Celebrating one of the most important Italian American female authors of our time, Personal Effects offers a lucid view of Louise DeSalvo as a writer who has produced a vast and provocative body of memoir writing, a scholar who has enriched our understanding of Virginia Woolf, and a teacher who has transformed countless lives. More than an anthology, Personal Effects represents an author case study and an example for modern Italian American interdisciplinary scholarship.

Personal Effects examines DeSalvo’s memoirs as works that push the boundaries of the most controversial genre of the past few decades. In these works, the author fearlessly explores issues such as immigration, domesticity, war, adultery, illness, mental health, sexuality, the environment, and trauma through the lens of gender, ethnic, and working-class identity. Alongside her groundbreaking scholarship, DeSalvo’s memoirs attest to the power and influence of this feminist Italian American writer.

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: “Habit of Mind” 1
Nancy Caronia and Edvige Giunta

Memoir
Louise DeSalvo’s “Even in Death, La Bella Figura”: A Meditation on Honor, Respect, and the Silences That Bind 37
Margaux Fragoso

The Poetics of Trauma: Intertextuality, Rhythm, and Concision in Vertigo and Writing as a Way of Healing 50
Peter Covino

Fixing and Fictioning: Memory and Catholicism in Vertigo 62
Jeana Delrosso

Portrait of the Mother as a Writer and Researcher 75
Julija Sukys

Louise DeSalvo: Essaying Memoir 86
Joshua Fausty

Teaching
On Vulnerability and Risk: Learning to Write and Teach Memoir as a Student of Louise DeSalvo 105
Kym Ragusa

Fixing Things: What Louise DeSalvo Has Taught Me about Writing 111
Emily Bernard

Dark Whiteness and Literacy without Assimilation: DeSalvo’s Unlikely Narrative 117
Kimberly A. Costino

Mixing Bowl: On Crazy in the Kitchen, DeSalvo in the Classroom, and the Day I Got into Hunter 130
Lia Ottaviano

Furthering the Voyage: Reconsidering DeSalvo in Contemporary Woolf Studies 140
Benjamin D. Hagen

Culture
The Context of Louise DeSalvo’s Impact: Incest in Virginia Woolf’s Biography 155
Mark Hussey

“Thirty- seven Is the Unraveling Time” and Other Fictions of Fidelity in the Works of Louise DeSalvo 169
Jenn Brandt

Life Online: Skating and Breaking the Surface of the Self 179
Amy Jo Burns

The Fruits of Her Labor: Louise DeSalvo’s Memoirs of Food and Family 189
Mary Jo Bona and Jennifer-Ann DiGregorio Kightlinger

Mapping the Female Ethnic Self in the Family Battleground: Vertigo and the Greek American Novel 210
Theodora Patrona

DeSalvo’s Rialto: On Moving as a Livable Bridge 222
Ilaria Serra

The Knife and the Bread, the Brutal and the Sacred: Louise DeSalvo at the Family Table 233
John Gennari

Afterword. Crazy in the Study: Trying to Claim a Tradition in Louise DeSalvo’s Accented Writing 251
Anthony Julian Tamburri

List of Contributors 261

Index 265