Doors of the Past
In Flight with the Native Language
Prefazione di Martino Marazzi
Doors of the Past is a memoir which aims to analyze the narrator’s attraction towards the American dream and the United States, her native country left as a child. Born in the Bronx in
Doors of the Past is a memoir which aims to analyze the narrator’s attraction towards the American dream and the United States, her native country left as a child. Born in the Bronx in an Italian family, she grew up in a rural setting in Irpinia where her father, during a vacation, in a rapture of nostalgia, decided to come back after a seven year stay in New York. The author explores her family history of migration; her deep intergenerational relationships with north America; her great fascination towards New England, where part of her family moved tracing a new interesting life path and where she had dreamt to move after taking her university degree. Thanks to the English language aspects of Italianità, that have always caused her strong feelings of discomfort and rejection, are deeply investigated.
If you were born in a place and grow up in another one, you miss the language and who knows what else!
Indice
Le porte girevoli del ritorno di Martino Marazzi
Acknowledgements
Part One – The American Dream
The house we think will suit us forever rarely does
The dream turns out to be a nightmare
Departure
For ever tourist
Full circle
Part Two – My Story
Italian upbringing: Education
English as a second language
Part Three
The village of the origins
Glossary
A tour within words