JoAnn Cavallo (Columbia University) Joanna Clapps Herman (Manhattanville College) Edvige Giunta (New Jersey City University)Joseph Sciorra (coeditor)
A Book-Presentation with
Poem Readings: Phyllis Capello (poet)For Italian immigrants and their descendants, needlework represents a marker of identity, a cultural touchstone as powerful as pasta and Neapolitan music. Out of the artifacts of their memory and imagination, Italian immigrants and their descendants have created narratives around embroidery, sewing, knitting, and crochet that help define who they were and have become. At the center of this book are the representations of Italian immigrant women’s domestic needlework. The book explores the many processes by which a simple object, or even the memory of that object, becomes something else through literary, visual, performative, ethnographic, or critical re-imagining. While primarily concerned with representations and interpretations of needlework rather than the needlework itself—its origins, design patterns, and techniques—the editors and the contributors to Embroidered Stories remain mindful of its history and its associated cultural values, which Italian immigrants brought with them to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina, and passed on to their descendants