Personal Effects

Essays on Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo

Nancy Caronia, Edvige Giunta

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780823262281
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Announcement Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “Habit of Mind”
• Memoir
• Teaching
• Culture
• Afterword. Crazy in the Study: Trying to Claim a Tradition in Louise DeSalvo’s Accented Writing
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Series Page