Books published by Bordighera Press

Literary Nonfiction. Italian Studies. Bordighera Press announces the publication of DISCOURSE BOUNDARY CREATION (LOGOS TOPOS POIESIS) edited by Peter Carravetta. This publication includes proceedings from a Forum in Italian American Criticism (FIAC) conference entitled "Logos, Nomos, Poiesis: A Festschrift," in honor of Paolo Valesio on his 70th birthday. These proceedings include essays and testimonials by Gian Maria Annovi, Teodolinda Barolini, Peter Carravetta, Alessandro Carrera, Patrizio Ceccagnoli, Andrea Ciccarelli, Luigi Fontanella, Erin Larkin, Ernesto Livorni, Mario Moroni, Alessandro Polcri, Lucia Re, Graziella Sidoli, and Laura Wittman.

Fiction. "With deadpan humor, THE POPE STORIES takes on Catholicism, family dynamics, personal paranoia, and the best and worst of our troubled times--a book filled with subtle insights and clever turns of phrase."--Brad Barkley, author of Money, Love and Alison's Automotive Repair Manual

Poetry. A collection of Joseph Tusiani's latest poetry in English. As this book went to press, NY State governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Tusiani had been designated NY State Poet Emeritus.

Poetry. Gutsy, irreverent, and tender, Nicole Santalucia is a poet of risk. In BECAUSE I DID NOT DIE, she peels away the protective layers behind which she could hide, and, instead, shows us the vulnerable person she is. Unflinchingly, she reveals all her flaws and failures, and through these courageous poems we are drawn into the life she has lived, populated by the people she has known and loved. This book is filled with unexpected moments of humor and irony interspersed with powerful, heartfelt poems. Santalucia is an amazing poet with an incredibly strong and recognizable voice."--Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Praise for Mark Ciabattari''s Rizzoli saga: ""With unerring irony, Ciabattari paints a shimmering, disorienting world in which the lines between dreams and reality are systematically skewed." -Publishers Weekly

This edition contains selected essays from the 40th annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association, held in 2007.

The selected essays gathered in these pages are inspired by the range and depth of the forty-second annual conference of the American Italian Historical Association, held October 29-31, 2009, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The general title of the conference, Southern Exposures: Locations and Relocations of Italian Culture, focuses attention on the themes of Italian immigration and ethnicity in the American South. The large response to the theme of Southern Exposures in the many panels was a welcome surprise; so too were both the variety of thematic approaches to the topic and the numerous research styles and methods. This diversity is further proof of the liveliness of Italian American Studies in the United States.

Part I of this volume, "Italians Before the Great Migration," contains the on-topic papers that were highlighted during the American italian Historical Association annual meeting. They display a wide range of subjects and disciplinary approaches. Part II is composed of essays on "Literature and Ethnic Identity" that are not limited to the central conference topic. Part III, "Poetry," is a collection of poems that span a wide range of human emotions and humanistic sensibilities, presented in English and Italian.

This volume consists of a selection of 14 scholarly works examining the urban experience of Italian Americans in small towns and big cities, out of the approximately 60 stimulating papers presented at the 41st annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association, held in 2008.

Part I of this volume, "Italians Before the Great Migration," contains the on-topic papers that were highlighted during the American italian Historical Association annual meeting. They display a wide range of subjects and disciplinary approaches. Part II is composed of essays on "Literature and Ethnic Identity" that are not limited to the central conference topic. Part III, "Poetry," is a collection of poems that span a wide range of human emotions and humanistic sensibilities, presented in English and Italian.

This resource explores many facets of the dynamic period of the 1940s and the consequences of war and peace specifically within the context of World War II, now recognized as a seminal event in Italian-American life and culture.

The essays in this collection constitute a partial representation of what was presented at the 39th annual conference of the American Italian Historical Association held in 2006.

This collection gathers more than twenty referred essays from three years of the annual conferences (2012-2014) of the Italian American Studies Association. The arts, history, demographics, and politics are just some of the topics examined herein. The reader of this collection will come away with a broad picture of what we might identify as Italian America and its various nooks and crannies.

Poetry. Italian American Studies. "Imagine Jonathan Swift with an Italian American sensibility--that's George Guida, a true original with the capacity to be hilarious, surreal and rueful, sometimes all at once. Whether he's traveling abroad or in Florida ('panhandle with mermaids... pray to the immigrants' pink grapefruit god'), casting his eye on suburban life or satirizing the food-and-gangster obsessions of fellow Italian Americans, no detail escapes his penetrating gaze. In 'The Sleeping Gulf,' you'll find humor's brooding underside and glints of light even in life's 'savage wood.'"--Maria Terrone, Author of EYE TO EYE

Literary Nonfiction. Italian & Italian American Studies. Essays in Italian and English. This collection of essays contributes to the fundamental mission of the Mediterranean Centre for Intercultural Studies--founded in 2012 and located in Erice--with the specific goal of creating a dialogue between those scholars whose intellectual work is dedicated to topics and themes related to any aspect of Mediterranean culture, in the broadest sense of the term. This volume also underscores our desire--and dare we say, necessity--to make readily available the best of work that emanates from the Centre's annual meetings.

"It contains the collected essays originating from a two-day conference at Stony Brook University. The conference aimed at charting various itineraries through little explored clusters of what we can rightly call "Italies," in the plural, and which have existed within and outside of the nation-state called Italy. These Italies are not to be understood solely in terms of circumscribed socio-geographical sites--as colonies, professional settlements, or ethnic enclaves--though these of course have been and continue to be the source of powerful and intriguing discourses. The Italies we wished to explore are those marked by a more subterranean genealogy, the rhizomes that inform symbolic presences in art, architecture, jurisprudence, and streams of cultural products which by their very nature are--and actually have been--transnational, often created without anyone realizing that they were somehow "Italian" and yet manifest unmistakable signs associated with the historical palimpsest called Italy."-- Amazon.

"In this seminal work, Barolini tells the story of Frances Molletone grappling with her ethnic heritage as she falls in love with a married man. When it first appeared, this novel was highly acclaimed in Italy. Now, it once again speaks to us of romantic love and conflicted longing in the aftermath of war."--Christine Lehner.

Fagiani's) muse is Italian-American memory. These are poems of origins and belonging, of family, culture, and politics. They function as archival records, a museum of language in which a gallery of characters and objects and moments are captured in lines that vibrate with a sound, a touch, a presence.--Edvige Giunta, author of "Writing with an Accent."

This volume is the result of 10 long conversations the author held with d'Aquino, who contributes a Preface to the volume. The interviews were originally published in "America Oggi," the daily newspaper of Italians living on the East Coast of the United States.

Emanuel di Pasquale's poems should be read by every American . . . He excels at the short lyric, writes directly, and feels deeply . . . The reader is enriched by both his Sicilian and his American realizations in his life-enhancing lines. - Richard Eberhart[di Pasquale] writes out of strong experience, and by insisting on accuracy, he comes out both simple and surprising. He's never decorative: there is always something human happening, and his words are close to it. - Richard Wilbur

In these sonnets, Turini Bufalini gives a detailed description of her life, from childhood to old age, along with the full spectrum of her emotions. She describes her birth followed by the death of her father and mother, her lonely, rustic but free life as an orphan in her uncle's castle in the wilderness of the Apennines, her exuberant joys of motherhood, and more.

This volume collects the essays presented at the colloquium "The Hyphenate Writer and the Legacy of Exile" held in February, 2008. This colloquium was born from an ongoing discussion on the themes of exile and immigrant writing, hyphenation, cultural boundaries, the breaking of such boundaries, and bilingualism.

Young painter Mario Minitti and several others--Fillide Meladrone, Archbishop Pietero Aldrobondini, Ranuccio Tomassoni, and Nunzio Pulzone--came to Rome at the turn of the century in 1600 to find fame and fortune. Their stories intersect as they fall in love with one another and share a common bond: they were painted by the great Caravaggio.

Poetry. Women's Studies. Translated from the Italian by Joan E. Borrelli. Bilingual Edition. Feminist, courtesan, playwright and a renowned virtuosa (soloist vocal performer) called to sing before Roman nobility and the courts of Florence and Paris, Margherita Costa is, moreover, the most Baroque of the Italian women poets of the seventeenth century. A prolific writer, she published six volumes of poetry, two prose works, three plays, two narrative poems, and a pageant in verse for knights on horseback. As a poet, she employs a variety of genres, using humor and irony to criticize prevailing attitudes towards women and to mock the politics of her times. Many poems reveal autobiographical references as she voices her personal struggles and her experiences as a woman of numerous roles, including wife, mother, widow, and, above all, writer, attempting to achieve recognition and respect for her literary endeavors. This anthology offers the first English translation from Margherita's extensive oeuvre and represents the first modern publication in Italian of a selection from seven of her books of verse, which have not seen print since their original editions in the 1600s. The volume includes a biographical and critical introduction, a comprehensive bibliography, and notes in both Italian and English.

Poetry. Italian American Studies. Maria Mazziotti Gillan's Ancestors' Song takes the reader on a journey, one in which she recognizes deep within herself "the voices of the women who came before," their words blending together, forming, as she tells the reader, "the beat I move to." This beat is very much a part of the narrative she weaves in her characteristically honest, intimate, and humorous voice. This beat is true, hard working, strong; a beat that began in the villages on the mountaintops in San Mauro, Italy, and continues to the present day, illuminating the path for those that will follow. These poems will move you to laughter, to tears, and a mixture of both, and are proof that Gillan is at the peak of her career. She is truly one of America's most beloved poets.

"Between 1910 and 1913 Antonio Vasquenz, a native of the Abruzzo village of Cerchio, wrote about forty letters totaling 25,000 words to his son Angelo, an immigrant working in the coal mines of western Pennsylvania. Unlike many contadini, Antonio was fully literate. He was also a talented writer and intelligent man. Over a four-year period he described in detail, with vivid and sometimes pungent prose, all the events and trials of his life: family illness and death, agricultural conditions, and always, always the financial burdens..." -- Publisher's description.

Literary Nonfiction. Italian American Studies. Women's Studies. "Since the 1960s Daniela Gioseffi has been an irrepressible and unforgettable voice in many of the key debates in American culture. Her...advocacy has given a special validity to her work in the fields of civil rights and of anti-war activism no less than in the struggles against mafia stereotypes and for an Italian American literary tradition. This book displays the depth and range of her commitment and contribution."--Robert Viscusi, Author: Astoria and Ellis Island, Founding President: The Italian American Writers Association