The Iliac Crest

by Garza, Cristina Rivera; Booker, Sarah; Poniatowska, Elena

• ISBN13: 9781558614352
• ISBN10: 1558614354
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-10-10
• Publisher: Feminist Pr

Summary

Often sentimentalized as nurturing through food, Italian American women have continually struggled against this stereotype to speak of the realities of their lives. In The Milk of Almonds, more than 50 writers speak in voices that are loud, boisterous, sweet, savvy, and often subversively comical. Drawing on personal and cultural memory rooted in experiences of food, here Italian American women dissolve conventional images, replacing them with a sumptuous, communal feast of poetry, stories, and memoir. Though they begin with food, the writers in this collection quickly carry the reader into unexpected terrain as they bear witness to experiences often considered unspeakable. A deeply satisfying literary banquet, The Milk of Almonds is an unprecedented collection, amply revising all received notions of what it means to be an Italian American woman. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Editors' Note	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
Beginnings
Rose and Pink and Round	p. 17
Aperitivo	p. 22
Mother Hunger and Her Seatbelt	p. 24
Beer. Milk. The Dog. My Old Man	p. 27
Our Father	p. 28
Italian Grocer	p. 37
Smoke and Fire	p. 38
Outside	p. 44
Sacred Hearts and Tar	p. 45
Ceremonies
Kitchen Communion	p. 49
Dizzy Spells	p. 56
My Children's Names	p. 64
Jazzman	p. 65
Bedtime Story	p. 65
The Seven Sacraments	p. 67
Kissing the Bread	p. 76
Pomegranate	p. 78
The Anthology Poems	p. 81
The Prodigal Daughter	p. 82
The Giara of Memory	p. 84
Awakenings
Go to Hell	p. 95
Motherlove	p. 101
We Begin with Food	p. 102
Breakfast in My Seventeenth Year	p. 104
Bone, Veins, and Fat	p. 105
Big Heart	p. 112
The Origins of Milk	p. 121
Cracked	p. 123
Broke	p. 130
Encounters
Other People's Food	p. 135
What I Ate Where	p. 143
The Stereotype	p. 148
My Grandmother, a Chicken, and Death	p. 148
"No Thank You, I Don't Care for Artichokes"	p. 150
Hot Peppers	p. 152
If You Were a Boy	p. 152
Tridicinu and 'Mmaculata	p. 153
She's doing the dishes	p. 158
Pasta poem	p. 159
Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner	p. 160
Transformations
I Can Be Bread	p. 167
Finocchio	p. 168
Pomodori	p. 170
Lovers and other dead animals	p. 175
Tripe	p. 175
Let Them Eat Cake	p. 176
Parable	p. 182
Rosette	p. 182
Basil	p. 189
Love Lettuce	p. 190
The Room	p. 198
Hunger	p. 200
Communities
Dealing with Broccoli Rabe	p. 205
Sunday	p. 205
The Oven	p. 214
Ravioli, Artichokes, and Figs	p. 216
Seventeenth Street: Paterson, New Jersey	p. 222
Passing It On	p. 222
You Were Always Escaping	p. 223
Poem	p. 225
Coffee an'	p. 227
Jeanie	p. 235
Working Men	p. 236
Moving In and Moving Up	p. 237
Fatso	p. 239
Passings
The Lives of the Saints	p. 249
After We Bury Her	p. 252
Ma, Who Told Me You Forgot How to Cry	p. 252
The Day Anna Stopped Making A-Beetz	p. 254
My Mother's Career at Skip's Luncheonette	p. 258
Secret Gardens	p. 259
The Exegesis of Eating	p. 261
The Vinegarroon	p. 269
Triple Bypass	p. 273
Last Supper	p. 274
New Year's Eve	p. 275
Baked Ziti	p. 276
Legacies
What They'll Say in a Thousand Years	p. 285
Polenta	p. 295
Lament in Good Weather	p. 299
Mafioso	p. 299
Picking Apricots with Zia Antonia	p. 300
Mortadella	p. 301
Keep the Wheat and Let the Chaff Lie	p. 308
The Northside at Seven	p. 310
Words	p. 312
How to Sing to a Dago	p. 320
The Post-Rapture Diner	p. 321
Cutting the Bread	p. 322
About the Contributors	p. 333
Credits	p. 343
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