Description:
A lucid view of one of the most important Italian American female authors of our time, Louise DeSalvo.
Celebrating one of the most important Italian American female authors of our time, Personal Effects offers a lucid view of Louise DeSalvo as a writer who has produced a vast and provocative body of memoir writing, a scholar who has enriched our understanding of Virginia Woolf, and a teacher who has transformed countless lives. More than an anthology, Personal Effects represents an author case study and an example for modern Italian American interdisciplinary scholarship. Personal Effects examines DeSalvo's memoirs as works that push the boundaries of the most controversial genre of the past few decades. In these works, the author fearlessly explores issues such as immigration, domesticity, war, adultery, illness, mental health, sexuality, the environment, and trauma through the lens of gender, ethnic, and working-class identity. Alongside her groundbreaking scholarship, DeSalvo's memoirs attest to the power and influence of this feminist Italian American writer.Brief description: Lia Ottaviano graduated from Hunter College's Creative Nonfiction MFA program in 2011. She lives in Brooklyn, New York by way of Coventry, Rhode Island, and is a Senior Editorial Assistant at John Wiley & Sons Publishing.
Review Quotes: The essays in Personal Effects do more than bear witness to the extraordinary achievement of Louise DeSalvo; they extend and amplify her inquiry into the nature of self, the politics of identity, the consequences of trauma. No study of memoir, of biography, of the role of literary criticism in the understanding of our time, can be complete without this multifaceted colloquy. Like the work of DeSalvo herself, this is a book of heartfelt intelligence and brilliant passion.---Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House, and Love & Fury