Between Two Worlds: Sicily and America

In this slim but weighty debut memoir, LoCascio details her experiences as a daughter of Sicilian immigrants while growing up in Montclair, N.J., during the 1940s and ’50s. LoCascio divides her work into five parts: family stories, women’s narratives, accounts from across the sea, immigrant chronicles, and “the rest of our stories.” She writes of her birth as a surprise, late-in-life baby (“At first, they thought I was a tumor, but nine months later, on September 4, 1937, I was born”), how she idolized her father, and of the differences between her parents: “And so I grew up with my father’s philosophy of life, where change is not only inevitable but desirable, side-by-side with my mother’s holding on to the supremacy of family and the Old Ways.” Throughout, she daydreams about Sicily—only to visit her ancestral town of Cerami to find that not everything was as bucolic before her father moved to America (“Yes, your father’s uncles burned down the municipio,” a resident tells her). LoCascio’s lyrical descriptions (“pushing the [pasta] shells into the center of the table like memories”) add depth and color to the narrative. These vividly remembered recollections will charm readers. (Self-published)