Mamma Mia!: Good Italian Girls Talk Back

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish Studies at Laurentian
University.

The title says it all: these good Italian girls are talking back! Their
voices are most often loving and proud, if at times tinged with
affectionate exasperation; other times they are filled with frustration
and even anguish. Most of the stories they tell are humorous and
entertaining, or inspiring, courageous, and poignant; others are
wrenchingly tragic; but all of them are candid and intimate stories
about what it is like growing up and being female and Italian in Canada.


Maria Coletta McLean has collected 25 stories by 18 authors, women
ranging in age from their 20s to over 70. With them we cross generations
and the Atlantic Ocean, travel to different parts of Canada, and
experience the balancing act necessitated by the overlap of Old World
Italian traditions and contemporary Canadian society. Sometimes
manoeuvring between the two calls for a certain glossing over of fact,
such as when a 12- or 13-year-old Maria Coletta lies to her mother so
that she’ll be permitted to go to a school friend’s house for that
most exotic of North American 1950s fare, the TV dinner. Other times, as
Anna Nobile in “Thicker Than Water” writes, it means living a kind
of double life, because the truth of her sexual orientation cannot yet
be shared with her family.

The stories that these women tell provide surprising insights into the
intricacies of family dynamics and the complexities of a multicultural
society. For anyone simply looking for a good read, I recommend Mamma
Mнa. The bonus is that you will not only be entertained but also
enlightened, and surely discover something about your own family
relationships, be they Italian or no.