The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture

by Edvige Guinta, Louise DeSalvo (Editor)

Overview

“A vast, thoroughly wonderful assortment of poetry, memoirs and stories . . . that defines today’s female Italian-American experience” (Publishers Weekly).

Often stereotyped as nurturing others through food, Italian-American women have often struggled against this simplistic image to express the realities of their lives.

In this unique collection, over 50 Italian-American female writers speak in voices that are loud, boisterous, sweet, savvy, and often subversively funny. Drawing on personal and cultural memories rooted in experiences of food, they dissolve conventional images, replacing them with a sumptuous, communal feast of poetry, stories, and memoir.

This collection also delves into unexpected, sometimes shocking terrain as these courageous authors bear witness to aspects of the Italian American experience that normally go unspoken—mental illness, family violence, incest, drug addiction, AIDS, and environmental degradation.

As provocative as it is appetizing, “this collection of verse and prose pieces . . . reveals the evocative and provocative power of food as event and as symbol, as well as the diversity of these women’s lives and their ambivalence regarding the role of nurturer” (Library Journal).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558614536
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	10/01/2003
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Editors' Note	xii
	Introduction	1
Part 1	Beginnings
	Rose and Pink and Round	17
	Aperitivo	22
	Mother Hunger and Her Seatbelt	24
	Beer. Milk. The Dog. My Old Man	27
	Our Father	28
	Italian Grocer	37
	Smoke and Fire	38
	Outside	44
	Sacred Hearts and Tar	45
Part 2	Ceremonies
	Kitchen Communion	49
	Dizzy Spells	56
	My Children's Names	64
	Jazzman	65
	Bedtime Story	65
	The Seven Sacraments	67
	Kissing the Bread	76
	Pomegranate	78
	The Anthology Poems	81
	The Prodigal Daughter	82
	The Giara of Memory	84
Part 3	Awakenings
	Go to Hell	95
	Motherlove	101
	We Begin with Food	102
	Breakfast in My Seventeenth Year	104
	Bone, Veins, and Fat	105
	Big Heart	112
	The Origins of Milk	121
	Cracked	123
	Broke	130
Part 4	Encounters
	Other People's Food	135
	What I Ate Where	143
	The Stereotype	148
	My Grandmother, a Chicken, and Death	148
	"No Thank You, I Don't Care for Artichokes"	150
	Hot Peppers	152
	If You Were a Boy	152
	Tridicinu and 'Mmaculata	153
	She's doing the dishes	158
	Pasta poem	159
	Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner	160
Part 5	Transformations
	I Can Be Bread	167
	Finocchio	168
	Pomodori	170
	Lovers and other dead animals	175
	Tripe	175
	Let Them Eat Cake	176
	Parable	182
	Rosette	182
	Basil	189
	Love Lettuce	190
	The Room	198
	Hunger	200
Part 6	Communities
	Dealing with Broccoli Rabe	205
	Sunday	205
	The Oven	214
	Ravioli, Artichokes, and Figs	216
	Seventeenth Street: Paterson, New Jersey	222
	Passing It On	222
	You Were Always Escaping	223
	Poem	225
	Coffee an'	227
	Jeanie	235
	Working Men	236
	Moving In and Moving Up	237
	Fatso	239
Part 7	Passings
	The Lives of the Saints	249
	After We Bury Her	252
	Ma, Who Told Me You Forgot How to Cry	252
	The Day Anna Stopped Making A-Beetz	254
	My Mother's Career at Skip's Luncheonette	258
	Secret Gardens	259
	The Exegesis of Eating	261
	The Vinegarroon	269
	Triple Bypass	273
	Last Supper	274
	New Year's Eve	275
	Baked Ziti	276
Part 8	Legacies
	What They'll Say in a Thousand Years	285
	Polenta	295
	Lament in Good Weather	299
	Mafioso	299
	Picking Apricots with Zia Antonia	300
	Mortadella	301
	Keep the Wheat and Let the Chaff Lie	308
	The Northside at Seven	310
	Words	312
	How to Sing to a Dago	320
	The Post-Rapture Diner	321
	Cutting the Bread	322
	About the Contributors	333
	Credits	343

Editorial Reviews

"The pieces in this impressive anthology are, with varying degrees, gentle and piercing. Some are best read alone over a cup of steaming cappuccino, while others pack more of a punch when read out loud to sisters or girlfriends. Editors DeSalvo and Giunta have collected a vast, thoroughly wonderful assortment . . . that defines today's female Italian-American experience." —Publishers Weekly

"What a powerful chorus of voices, breaking silence while breaking bread. Fully orchestrated in poetry and prose, these voices sometimes acclaim and sometimes defy the culture they share as Italian American women—who write, and write brilliantly. If food is their medium, power is their message, the power of words and images to evoke the dislocations and contradictions of the harsh, sensuous, soothing, disturbing world embodied in cultural foods." —Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars

"The Milk of Almonds provides a rich repast indeed. Whether sampled in small bites or in the entire multi-faceted banquet that is the complete work, this collection, like a deeply satisfying meal, is something to savor." —Jessica B. Harris, author of The Africa Cookbook

"Fed by anger, fed by love, fed by hunger: writing about food inevitably reveals our dreams, resentments, and longings. The Milk of Almonds will unsettle readers who think they know Italian American women. Its poets, storytellers, and memoirists demonstrate just how good food is for thought." —Donna Gabaccia, author of We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans

From the Publisher