Monday, March 03, 2014

Telling HerStory 2014: Italian Women in Chicago



The Book: 

Italian Women in Chicago: Madonna Mia! QUI debbo vivere? (You mean I have to live HERE?). Edited by Dominic Cadeloro, Kathy Catrambone and Gloria Nardini.

What's it about:

In one word "stories." This is a wonderful collection of stories from Casa Italia that documents the lives of Italian American women in Chicago. In his introduction, editor Dominic Cadeloro writes "we resolved to delve into oral history archives and scour newspaper archives using newly-developed search engines...It is path-breaking in that it increases enormously the amount of published material on the topic. In one way or another, the names of more than 500 individuals and groups are mentioned and discussed in varying degrees of depth."

Why you should read it:

I love this book and I love the idea of it, to take the stories of women from a community and share them. This is genealogy at its best. Don't have Italian ancestors? That's ok, read this book to see what can be done to document a community of women. Then think about what you can do to document your female ancestors or their community.

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