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

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.
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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.)
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• Published by

  The Feminist Press

• Publish Date

  December 31, 2008 

• Print ISBN

  1558615520

• eBook ISBN

  9781558616486

• Imprint

  The Feminist Press

• Filesize

  282.63 KB

• Number of Print Pages*

  144

* Number of eBook pages may differ. Click here for more information.