About the Author:
Maria Laurino is a journalist and essayist living in New York City. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times and the Village Voice.
From Kirkus Reviews:
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. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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