Books published by Bordighera Press

"In a rural New Jersey town, on the eve of WWII, young Marie Genovese looks out from her apartment window above the Five & Ten and wonders how she'll save the failing store she's inherited from her mother. Forced to bake for extra money, Marie dabbles in herbs, and hopes to change her fate. But when a herb-laced cake causes a wealthy local banker and Marie to fall in love, her troubles only compound-a family friend plots to take the store, her brother is involved in a fascist hate crime, and Marie becomes pregnant by her married lover. Enter the mysterious Aunt Ada from Italy, who brings a skill with herbs and knowledge of the family's Italian past. Soon Marie will face a choice: accept the protection of her wealthy lover, or defiantly break cultural norms by remaining independent. In a time similar to today, full of fear, economic uncertainty, and the controlling behavior of men, a powerful line of women, living and dead, helps Marie decide. ITALIAN LOVE CAKE is a story of a rare feminist awakening in 1939"--

Systems, love, philosophy, science, end-means, anthropomorphism, economy, action, success, separation: these are the main theoretical themes of "that strange and extraordinary dialogue" that developed between Eugenio Colorni and Altiero Spinelli in the Ventotene island (1939-42). They represent an easily accessible, interdisciplinary, iconoclastic, liberating, and fantastic intellectual feast under extreme conditions of confinement imposed by the fascist regime. They developed hand in hand with the political discussion that, with the contribution of Ernesto Rossi and Ursula Hirschmann, gradually unveiled the well-known political Manifesto for the unification of Europe.

In this unique volume of essays, three Italian-Canadian-American scholars of the post-WWII diaspora, who among them span a wide expanse of geographic and cultural ground, reflect on the meaning of triangulated identities. What are the processes of translation required by personal lives, consciousness, scholarship, and modes of representation, lived in such a context? At their simplest, they must confront blended or hybridized environments, geographic, cultural, and temporal straddling, "chronic otherness," and the apparently contradictory forms of invisibility and hyper-visibility, peripherality and multi-centredness. As a basic navigational tool, cartographic "triangulation" allows these authors to explore their own personal geo-cultural positionings and to seek equipoise in an equilateral triangle. All three bring direct experience and heightened knowledge of the trans-diasporic perspective, which has left them well-prepared for the challenges of an increasingly globalized reality. Even so, such positioning does not deny an elusive sense of home and belonging; their journeys have also taught them how to feel at home in the world.

Come nel nostro volume inaugurale di sette anni fa - Europe, Italy, and the Mediterranean: L'Europa, l'Italia, e il Mediterraneo (2014), nato dal primo convegno organizzato dal Mediterranean Centre for Intercultural Studies (MCIS; Centro Mediterraneo di Studi Interculturali) - questa raccolta di saggi nasce dal settimo convegno del Centro, che si è svolto ad Erice, in Sicilia, nel Maggio 2019. La presente raccolta contribuisce alla missione fondamentale del MCIS ... con l'obiettivo specifico di creare un dialogo tra quegli studiosi il cui lavoro intellettuale è dedicato a temi legati a qualsiasi aspetto della cultura mediterranea, nel senso più ampio del termine. Il volume sottolinea anche il nostro desiderio - e oseremmo dire la necessità - di mettere a disposizione il meglio del lavoro che scaturisce dagli incontri annuali del Centro.

"In this historical novel, a Sicilian immigrant navigates the spheres of workers rights and organized crime in his adopted homeland"--Kirkus Reviews.

... Ciabattari brims with brio in this fanciful, cannily humorous look at the jungles of darkest Manhattan. Twenty-one brief "dreams" or vignettes introduce Rizzoli, a modern Everyman who tries to do his work, retain a shred of dignity, and, maybe, find a little affection. But life is tough in the big city.-Publishers Weekly

An exploration of the Italian references and inspirations found across the writings of Thomas Jefferson.“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”—Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence“[T]u vedrai noi d’una massa di carne tutti la carne avere e da uno medesimo creatore tutte l’anime con iguali forze, con iguali potenze, con iguali vertù create. La vertù primieramente noi, che tutti nascemmo e nasciamo iguali, ne distinse...”“[Y]ou will see that we all have flesh from the same mass of flesh and from the same creator all have souls created with equal forces, with equal powers, and with equal capabilities. Capability is the first thing that distinguished us, who all have been born and are born equal...”—Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron

"At the core of this elegantly crafted book is a riveting cautionary tale about heartbreak, disaffection, and visceral family dysfunction that soars to agonizing life as a result of the poet's precise and startling language. Set against a largely dystopic landscape of 'bursting gamma rays, rogue asteroids...and latent nuclear fiascos,' AND NOT TO BREAK is chock-full of 'weird surprises' and unpredictable syntactical energy. Beware, most of all, Sylvester's exhilarating hyphenated adjectives that pack a psychological and intellectual wallop.--Peter Covino"--From back cove

Literary Nonfiction. Film. Italian American Studies. For those who believe that the choices involved in subtitling or dubbing foreign films are merely physical in nature--fitting the written words within the borders of the photogram, synchronizing the sounds of translated dialogue with the lip movements of actors--TRANSLATING FOR (AND FROM) THE ITALIAN SCREEN offers dramatic proof to the contrary. What emerges from this volume is a sophisticated and profound understanding of the cultural stakes of such operations. As evidenced by these ingenious case studies of the transformations undergone by Anglophone films when shown on Italian screens (or vice-versa), the cultural implications can be terribly tone-deaf (e.g. Monty Python and the Holy Grail), deeply harmonious (e.g. The Nanny), or ideologically distorted (e.g. La ricotta). In compiling this rich and provocative collection of essays, Balma and Spani have rendered it impossible for readers to maintain a naive view of the role played by subtitling and dubbing in the all-important transmission of cross-cultural understanding.--Millicent Marcus

In Discovering the Possible Luca Meldolesi recounts over half a century of Hirschman's work, exploring the motivations, methodology, and unexpected developments of his research. Published simultaneously in Italian, Spanish, and English, Discovering the Possible is the first book to probe the whole corpus of Hirschman's work and to highlight the wealth of his ideas and the sharp self-irony with which his intuitions are forged into thoughts. The book will interest students and professionals in economics, sociology, political science, and moral philosophy, as well as those who focus on the development sector of these disciplines.

Anna Citrino has woven the story of Italian immigrants-their small joys and compelling heartaches-into a moonlit tapestry. Thread by poetic thread, this book is an exquisite fabric of personal journeys, cultural insights, and little known Italian American history. I loved entering this "space between," created with great love and profound grace.-Catherine Ann Lombard A Space Between is that rarity in books of poetry, a book that coheres, where everything is of a piece. . . . The book brings vividly alive the immigrant experience. The differences between the two worlds that the characters inhabit are rendered with skill and delicacy . . . A Space Between has epic sweep rendered in a wide range of voices, each distinctive, each compelling.-Michael L. Newell A massive, ambitious effort of epic proportions that rewards with its interweavings of history, consequence, heritage, and legacy. How heartening it is to witness in these poems the resonance through generations of immigration and sacrifice to provide for living, surviving, prospering. -Nicholas Samaras

Palazzeschi is indeed a rare personality; in him a cool detachment does not stop sympathy; he scrutinizes, questions, even challenges convention without ever rejecting it. His outlook on life seems to combine that of a small boy at a circus (and probably one who has sneaked under the canvas) with that of a sage who knows that wisdom begins but does not necessarily stop at melancholy.-Thomas G. Bergin Aldo Palazzeschi is surely Italy's most neglected major twentieth century author . . . he ranks high as a poet and writer of fiction.-Nicolas J. Perella I found these translations of a major literary voice of the twentieth century, who has yet to enjoy much fame outside of Italy, to be faithful to the spirit of the originals and most capable in effectively rendering difficult texts. These most welcome translations are accompanied by critical essays by leading Palazzeschi scholars that help orient readers through the Futurist manifestos that lie at the foundation of Palazzeschi's career as a "tragicomic writer" and capture "the essence of his spiritual outlook" as well as his ambivalent relationship with Futurism throughout his literary career.-Mark Pietralunga

"It seems appropriate that Bordighera Press would choose to publish this study on Pavese on the heals of bringing back in print Rimanelli's controversial book Il mestiere del furbo after over fifty years. Eugenio Ragni's observations in his introductory remarks to the recent re-release of Il mestiere del furbo strike us as applicable to Rimanelli's book-length study on Pavese. Ragni refers to Il mestiere del furbo as an example of intellectual independence and whose analysis is still critically valid after so many years. The same holds true for Rimanelli's study of Pavese, as does a similar careful reading of the texts combined with a balanced philological and narratological approach. Moreover, a distinguishing feature of both Il mestiere del furbo and Cesare Pavese's Long Journey: A Critical-Analytical Study, particularly from other criticism in the 1950s and early 1960s, are Rimanelli's enlightened references to foreign works and authors. Finally, the publication of this book-length study of Pavese brings to light an important chapter of Rimanelli's own life journey. It highlights a strong sense of tradition, a loyalty to place and to one's roots, and the idea of America as a metaphor for one's literary substance, one's myth, and one's destiny."-Mark Pietralunga, from the "Introduction"

A self-deprecating, sobering book about a world that continues to move forward without anyone really advancing. -Gian Paolo Serino As Europe, along with the rest of the world, struggles to learn itself anew and adapt in the presence of rapid demographic change - and often acting in a way that fails to recognize the positive potential in this change - Kossi Komla-Ebri provides a human and personal account of this global process which sometimes seems too big, global, and too daunting. Komla-Ebri's vignettes show us through pain and humor what this giant global force looks like when it comes out in the everyday, rears its heads in the interactions between friends or strangers, the intimate or the unfamiliar. By shedding light on the relationship between the structural and the interpersonal, he takes deeply personal issues and makes them universal. Komla-Ebri shows us that we are all touched by what may feel abstract or too broad for the individual to reproduce and affect. All people who have experienced embar-race-ments and othering - which is increasingly all people - should find this book enlightening. And by reflecting our own behavior back to us or teaching us how to cope with and process these daily slights, this work helps us put one foot in front of the other toward a world of greater belonging. -Dr. john a. powell, Hass Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society

Once again, Maria Famà makes us smile as she cajoles us with profound folk wisdom and ironic wit. This is a book everyone of any background can delight in. The witty folk wisdom it offers can be cherished for a lifetime. -Daniela Gioseffi, American Book Award winner The Good for the Good weaves wit and warmth into poems inspired by Italian and Sicilian sayings embraced by her family through generations. -Amy Barone, Author of We Became Summer These poems create a rich tapestry of folk wisdom, linguistic hybridism, and inter-generational transfer across two sides of an ocean. . . . Famà's reflections on the legacies of her Sicilian heritage are as timeless as the sayings that inspired her work. -Lina Insana, Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh

Poetry. Italian Studies. In poems born of the rocky soil of the old country, where children learn to sew in a 'walled-in-garden' with 'one potted plant--crown of thorns, ' Frasca threads history and myth. She tells of immigrant hope that turns so quickly to devastating loss, and makes exile real--the self in search of the self. Writing to her counterpart, Anna, who dies young back in Sicily, and carrying her father's ghost, time feels endless, simultaneous. But Frasca is also a poet of wonder, and this work is alive, visionary, painterly. Here, myth isn't an old story, it is the art of transformation, and Frasca embodies an ever-present unfolding.--Anne Marie Macari Like mulberries that both stain and heal, these luscious poems and stories insist on our culpability in the misery of familiar or distant others while also consoling and nurturing with sensorial and sensual pleasures only a poet like Frasca, living within the tension between assimilation and alienation, between worlds that 'disorient & enlighten, ' can deliver. Frasca threads through memories wary of the ways nostalgia scars, seeking antidotes by turning writing into a 'battledress, ' and crafting introspection into a means of saving us 'from our ugly stink.' Enter WILD FENNEL's 'feral fires' and you will emerge both bruised and blessed, loving anise seeds and the smell of fox the way one should, on their own terms.--Mihaela Moscaliuc

Poetry. Italian Studies. The poems in SEASON OF SUBTRACTION are at once effortlessly attainable, and at the same time surprisingly fresh and delightfully unexpected...If you listen carefully, you can hear Michelle say, Yes, you come too. SEASON OF SUBTRACTION is an extraordinary book.--John Stanizzi The prose poems that make up SEASON OF SUBTRACTION bask in the poetics of language and syntax; they are bricks paving a dream-village, both American and Old World...I am in awe of the space Michelle Messina Reale creates: its friction, its strength, its mournful insistence, and the speaker who 'pin[s] my father's heart to the wall and pray[s] a novena to lost souls...'--Jennifer Martelli SEASON OF SUBTRACTION is like Sicily's own citrus fruits--hybridized, yet native and emblematic; sweet and intricate, yet often bitter in places at the whim of life's turning. With its nuanced language, crafted metaphors, and raw honesty, Reale's work is a treat to be savored.--Chad Frame In SEASON OF SUBTRACTION, Michelle Reale entangles you in the language of ache and need, and the search for a lost relative who becomes a found love...You will gather so many pieces in this beautiful collection, and you will exit it feeling whole, knowing what was once lost is now home.--Kailey Tedesco