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Chapters (17)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Preface
  4. Introduction
  5. Grace
  6. America 1911
  7. Dainty Shoes
  8. Grandmother Lidda
  9. America 1918
  10. I Take You Out
  11. Her Father’s House
  12. Ciancianedda
  13. Red Roses
  14. Caterina’s Loom
  15. Glossary
  16. Afterword
  17. Translator’s Acknowledgments

Odorisio, Maria Linda. 1986. Donna o cosa? I movimenti femminili in Italia risorgimento a oggi. Torino: Milvia Carrà.

Onofri, Massimo. 2003. La modernità infelice: Saggi sulla letteratura siciliana del Novecento. Avagliano: Cava de’ Tirreni.

Raya, Gino. Ed. 1980. G. Verga, Lettere a Paolina. Rome: Fermenti.

Pausini, Cristina. 2001. Le briciole della letteratura: le novelle e i romanzi di Maria Messina. Bologna: CLUEB.

Pirandello, Luigi. 1957. L’esclusa. 1893. Reprinted in Tutti i romanzi. Vol. 3. Milano: Mondaori.

———. 1952. Novelle per un anno. Milano: Mondadori, 1952.

Sciascia, Leonardo. 1967. Narratori si Sicilia. With Salvatore Guglielmino. Mursia: Milano.

———. 1980. “Per terre assai lontane.” In Partono i bastimenti: L’epopea dell’emigrazione italiana nel mondo; Storie e immagini. Ed. by Paolo Cresci and Luciano Guidobaldi. Milan: Mondadori.

———. Rpt. 1991. “Come si può essere siciliani.” Vol. III. Leonardo Sciascia: Opere 1984–1989, Ed. Claude Ambroise. Milano: Bompiani.

———. Rpt. 1991. “Sicilia e sicilitudine.” Vol. III. Leonardo Sciascia: Opere 1984–1989, Ed. Claude Ambroise. Milano: Bompiani.

———. 1981. “Afterword.” Casa paterna. Palermo: Sellerio.

Verga, Giovanni. 1974. “L’amante di Gramigna.” Vita dei campi, 1880. Reprinted in Tutte le novelle. Milan: Oscar Mondadori.

———. 1973. I Malavoglia. Milan: Oscar Mondadori.

Zambon, Patrizia. 1989. “Leggere per scrivere. La formazione autodidattica delle scrittrici atra otto e novecento: Neera, Ada Negri, Grazia Deledda, Sibilla Aleramo.” In “Studi novecenteschi.” 38, 287–384.

Translator’s Acknowledgments

Translator’s Acknowledgments

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My father’s parents were Sicilian, my mother’s French Basque. All had come to North America as young adults early in the last century, passing through Ellis Island in search of a better life. While the stories of my mother’s past were well documented and shared freely within the family, those on my father’s side were shrouded in secrecy and silence. The daguerreotypes that lined my grandfather’s dresser and the framed image of a hilltop town that rested beside his bed piqued my childhood curiosity. Yet my grandfather would never speak about the lovely young women in the photos, or of the lone elderly woman whose sorrowful gaze always caused me to avert my eyes.

Shortly after my grandfather’s death I traveled to Sicily for the first time, determined to piece together the pasts of these women who remained behind. It was the first of many trips that I would make to the island. During the course of my post-doctoral research in the early 1980s, I came across the recently recovered short stories of Maria Messina. In those compact texts, I discovered the sad reality of ordinary Sicilian life as my emigrant grandfather, his sisters, and mother had experienced it. The current volume reflects in part both my personal and scholarly relationship with Sicily—its history, culture, literature, and tragedy of emigration—as well as my desire to bring Maria Messina’s writings to an English-speaking audience.