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

Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily
ISBN-10
1558616489
ISBN-13
9781558616486
Series
Behind Closed Doors
Category
Fiction
Pages
144
Language
English
Published
2007-07-01
Publisher
The Feminist Press at CUNY
Author
Maria Messina

Description

Ten stories of impoverished Sicilian women in the early 20th century—“honed, polished, devastatingly direct . . . verismo at its unsentimental best” (Kirkus Reviews). The Sicilian writer Maria Messina’s captivating and brutal stories of the women of her home island are presented in a “lyrical and immediate” English translation by Elise Magistro (Publishers Weekly). 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. The individuals in these stories are caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to move beyond them. Women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, left behind while working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, “Messina’s words will leave their mark. Their power makes them impossible to forget” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

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