Remembrances: Sixty Tales of Growing up with Italian Mothers, Grandmothers and Godmothers [signed]

Edward Maruggi's collection Remembrances: Sixty Tales of Growing Up with Italian Mothers, Grandmothers and Godmothers is as much a walk through the reader's own history as it is through the history of those in the stories that are told. The photographs add a certain nostalgia that would take any reader back to grandma's house for a Sunday meal or to the memory of one's Godmother who held her own place in our lives. As our own mothers figure most prominently in most of our lives, it is a logical arrangement for the book to begin with a section on Mothers, then Grandmothers and finally Godmothers. (Mother-in-laws and great grandmothers also find their place in these tales!) Such an order represents the natural progression of relationships as they would naturally flow from our birth. Our mothers provide our first home in the belly of their own bodies from whence we are born into the larger world where our stories unfold. -review