wife, mother, and respected teacher Emma Perotti finds herself on trial for the young woman’s murder. Almost five years earlier, An-ling Huang walked into Emma’s ESL classroom and into her family’s life. Emma was drawn to the vulnerability she perceived in An-ling. An-ling seemed to long for a surrogate mother and eagerly attached herself to Emma. Emma’s husband, Tom, resented An-ling’s intrusion and his wife’s affection for her. Their son, Josh, developed his own relationship with her. Dredging up painful memories and buried grief, An-ling’s presence threatened to tear the family apart. Then An-ling was found dead, suffocated. As Emma’s trial progresses, An-ling is revealed not to have been who she claimed, and the reader learns that the family members all have their own secrets.
“A taut psychological thriller. . . . [T]he novel is a gripping, intelligent read. Particularly compelling are its subtle insights into the nature of family, foreignness and the lies we tell ourselves and others even when our intentions are good.”
— Publishers Weekly
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