The Place I Call Home by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
A Review by Vittoria repetto
This review will appear in Winter 2013 issue of VIA ( Voices in Italian Americana) magazine.
Though the years, Maria Mazziotti Gillan has painted wonderful pictures of her life via her narrative poems.
In her new book, The Place I Call Home, she gives us vivid images of the house she grew up in, images of her mother washing clothes and sewing to supplement the family income and making sure that her family was well fed though she never spent money on frivolities like blueberries.
“…remember my mother’s refrigerator
that was always full of homemade food – bread, meatballs,
braciola, spinach, broccoli rabe, but no blueberries,
this small berry I didn’t taste until I was a grown women
and married myself, and I imagine my mother’s horror
at the thought of he spoiled daughter paying $3.95 a pint
for blueberries just because she wants them.”
These are stories of a mother who only went to the 3rd grade in Italy buying her daughter a typewriter so she could be a writer.
But these poems go deeper than nostalgia for one’s family or the difference between an immigrant family and a first generation “American girl.”
There are revealing poems like “Doing the Twist with Bobby Darin” that deal with her shyness about her body and dancing w. someone who thinks a Italian girl is loose and easy.
“my friend’s husband dragged me
out onto the dance floor, expecting
that I would be loose and easy,
imagining that all my energy
would translate into an abandon I never felt…….
……….. I understood
that he thought my Italian bloo
meant I was hot like Sophia Loren
or Anna Magnani.”
There are poems that strike at our hearts and make us sigh sadly when she talks about her husband having Parkinson’s and not being in the same bedroom with him, of Dennis getting to the point where he will not know her.
There are angry poems about her ex son-in-law who hurt her daughter badly when they divorced.
This book will make you laugh and cry and every emotion in between; buy it!
© 2012 Vittoria Repetto
Italian American Writers Blog 
Dear Victoria, thanks so much for information related to Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s new book, which I intend to buy and read. She has been an inspiration to me, now working on my seventh publication of prose poems
with a FELLINI theme, which Poet/Professor Russell Thorburn/U of Michigan, is “mentoring” and will be my Guest Reader for the series I host, every First Fridays, at SAVAGE ART GALLERY in Palm Springs. He will be my houseguest as well and this series is funded by Poets & Writers Magazine, through a Grant received from the James Irvine Foundation, celebrating eight years of presenting published poets to read for the community in the Coachella Valley, formerly hosting at Barnes&NOBLE/Palm Desert/Westfield Palm Desert.
I believe that POETRY IS POWER and brngs people together to better understand that we are all “Fratelli e Sorelli” (“Brothers and Sisters”) and need to “Love One Another” more, so that there will never be a need for war! I believe this with all my heart and soul, and have been writing about it for over 40 years. I will celebrate 89 years of life in April, and plan to live to 100, or longer, to finish the work I began, after the age of 50, when I returned to college, having been deprived of that privilege due to World War I I. I went to work in Washington for the FBI instead, and thank the Lord and His Angels daily, for the time I’ve had to earn a B.S. in Human Relations and Organizational Behavior
at the University of San Francisco, in 1982, funded by Levi Strauss & Co., in San Francisco, where I worked as an administrative assistant, now
retired and reading and writing every day in Desert Hot Springs, where
I intend to celebrate 100 or longer, “singing SAPPHO’s SONGS!”
May the Blessings of the Lord and His Angels be with all of you and
may we all come to know PEACE in our time. I’ll be happy to send you
a copy of my last publication “PAX VOBISCUM: Anti-War Poetry Collection” (Pacific Copy & Print, Sacramento, CA 2009) if you will advise me of your address.
Many thanks for all you do for Poets and may our paths cross some time in the near future. As a matter of information, I’ll be meeting with
Michael Rothenberg, I I
Con Amore e Buona Fortuna,
Patricia D’Alessandro
Host: “Valley Voices of the Muse”
SAVAGE ART GALLERY/Palm Springs, CA
ciaopat12@gmail.com
Recipient of a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors for Outstanding Cultural Arts Promotion in
2007.
Dear Victoria – my monster of a computer NOSFERATU did not finish my
previous eMail !!!!! POETS MICHAEL ROTHENBERG, I I, and his partner
TERRI CARRION, founders of “100THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE”
a WORLDWIDE POETRY READING that Stanford University has archived
and will continue to do so in perpetuity, will be my houseguests in a week
to discuss plans for the 2013 Event. They live in Guerneville, CA, and
have connected Poets throughout the World, for this event, now preparing
for it’s THIRD YEAR. I’ll keep you posted on our progress if you are interested?
May the Blessings of the Lord and His Angels be with all of you, with a fervent prayer for PEACE IN OUR TIME.
Con amore e baci,
Patricia D’Alessandro
ciaopat12@gmail.com
Dear Victoria, acknowledge BOTH eMails, one interrupted for no reason
by NOSFERATU, my unpridictable computer!!!!!!! PEACE, Patricia
ciaopat12@gmail.com
It’s Vittoria…the Italian spelling…2 t’s, no c