Journey Without a Map: Growing Up Italian: A Memoir.

Anna Migliarisi is an assistant professor in the English Department at
Acadia University, Nova Scotia.

Journey Without a Map is a veritable medley of storytelling, and so it will surprise no readers to learn that Saskatchewan-based writer Donna Caruso—niece of, yes, the legendary Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso—has flourished for three decades in a number of creative disciplines, from stand-up comedy to documentary film and video production. Caruso has also authored numerous radio plays, screenplays and children’s musicals. Her collections of short stories have been deservedly recognized by the Saskatchewan Book Awards.

Subtitled Growing Up Italian: A Memoir, the present collection is organized into six principle sections that contain 40-odd tales, poems, and letters about family, love, faith, death, and growing up Italian. Caruso also puts forward detailed cooking instructions, dedicated to her sons, in, for example, “Letter to Louie about Cooking Pasta” and “How to Cook for a Girlfriend.” In their totality, these varied pieces, full of wisdom and humour, form part personal memoir, part social history, and part love letter to childhood, family, and Italian cultural heritage.

These themes have been touched upon by Caruso in previous works. Story Album, for instance, a one-hour documentary, interweaves short stories of Caruso’s immigrant grandparents; Doll Hospital is a moving exploration of Caruso’s harrowing, but ultimately “hopeful” experience with breast cancer; and 2008 Bressani Literary Prize–winning, The Clothesline Project is a unique art installation and one-person performance that unifies themes of family, roots, displacement, and beginning anew.

One of the pleasures of Journey Without a Map is seeing how deftly Caruso extends preoccupations with movement, crossing, the journey or “passageway” from the Old World to the New, from despair to hope, and from childhood fancy to experience and well-earned wisdom. All of these enduring and universal themes are here richly animated. Journey without a Map is sure to appeal to a broad range of readers; it’s a satisfying read—pensive, and unexpectedly funny.