Behind Closed Doors - by Maria Messina

About the Book

Stories of Sicily, immigration, and the lives of Sicilian women in the early 20th century.

Book Synopsis

Ten stories of impoverished Sicilian women in the early twentieth century.

The Sicilian writer Maria Messina's captivating and brutal stories of the women of her home island are presented in a "lyrical and immediate" English translation by Elise Magistro (Publishers Weekly).

Messina, who died in 1944, was the foremost female practitioner of verismo-the Italian literary realism pioneered by fellow Sicilian Giovanni Verga. Published between 1908 and 1928, Messina's fiction represents the massive Sicilian immigration to America occurring at that time.

The individuals in these stories are caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to move beyond them. Women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, left behind while working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, "Messina's words will leave their mark. Their power makes them impossible to forget" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Review Quotes

Praise for Behind Closed Doors

"[T]hese ten persuasive tales offer stark, finely drawn portraits of poor and middle-class Sicilian women in the early years of the twentieth century." --The New York Review of Books

"A window into another time and another culture... We understand the emotions of [the] characters, simultaneously victims and heroines... Messina's words will leave their mark. Their power makes them impossible to forget." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Virtually the only great Italian fiction about the massive Sicilian immigration to America written while it was happening... honed, polished, devastatingly direct--verismo at its unsentimental best." --Booklist

About the Author

Maria Messina (1887-1944) was born in Palermo, Sicily. She taught herself to read and write, eventually finding a mentor in the famed Italian realist Giovanni Verga, who encouraged her to begin writing seriously. Her works include novels, short stories, and children's tales. In 1910, she received the Medal of Gold for her first book of stories, Pettini-fini (Fine Combs).

Fred Gardaphe is the director of Italian American Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the president of MELUS (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US).

Elise Magistro holds a doctorate in Italian from UCLA and is a lecturer in Italian at Scripps College in Claremont, California.