After Italy: A Family Memoir of Arranged Marriage is the story of two marriages undone by a dowry and the fallout from that rift on three generations of a Southern Italian family. Enlisting Calabrian folklore, epigenetics, and psychology, Monardo writes from both sides of the ocean, charting her grandfathers’ immigration to Braddock, a Pittsburgh steel town; her father’s wartime as a medical student in Naples; the family’s marriages—including her own—that were tainted by an Old World curse; and an unlikely path to international adoption.
Promotional Support from Heinz History Center Italian American Program and Sons & Daughters of Italy Primo Italiano Lodge 2800