20. The interconnectedness of the women’s lives is immediately accentuated in the transition from the prologue to part one. With an abrupt chronological—and geographical—shift, clearly announced in the dates of Umbertina’s birth and death (1860–1940) underneath the title of the first section, Barolini transports the reader from the fashionable bourgeois world of Rome and Florence of the early 1970s, which constitutes the setting of the prologue, to the rough peasant life in the small village of Castagna, on the Sila mountains, in Calabria (circa 1876) of the “Umbertina” section. At the same time, the change in tone and style—from the more unsettling and staccato rhythm of the contemporary Marguerite section to the slower narrative pace of the Umbertina section—signals the distance between their lives. In general, it is through innovative use of form as well as through content that Barolini captures the different consciousness and life experience of each of her female protagonists.

21. This sense of displacement is particularly strong in emigrants from a country like Italy, which is still relatively resistant to geographical mobility. There is additional irony in this, as well, since for thousands of years people from other countries have moved in and out of the Italian regions, while in the last two centuries the inhabitants of the South have been driven to emigrate abroad, so that the children of the area that was once called “Magna Graecia” (Umbertina 28) are now scattered across the globe.

22. In “Il Caso della Casa,” Viscusi discusses the theme of departure in oedipal terms, focusing though on the guilt of the children who abandon the parent as opposed to the guilt of the parents (i.e. Italy) who have failed to provide for their children.

23. On Paper Fish, see Giunta, “A Song from the Ghetto,” and Bona, “Broken Images.” For a comparative discussion of Umbertina and Paper Fish see Bona, “A Process of Reconstruction: Recovering the Grandmother in Helen Barolini’s Umbertina and Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish” in the forthcoming Claiming a Tradition. Gardaphé also discusses Umbertina alongside Paper Fish in “The Later Mythic Mode” (Italian Signs, American Streets 131–41).

24. While Barolini lived in Italy for many years, De Rosa has never traveled there, which explains, in part, their different representations of Italy.

25. That neither Umbertina nor any other comparable account of Italian American immigrants’ lives—apart from Mario Puzo’s much glamorized The Godfather—has been translated into Italian and published in Italy thus far is compelling evidence of a historical void that needs to be filled. If sociological and historical studies done in Italy provide important data, it is literary works such as Umbertina that give voice to the silent millions who have left that country in the last two centuries. For a sociological study of patterns of Italian emigration to the United States see Squier and Quadagno. On Italian emigration and settlements see also Caroli; Friedman-Kasaba; Gabaccia From Sicily to Elizabeth Street, and Di Leonardo. On contemporary Italian American women see Anderlini-D’Onofrio.