Authors: Jerre Mangione, Eugene Paul Nassar (Foreword by), Dorothy Canfield
ISBN-13: 9780815604297, ISBN-10: 0815604297
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Date Published: March 1998
Edition: 1ST SYRACU
Mount Allegro is an extraordinary memoir, a celebration of Sicilian life, an engaging sociological portrait, a moving reminiscence of a fledgling writer's escape from the restrictive culture in which he grew up. Jerre Mangione's autobiographical chronicle of his youth in a Sicilian Community in Rochester is one of the truly enduring books about the immigrant experience in this country. Family squabbles, soul-nourishing food, and the casting of evil eyes are only some of the ingredients of this richly textured book, although they must all take second place to its unforgettable characters. As Eugene Paul Nassar writes in the book's Foreword, "Mount Allegro ... gave a literary visibility and identity, amiable and appealing, to a poorly understood ethnic group in America, and did so at a very high level of artistry."
Foreword | ix | |
Introduction | xv | |
1 | When I Grow Up | 1 |
2 | Family Party | 14 |
3 | Mr. Michelangelo's Spite Wall | 38 |
4 | Talking American | 49 |
5 | God and the Sicilians | 67 |
6 | Evil Eye | 100 |
7 | The Unholy Three | 117 |
8 | Sicilian Virgin | 152 |
9 | A Man and His Vice | 166 |
10 | Uncle Nino and the Underworld | 181 |
11 | American Pattern | 207 |
12 | New Bread, Old Wine | 225 |
13 | Welcome to Girgenti | 246 |
14 | Blighted Land | 265 |
Finale | 287 |