While from a structural point of view clear narrative and chronological demarcations exist between each character’s story, Umbertina should be read as one woman’s—Barolini’s—complicated search for cultural origins and continuities, a search linked to the development of a feminist consciousness.13 The structure of the novel makes it clear that the recovery of family and immigrant history is embedded within a feminist plot: The book opens not with Umbertina, but with Marguerite, the granddaughter who initiates the personal exploration that will lead her own daughter back to the origins, back to Umbertina. Marguerite’s search is not what one would call successful—especially since it is tragically cut short. Yet she is the one who opens the Pandora’s box that will make it possible for her daughter, Tina, to continue the journey.14 Barolini’s narrative of female development argues for the importance of ties between women and highlights the ways in which they can be sources of strength and resourcefulness for themselves and their daughters. But it also demonstrates the ways in which mothers can deplete their daughters’ strength. Late in her life, Umbertina comes to understand how, in acting within the paradigms of the patriarchal culture that she both accepts and defies, she has not been able to pass on her own strength to her daughters. While a feminist consciousness does not reach maturity in Umbertina, in her daughters, or in her granddaughter Marguerite, it is more fully realized by her great-granddaughter Tina and especially by Tina’s sister Weezy, who, though not a central figure, occupies an important place in the larger tapestry into which the novel itself is woven. And feminist consciousness is certainly evident in the book as a whole. The feminism of many of her characters may be ambiguous, and at times even reluctant, but Barolini’s certainly is not.