At Home in the New World

Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Italian Studies. I love this collection of essays by Maria Terrone, an exceptionally talented woman of Italian American ancestry who grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, with maternal roots firmly established, as she shows us, in Sicily's long history. Subtly crafted, witty, honest, it brings to life a New York one instantly recognizes. Her New York is an international city, ranging from the factories of Long Island City to a Fifth Avenue beauty company to shooting ranges to Catholic schools, a world where a woman might lose herself in preparing foods from many countries, to hunting down out-of-this world watches, gloves and shoes, while taking those graffiti-soaked subways to summer jobs in New York's cubicles and windowless offices. All of it memorably realized here on page after page in a language which only really fine poets can evoke, realizing for us, her lucky readers, a world shared in truth by so many of us.--Paul Mariani