Umbertina - Hardcover

Barolini, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087223536X ISBN 13: 9780872235366

Publisher: Seaview Books, 1979

Synopsis

One of the first novels to explore Italian American women's experience and an acknowledged contemporary classic of Italian American literature, Umbertina tells the richly detailed story of four generations of women. The novel follows Umbertina and her descendants from her roots in a Calabrian village through a period of American assimilation, to Umbertina's great-granddaughters' efforts to resolve the dilemma of their Italian American identity. When first published in 1979, the Philadelphia Inquirer called it "an important novel for these times. . . . Through a dazzling interplay of American and Italian characters in both countries, Helen Barolini delineates the major concerns of all thinking American ethnics." This is no less true today, as this republication restores Umbertina to a reading public newly attuned to the complexities of cultural inheritance and identity.

"An ambitious saga which spans the history and probes some of the tensions of the Italian American . . . . panoramic, descriptive, and solidly crafted."â Publisher's Weekly

For course use in: ethnic literature, ethnic studies, gender studies, Italian American literature, literature of immigration, 20th-century U.S. literature

Helen Barolini's other works include the novel Love in the Middle Ages and Chiaroscuro: Essays of Identity. She conceived and edited the volume The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian-American Women, winner of an American Book Award and a Susan Koppelman Award of the American Culture Association.

About this title

About the Author

Helen Barolini is a recipient of an American Book Award for The Dream Book: an Anthology of Italian American Women Writers. The Italian edition of her novel Umbertina was the recipient of a literary prize in Italy, the Premio Acerbi, in 2008. She is also the author of twelve published books, two unpublished novels, and many short stories and essays that have appeared in literary journals, anthologies and several annual editions of Best American Essays.

Review

"An important novel for these times . . . through a dazzling interplay of American and Italian characters in both countries, Helen Barolini delineates the major concerns of all thinking American ethnics." The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An ambitious saga which spans the history and probes some of the tensions of the Italian American . . . panoramic, descriptive, and solidly crafted." Publishers Weekly

"Readable, perceptive, and rich in detail." Library Journal

"Umbertina should be read. . . . Barolini redeems from silence, from neglect, those brave women upon whose shoulders [Italian Americans] should be proud to stand." Newsletter of the Italian-American Institute

"An important novel for these times . . . through a dazzling interplay of American and Italian characters in both countries, Helen Barolini delineates the major concerns of all thinking American ethnics." ―The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An ambitious saga which spans the history and probes some of the tensions of the Italian American . . . panoramic, descriptive, and solidly crafted." ―Publishers Weekly

"Readable, perceptive, and rich in detail." ―Library Journal

"Umbertina should be read. . . . Barolini redeems from silence, from neglect, those brave women upon whose shoulders [Italian Americans] should be proud to stand." ―Newsletter of the Italian-American Institute

Edition details

• Publisher: Seaview Books
• Publication date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087223536X
• ISBN 13: 9780872235366
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 424