Monday, March 13, 2006

Book:"A Circular Journey" by Helen Barolini, Dean of Woman Italian American writers

 

 

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Helen Barolini, Novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, poet, Dean of Women Italian American writers, is the recipient of numerous prizes, including an NEA grant and an American Book Award, and has written 22 Books.

 

Here newest, and eagerly awaited "A Circular Journey" will be available in May 2006.

 

Fred Misurella, in CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, April 15, 2002, commented:
"Helen Barolini, UMBERTINA, a novel, CHIAROSCURO, a book of essays, and MORE ITALIAN HOURS, a recent collection of stories, form a triptych of Italian American culture evolving through the 20th century."

Helen (Mollica) Barolini was born and raised in Syracuse, NY and attended local schools. She attended Wells College for two years and was graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University. From the University of London where she studied contemporary English literature, she traveled in Europe writing feature articles called "Letters from Abroad" for the Syracuse Herald Journal. She then studied in Italy where she met and married the late Italian author and journalist Antonio Barolini.


In a married life of several moves between Italy and the US (two of three daughters were born in the US one in Italy) Helen Barolini became the English translator of her husband's writings that were published in the U.S.  Barolini now lives in Hastings-on-Hudson,NY . 

A Circular Journey collects for the first time in one book the essays that most powerfully define the unique gifts of one of America’s most distinctive voices.

These fifteen pieces, tracking some thirty years of a writer’s life, come together to illuminate the stages and themes and places that mark Helen Barolini’s art. Divided into three closely linked sections—“Home,” “Abroad,” “Return,”—the essays move through Barolini’s worlds. Returning to the heritage of her Italian immigrant grandparents, she moved to Italy as a young writer. There she lived for many years, becoming acquainted with the brightest of Italy’s literary lights. The accomplished poet, novelist, and critic she became now lives at home in two nurturing cultures, America and Italy both.

Barolini moves lyrically through the generations of her life, giving form to the influences that shaped her art and her sense of self—as an American, a woman, a! nd a gifted daughter of the two cultures she has so powerfully imagined.

 

A Circular Journey
Helen Barolini
$22.95

 

 

 

Some of Barolini's Other Available titles:

  • UMBERTINA, The Feminist Press re-issue, 1999

"...this novel depicts a search for definition as woman and American through four generations...well worth the attention of those willing to feel the struggle, victory, and loss involved in the acquisition of an American identity." Frank Gado

...a superb job of evoking both transcultural and transgenerational conflicts..."  Alden Whitman

"...large in scope, in depth, and in the gift of rapid narrative movement."  Cynthia Ozick

  • CHIAROSCURO: Essays of Identity, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999

"As part memoir, part social commentary, and part literary criticism, Helen Barolini's wonderful Chiaroscuro seems to me...profoundly original..."  Sandra Gilbert

  • MORE ITALIAN HOURS, and Other Stories, Bordighera, 2001

Taking its title from Henry James' travel pieces, Barolini's collection is a gathering of fifteen cross-cultural stories about Italians and Italian Americans balancing on the wire connecting their two worlds. Both Italy and the United States are backdropes for these stories, making a variegated tapestry of people and places."

  • THE DREAM BOOK: an Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women, rev. ed. Syracuse University Press, 2000

"...Barolini's powerful Introduction...is an impassioned and magnificent contribution to our knowledge of what it has meant and means still to be Ethnic American and Woman...It is a book of heroic recovery and affirmation."  Alice Walker

 

  • ALDUS AND HIS DREAM BOOK, Italica Press, 1991

"In this marvelous , learned and friendly volume, Helen Barolini...conveys the magic of an age in which the book as we know it was invented..."  A Common Reader

  • FESTA, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

"Reading FESTA is like taking a good humanities course. Barolini weaves information about Italian life with the art of cookery...showing the connectedness of all life."  Maine Sunday Telegram

  • LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES, Morrow 1986; An Authors Guild Backinprint.com Edition, 2000

"a warm story, a very readable book."  Christian Science Monitor

 

The ANNOTICO Reports are Archived at:

Italy at St Louis: www.italystl.com

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