Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood

In a series of essays entitled Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood (Bordighera Press) Kathy Curto recounts her Italian American girlhood on the Jersey Shore in the '70s & '80s. Some constant pivotal realities are ever-present in this coming-of-age memoir: the fallout from her parents' stormy marriage, the physical and emotional residue from dirty, undervalued work and the effects of infidelity and addiction. The daily dramas in her curious imagination, in the kitchen of their house on Regency Court and at Fred's Texaco, the family business, guided her developing understanding of the world. This book is as much about people as it is about place, language, and chaotic family love.Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood peeks into the blue-collar, lipstick-on-your-collar and button-up-your-collar-and-be-a-good-girl time of life that produced hilarious and tragic understandings (and misunderstandings) of the world.