NEWS Bollettino Highlights In Touch New on the Website Calendar Winners

BOOK REVIEW: The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture Edited by Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta Feminist Press (City University of New York). 2002. 346 pp. The Milk of Almonds, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta, is an anthology that collects "the voices of Italian American women at the beginning of the twenty first century." Its pages present a rich diversity of voices and authors who write about a variety of issues. In the book's introduction, the editors explain the motivation behind the collection: "The Milk of Almonds became the book we had to do because of our respect and love for the literature that our Italian American sisters and we had been creating, and also because of our common love and respect for food, our recognition of its cultural power and of women's historical role as food-makers, and our sensory and sensual ties to the recipes from a country to which we are both - differently - tied." Using food as a unifying theme, the writers gathered in this collection both celebrate their Italian-American culture and offer a critique of it. With over 50 authors represented, the reader will find a variety of points of view and a diversity of ideas that keep the book from falling into simple nostalgia or sentimentality. I particularly appreciated "Other People's Food" by Pamela E. Barnett. In this memoir, the author explores the complexity of inter-cultural relationships and illustrates that they offer both rewards and challenges in our world today. Barnett begins by describing her visit to Palestine and the hospitality she received at Palestinian homes and meals. The Palestinians accepted her because of her darker skin and the fact that they felt they shared "Mediterranean blood" with her. However, the author must be careful to hide her paternal Jewish ancestry. Living in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a predominance of Italian and Jewish neighbors, her paternal grandparents referred to themselves as "Italian-Jews." And as the author notes, "My great-grandmother would make gefilte fish on Friday and exchange some of it for Mrs. Battistone's Friday dish of baked oysters in garlic." Her paternal grandparents seemed to move easily between different cultures and traditions. Unfortunately, her maternal grandmother Lillian Murillo did not shift so easily between cultures and, ultimately, tried to hide her Italian culture in an effort to assimilate into mainstream American WASP culture. The author remembers that her maternal grandmother in a effort to erase her Italian American identity "cooked pot roast; her marinara sauce came from a jar." These experiences influence the way Barnett approaches her Palestinian hosts and she comes to realize that "When I eat other people's food, I metaphorically collapse boundaries . . . This is the world I want to live in: a world where we acknowledge our differences and affirm our human and glorious capacity to understand and love across the boundaries." Cheryl Burke's "Bones, Veins, and Fat" is equally thought provoking as she recounts her experiences with anorexia. In this memoir, the author illustrates the complex relationship between food, beauty and identity. While her Italian-American family centered much of its life on bountiful meals, she was expected to maintain an ideal weight to remain attractive. Burke writes, "Female worth was measured in beauty. It amazes me that a family so centered around food was also obsessed with how its women looked." She recounts her early experiences with anorexia when she lost so much weight that she had a "skeletal frame" and how eventually, in college, she came to find an identity that led her to "acquire healthy eating habits." Through descriptive details and personal insight, Barnett is able to capture the pain of those suffering from anorexia and explore how cultural expectations of women can lead to confusion about identity and self-worth. Besides memoirs and short stories, the anthology is also filled with many excellent poems. In "Motherlove," Mary Jo Bona describes the relationships between three generations of mothers and daughters. She writes that "I imagined love in early June: / Mother kneading dough for bread, her / hands and brow wisps of white; / a look of consternation narrowed her eyes/ burrowing deep into her own mother's / failing heart." In another poem, "Picking Apricots with Zia Antonia," Maria Famá remembers a visit to Italy when "my aunt and I picked apricots / in a terraced field / on a mountainside." She comes to reflect on the differences between her life in metropolitan America and her ancestors' life in rural Sicily. Many of the pieces in this collection reflect the memories of childhood and adolescence, such as Mary Saracino's "Smoke and Fire." Other stories and poems focus on parent and child relationships, whether they are memories of parents from childhood or experiences with dealing with older parents. Mary Ann Mannino writes about her mother in "The Anthology Poems" while Cris Massa writes about her father in "Our Father." And while both pieces are different in style and tone, neither of them fall into simple sentimentality rather they explore the complexity of human relationships. Not every reader will appreciate or agree with every piece in the book, but one will find in this collection a complex look at human nature. With food as a central theme that unites these stories and poems, the anthology contains such titles as "Aperitivo," Kissing the Bread," The Origins of Milk," "pasta poem," "Ravioli, Artichokes, and Figs," "Baked Ziti," and "Polenta," and it is through the descriptions of meals, the memories of food, and the recollections of cooking and baking that these authors illustrate the complexity of life, family, and love. Italian Catholic Federation, 8393 Capwell Drive, Suite 110, Oakland CA 94621 tel: 888/ICF-1924; 510/633-9058; fax: 510/633-9758; Email: info@icf.org Website designed by HYPERSPHERE