The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture

by Edvige Giunta, Louise DeSalvo (Editor)

“A vast, thoroughly wonderful assortment of poetry, memoirs and stories . . . that defines today’s female Italian-American experience” ( Publishers Weekly ). Often stereotyped as nurturing others through food, Italian-American women have often struggled against this simplistic image to express the realities of their lives. In this unique collection, over 50 Italian-American female writers speak in voices that are loud, boisterous, sweet, savvy, and often subversively funny. Drawing on personal and cultural memories rooted in experiences of food, they dissolve conventional images, replacing them with a sumptuous, communal feast of poetry, stories, and memoir. This collection also delves into unexpected, sometimes shocking terrain as these courageous authors bear witness to aspects of the Italian American experience that normally go unspoken—mental illness, family violence, incest, drug addiction, AIDS, and environmental degradation. As provocative as it is appetizing, “this collection of verse and prose pieces . . . reveals the evocative and provocative power of food as event and as symbol, as well as the diversity of these women’s lives and their ambivalence regarding the role of nurturer” ( Library Journal ).

Genres: Food, Italy, Italian Literature, Nonfiction, Memoir

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[GraceAnne · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is only one copy of this at NYPL, and it is non-circulating. I read enough of it today to know I need to own it. It is full of stories I recognize: funny, scary, sexy, voluptuous.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty)]

Mangia bene!!

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read through the end of the first section of essays and poems, and then had to stop. They are well written, but I found them so depressing. I always think of Italians as joyful, sitting down to tables laden with delicious food and enjoying being with family, talking over each other in their musical native tongue, but these pieces were all quite melancholy, and really, when I think about it, the Italian side of my family was and is, well, not necessarily joyful, so I'm not sure where I got that image from. So it's possible that this book is completely accurate, but be that as it may, I'm not in a place right now where I can take much more melancholy, so I think I will leave it for another time down the road. It's probably great as a serious work of academic literature--which was its intent--but not so much if you're looking to be entertained.

[Hiram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Editors did a great job in avoiding uncritically celebratory or nostalgiac ethnic fare. Pieces are complicated, often dark. A nice contribution to Italian American studies.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection.