Con Amore: A Daughter-In-Law's Story of Growing Up Italian-American in Bushwick

by Bea Tusiani

Overview

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Yearning for acceptance from her Italian-speaking mother-in-law, Bea Tusiani's stories offer a glimpse into the struggle of generations. From Bushwick, Brooklyn in the 1950's to her mother-in-law's kitchen in the Bronx, Tusiani shows how two women who loved the same man, one as a mother, the other a wife, came to an understanding . . . con amore . . . with love. A sparkling memoir about life as an Italian girl who becomes a wife in the enchanted village of Brooklyn.

The lost world of childhood and adolescence is here faithfully recaptured, with an acute understanding of the tradeoffs and heartbreaks involved. Bea Tusiani's memoir is richly evocative, skillfully written, honest, compassionate, and wise. --Phillip Lopate

You will find much to celebrate in this beautifully told tale.--Adriana Trigiani

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781599541235
Publisher:	Bordighera Press
Publication date:	02/13/2018
Series:	VIA Folios , #128
Pages:	217
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Bea Tusiani is a freelance writer whose stories have appeared in the New York Times. She has also written for Newsday op-ed pages, and her essays have been published in numerous magazines, including Attenzione and Ambassador. A native of Brooklyn, she grew up in the Bushwick section where her four grandparents emigrated from Santa Margherita Belice, Sicily.

Editorial Reviews

The lost world of childhood and adolescence is here faithfully recaptured, with an acute understanding of the tradeoffs and heartbreaks involved. Bea Tusiani’s memoir is richly evocative, skillfully written, honest, compassionate, and wise.

—Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and To Tell

This memoir works to chronicle the past on many levels. We see Bea Tusiani’s coming of age, but we also meet two Italian immigrant extended families intent on preserving roots and becoming American in the decades of the 50s and 60s. And we meet the impossible and impossibly loveable Mamma Maria, the author’s mother-in-law and family matriarch. All are captured in an easy conversational prose that is deceptive in its art.

—Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain

Bea Tusiani has written a sparkling memoir about life as an Italian girl who becomes a wife in the enchanted village of Brooklyn. You will find much to celebrate in this beautifully told tale.

—Adriana Trigiani, author of the Big Stone Gap trilogy

From the Publisher