Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood
Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood
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- 8,49 €
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- 8,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
In a series of essays entitled Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood (Bordighera Press) Kathy Curto recounts her Italian American girlhood on the Jersey Shore in the '70s & '80s. Some constant pivotal realities are ever-present in this coming-of-age memoir: the fallout from her parents' stormy marriage, the physical and emotional residue from dirty, undervalued work and the effects of infidelity and addiction. The daily dramas in her curious imagination, in the kitchen of their house on Regency Court and at Fred's Texaco, the family business, guided her developing understanding of the world. This book is as much about people as it is about place, language, and chaotic family love.
Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood peeks into the blue-collar, lipstick-on-your-collar and button-up-your-collar-and-be-a-good-girl time of life that produced hilarious and tragic understandings (and misunderstandings) of the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her tender and evocative debut memoir, Curto, who teaches creative writing at Montclair State University, presents "glimpses of time, reimagined." These anecdotes, strung together to recreate her New Jersey childhood and adolescence in the 1970s and '80s, draw the reader into the world of a hardworking Italian-American family. The youngest of four children, Curto is often silenced by her parents. Her father, who runs a Texaco gas station, is moody and sometimes volatile; her mother argues with him, and for a time they separate and she works at a Laundromat; Curto's older brother, meanwhile, becomes addicted to an assortment of drugs, causing turmoil in the family. The author beautifully recreates the sensations of childhood: touching the soft skin on her mother's upper arm, catching the scent of her father's cologne mixed with gasoline and grease, and experiencing her first kiss ("The music stops. He kisses me but misses my mouth. Grape soda on my chin"). As she gets older, she becomes increasingly aware of her family's failings: the outside office at the gas station is neat and clean, she observes, but the inside office, like her family, is stained with ashes, sauce, coffee, and, "if you look closer: blood, sweat, and tears." This slim, quiet story of girlhood is a gem; Curto creates a vivid picture of the confusion and magic of childhood.
