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Author DeSalvo, Louise A., 1942-2018, author.

Title The house of early sorrows : a memoir in essays / Louise DeSalvo
Published New York : Fordham University Press, [2018]

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 208 pages)
Contents Prologue: ghost writer -- Lifeboat -- Cutting the bread -- Dark white -- Passing the saint -- White on black -- Fourteenth Street -- The house of early sorrows -- My sister's suicide -- Breathless, adjective -- V and I -- Adultery stories -- Old flame -- Moving on
Summary As the child of children of immigrants, Louise DeSalvo was at first reluctant to write about her truths. Her abusive father, her sister's suicide, her illness. In this stunning collection of her captivating and frank essays on her life and her Italian-American culture, Louise DeSalvo centers on her beginnings, reframing and revising her acclaimed memoiristic essays, pieces that were the seeds of longer collections, to reveal her true power as a memoirist: the ability to dig ever deeper for personal and political truths that illuminate what it means to be a woman, a second-generation American, a writer, and a scholar. Each essay is driven by a complex inquiry that examines the personal, familial, social, ethnic, and historical dimensions of identity. Collectively, they constitute a story significantly different from DeSalvo's memoirs when they first published, where the starkness of their meaning became blunted by material surrounding them. DeSalvo has also restored material written and then deleted--experiences she was too reticent to reveal before, in writing about her sister's suicide, her husband's adultery, her own sexual assault. The essays also include new material to shift the ballast of an essay as her life has changed significantly through the years. The House of Early Sorrows is a courageous exploration not only of the DeSalvo's family life and times, but also of our own
Notes In English
Subject DeSalvo, Louise A., 1942-2018
DeSalvo, Louise A., 1942-2018 -- Family
SUBJECT DeSalvo, Louise A., 1942-
DeSalvo, Louise A., 1942-2018 fast
Subject Critics -- United States -- Biography
English literature -- Appreciation -- United States
Authors, American -- Biography
Italian American women -- Biography
Italian American families -- New Jersey
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Personal Memoirs.
Authors, American
Critics -- Biography
English literature -- Appreciation
Families
Italian American families
Italian American women
New Jersey
United States
Genre/Form Biographies
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0823279324
9780823279326
9780823279319
0823279316