Life al Dente: Laughter and Love in an Italian-American Family

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Synopsis
rity that made Pagen Babies a classic, here is the Italian-American experience served up by the author who has been crowned the Patron Saint of Humor. Before the Sopranos, there were the Cascones. . . . Life al Dente, the new memoir from the author of Pagan Babies, brings the same wit and wonder to the telling of Gina Cascone's Italian-American girlhood . . . well, boyhood actually. In an Italian family, few things are a greater handicap than beir born female, but Gina's Dad generous by decided to overlook this shortcoming and raise Gina as a boy-the son he always wanted. As lawyer to numerous "alleged" mobsters, Dad had some colorful clients who would regularly gather around the basement pool table to talk business, drink, and be hustled by junior high Gina. There was no way Gina was going to turn into one of the big hair girls of Italian-American stereotype, but her journey would have all the bumps that come with that cherished immigrant ambition of moving from steerage to the suburbs in three generations. That sense of dislocation came early for Gina as her family moved from the kind of neighborhood where old men play bocce and the Ftttefnu are named Nunzio to one where frozen food prevails. brains got her into the top high school, she quickly made the lonely discovery that she was the only one there whose name ended in a vowel. In our overly pasteurized and homogenized world, there's a real hunger to find and celebrate our connection to old world roots and traditions. Life al Dente abounds in hilarious stories, but also rewards readers with a genuine and poignant contemplation of cultural identity. with a genuine and poignant contemplation of cultural identity. from the book
Copyright:
2003

Book Details

Book Quality:
Excellent
Book Size:
166 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780743453288
Publisher:
Atria
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Gina Cascone
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Social Studies
Submitted By:
Jim Pardee
Proofread By:
Lena
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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