Title
Contents
The projectionist -- Bocci -- Traunts -- Keeping the beat -- Ioe music -- A kind of april -- The mathematics of pendulums -- Tall pittsburgh -- Where love leaves us
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1994
Series
Iowa Short Fiction Award
Judge
Francine Prose
Award Date
1993
Publisher
University of Iowa Press
Place
Iowa City
Total Pages
144
ISBN
9780877454441
Abstract
These nine superbly crafted stories, set primarily in Pittsburgh's Italian American neighborhoods, concentrate on families, on the poignant nature of father-daughter relationships, and on the fate of those who are refugees from their physical or spiritual communities. “Love is born only out of wreckage,” Manfredi's characters declare bravely. Her vigorous families are both the wrecking crews and the architects of the human foundation.
In “The Projectionist,” a displaced Sicilian is forced to confront the family he lost in war-torn Italy at the same time that his current family is disintegrating; his disillusionment with the American dream overwhelms him when his oldest daughter exchanges Old World values for the hippie-inspired climate of permissiveness. Ten-year-old Elena, in “Bocci,” takes the teachings of her strict Catholic upbringing to the extreme, and it is her devoutness that is cruelly used against her when violence compels her to reject becoming “a nun or a saint.” The father in “Tall Pittsburgh” sends his daughter to charm school at Sears, then enters her in a beauty pageant for tall women. Distraught in spite of her second-place win, he begins to relive his grief over the death of his beautiful wife.
Many of Manfredi's vital, luminous characters are outsiders, dispossessed by their inability to bridge the gap between the self and others, forced to deal with loss through death and lapse of faith, yet always managing to survive despite their place on the bewildering margins. Manfredi reveals an affirmation, finally, that hope is a permanent possession of every human spirit.
Keywords
Italian American families, Fathers and daughters, Italian Americans, Pittsburgh, Penn.
Purchase the Print Book
Book available for purchase at University of Iowa Press.
Rights
Copyright © 1994 by Renée Manfredi All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, without permission in writing from the publisher.
URL
http://ir.uiowa.edu/uipress_isfa/16