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Umbertina
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HELEN BAROLINI has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts writing grant, and an American Book Award for The Dream Book: an Anthology of Italian American Women Writers. The Italian edition of her novel Umbertina was the recipient of a literary prize in Italy, the Premio Acerbi, in 2008.

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Umbertina

A Novel
Helen Barolini

Afterword by Edvige Giunta

Publishers Weekly calls Helen Barolini's now classic novel of immigration “an ambitious saga which spans the history and probes some of the tensions of the Italian American...Panoramic, descriptive and solidly crafted.” This multigenerational novel begins in Calabria, as Umbertina persuades her husband to emigrate. Through years of struggle on New York City’s Lower East Side and in a growing upstate New York town, it is Umbertina’s determination, ingenuity, and business sense that propel the family into financial success and security—leaving her daughters and granddaughters to sort out their identities as Italian Americans and women.

"An important novel for these times . . . through a dazzling interplay of American and Italian characters in both countries, Helen Barolini delineates the major concerns of all thinking American ethnics."

—Philadelphia Inquirer

"An ambitious saga which spans the history and probes some of the tensions of the Italian American . . . panoramic, descriptive, and solidly crafted."

—Publishers Weekly

"Readable, perceptive, and rich in detail."

—Library Journal

"Umbertina should be read. . . . Barolini redeems from silence, from neglect, those brave women upon whose shoulders [Italian Americans] should be proud to stand."

—Newsletter of the Italian-American Institute

"I read Umbertina nonstop on the afternoon and all through the night of the day it came. . . . Large in scope, in depth, and in the gift of rapid narrative movement."

—Cynthia Ozick