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Behind Closed Doors

Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily

Maria Messina Elise Magistro Fred Gardaphe

$44.95

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English
Feminist Press at The City University of New York
01 July 2007
Ten stories of impoverished Sicilian women in the early 20th century-""honed, polished, devastatingly direct . . . verismo at its unsentimental best"" (Kirkus Reviews).

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Messina, who died in 1944, was the foremost female practitioner of verismo-the Italian literary realism pioneered by fellow Sicilian Giovanni Verga. Published between 1908 and 1928, Messina's fiction represents the massive Sicilian immigration to America occurring at that time.

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By:  
Introduction by:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Feminist Press at The City University of New York
Country of Publication:   United States
ISBN:   9781558613690
ISBN 10:   1558613692
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Maria Messina (1887-1944) was born in Palermo, Sicily. She taught herself to read and write, eventually finding a mentor in the famed Italian realist Giovanni Verga, who encouraged her to begin writing seriously. Her works include novels, short stories, and children's tales. In 1910, she received the Medal of Gold for her first book of stories, Pettini-fini (Fine Combs). Fred Gardaphe is the director of Italian American Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the president of MELUS (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US). Elise Magistro holds a doctorate in Italian from UCLA and is a lecturer in Italian at Scripps College in Claremont, California.

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

Praise for Behind Closed Doors ""[T]hese ten persuasive tales offer stark, finely drawn portraits of poor and middle-class Sicilian women in the early years of the twentieth century."" -The New York Review of Books ""A window into another time and another culture... We understand the emotions of [the] characters, simultaneously victims and heroines... Messina's words will leave their mark. Their power makes them impossible to forget."" --The Philadelphia Inquirer ""Virtually the only great Italian fiction about the massive Sicilian immigration to America written while it was happening... honed, polished, devastatingly direct--verismo at its unsentimental best."" --Booklist


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