General Gay & Lesbian Biographies, Italians & Italian Americans - Biography, Lesbian Biographies, Pennsylvania - Regional Biography
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Overview
Delicately interweaving the bilingual journals of her grandfather (a southern Italian shoemaker), her mother's poetry, Sicilian folklore, and dreamwork with her own story, Mary Cappello writes as witness of the marks left on her family by immigration and assimilation. Night Bloom counters America's obsession with mafiosi at the same time that it exposes the daily violence of grinding poverty. As a lesbian who has entered the middle class, Cappello celebrates the subversive desire in her immigrant family's responses to the forces shaping their lives, and in the Catholic icons, television superheroes, and disco divas with whom she identified as a child.Editorials
Booknews
Capello (English, University of Rhode Island) combines the bilingual journals of her grandfather, her mother's poetry, Sicilian folklore, and dreamwork with her own reminiscences of growing up in an immigrant family in a working-class suburb of Philadelphia. She explores the contradictions of her father's rage and gardening, and her mother's poetry and agoraphobia. As a lesbian who has entered the middle class, she celebrates the subversive desire in her family's responses to the forces shaping their lives. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.NY Times Book Review
...[S]ometimes colorful, frequently meandering....Amid [a] somber landscape...Cappello finds reason to rejoice....[H]er writing shines...Book Details
Published
November 1, 1998
Publisher
Beacon Press
Pages
262
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780807072165