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The Empowered and Empowering Grandmother in the
Poetry of Italian/American Women Italian/American
women writers look at the world through a double lens; they see with what
Gloria Anzaldua refers to as the mestiza
consciousness (79–91). Anzaldua sees this consciousness as the location for
the coming together of “two self consistent but habitually incompatible
frames of reference (79). In a 1980 issue of Attenzione, Tina de Rosa, an Italian/American woman writer, expressed
this way of seeing by saying, “I don’t really belong anywhere. That is the
inheritance. . . . You say partially goodbye to one world
partially hello to another . . .” (39). The two worlds Italian/American
writers simultaneously inhabit are the one formed by the culture of the
southern Italian peasant and the one created by the dominant Anglo-American
enlightenment culture of the United States. In seeking to be
published writers in America, these Italian/ American women are attempting to
transgress boundaries in both cultures. By both the male and female peasants
of the Mezzogiorno, reading and
writing were considered luxuries of the privileged classes who were
exploiting the peasants and producing
la miseria. In the dominant Anglo-American culture of this country,
writing literature was viewed as a masculine practice, accomplished by
individual male agents. In order to write in America, Italian/ American women
need to become agents in the world. They must imagine themselves doing
something (writing literature) that has not been done to any extent by women
in either culture. These women have neither role models nor mentors. I suggest that the
Italian/American woman is enabled to write and to become the agent in her own
life because she creates for herself, in her poetry and fiction, a powerful
female figure to emulate whom the writer perceives as agent and subject in
her own life. This female figure is the immigrant grandmother. The writer creates
a tradition for herself, not a literary tradition, but a tradition of
powerful women who have successfully broken American cultural gender norms. In attempting to
provide a way of envisioning women’s agency, Jessica Benjamin suggests that
what women need to become agents is “a mother who is articulated as a sexual
subject, who is an agent, who does express desire . . .” and with
whom they can form a homoerotic bond similar to the bond between a powerful
father and his son in which the son wishes to be like the father and to be
loved by him (89). Benjamin locates women’s desire in intersubjective space;
that is she believes that for women, they become more themselves, i.e.,
become agents, when they are in relationship, not when they are alone (92). In his 1992
theoretical text, Radical Parody,
critic Daniel O’Hara suggests that contemporary literary critics seeking
critical agency construct themselves by using a certain revisionism, that is
“an interpretive practice of modern intellectuals that would resee and
reevaluate the past (older literary criticism) in the light of the perceived
special interests of the present” (5). Italian/American women writers use
similar revisionary practices in order to meet their needs as women
attempting to write in a culture that negates their desire. By focusing on
certain aspects of the grandmother’s life, namely those aspects which defy
American cultural gender norms, the Italian/American woman writer
fictionalizes her grandmother in such a way that the grandmother becomes empowered
in America. The writer then forms a homoerotic bond with this powerful woman
and is herself empowered to break the Anglo-American taboo against women
writing literature. Because she was educated in America, the Italian/American
writer is heavily influenced by enlightenment thought, and when she imagines
her grandmother, she creates a person conceived in the liberal humanist
philosophical position but whose agency is located in intersubjective space.
A poem that
illustrates what I am arguing is “The Grandmother Dream” by Sandra Mortola
Gilbert: My Sicilian
grandmother, whom I’ve never met, my Sicilian
grandmother, the midwife, who died forty years ago,
appears in my bedroom. She’s sitting on
the edge of my bed, at her feet a
shabby black bag, and she speaks a
tangled river of Italian: her Sicilian words flow out like dark
fish, slippery and cold, her words stare at
me with blank eyes. I see that she’s
young, younger than I am. I see her black
hair gleam like tar as she draws from her
small black midwife’s bag her midwife tools:
heavy silver instruments polished like
doorknobs, polished—misshapen, peculiar— like the knob of an
invisible door. (in Barolini 350) The poem’s title,
“The Grandmother Dream” locates the events of the poem within the mind of the
speaker. It is the speaker of the poem who needs to connect with her
grandmother even though the octave implies intentionality on the part of the
deceased grandmother. Also it is the speaker who dreams a specific kind of
woman. The octave of this
Petrachan sonnet presents the poet’s grandmother as a woman with an urgent
message for her granddaughter, but her Sicilian dialect is not understood by
that granddaughter so her message is not being conveyed. It is in the sestet
that the grandmother’s actions convey the message. Gilbert has focused
on one fact among the many facts she knows about her grandmother. She
privileges the grandmother’s position as a midwife in Sicily. In Italian
peasant villages all babies are delivered by midwives. New life comes into
the world from the bodies of women into the hands of women. In America, in
the l970s, when this poem was written and published and still today, most
babies are delivered by male gynecologists in hospitals, among strangers whom
the mother has never seen before and will probably never see again. Because
the Sicilian woman delivered babies, a job relegated to male agents in
America, the Italian/ American granddaughter perceives her as an agent, a
person who has broken an American cultural gender norm. In the Anglo-American
poetic tradition, giving birth to “great” poetry has also been a male affair.
Gilbert wishes to break that gender norm. In this poem, her grandmother hands
her the tools. The grandmother: draws from
. . . her . . . bag her midwife tools:
heavy silver instruments polished life
doorknobs, polished—misshapen, peculiar— like the knob of an
invisible door. Gilbert imagines a
grandmother whose midwife tools look like “the knob of an invisible door.” I
suggest that what Gilbert imagines here is that the tools of midwifery gave
her grandmother needed agency, and Gilbert assumes that agency through what
Benjamin calls a homoerotic bond and uses it to open the “door” to literary
success in America. She has created for herself a bond with what Benjamin
suggests is needed “a mother who is an agent.” Rose Romano’s poem
“Invocation to the Goddess as Grandmother” is another poem which depicts a
homoerotic bond between the grandmother and granddaughter, a connection in
which the granddaughter sees her grandmother’s strength reflected in
herself. Nonna, your memory
breathes in my mind; my thoughts take
you home to me. Nonna, come. Nonna, your blood runs in my veins; hot and alive, it brings you home. Nonna, come. Nonna, your courage flows through my life, carries my
beginnings home with you. Nonna, come. Nonna, your earth turns to
meet me; the immigrant woman comes home to me. Nonna, come. (14) The speaker of this
poem imagines her grandmother as an all-powerful goddess figure with whom she
is united. The poem is a prayer, a litany to this figure whose “memory” is in
her mind and whose blood is in the speaker’s veins. The granddaughter seeks
agency, not in autonomy, but in an even closer bond with her powerful
grandmother. The sixth stanza of
another poem by Rose Romano, “To Show Respect,” imagines an equally powerful
grandmother whom the granddaughter imagines becoming: Halfway down the
table, I watch my grandmother, admire
her strength, envy her strength, feel
the thrill of knowing someday I will be
the grandmother, sit at the head of the
table, be my own boss. I’m already
short; someday I’ll be round, like
a meatball, like my grandmother.
Someday I’ll wear black dresses, black
stockings, square black shoes. Someday I’ll
wear an apron, with a bodice, safety
pins and sewing needles stuck to the
bodice, change and keys in the pockets,
keys to every room in the house, more keys
than there are rooms in the house. I’ll
tie my long hair at the back of my
neck, long faded white hair, wear wire rim
glasses, never wear make-up or
perfume. The children will play under my
feet in the kitchen, and I’ll say—Hey,
what’s the matter for you, hah? The children will
play under my feet in the
kitchen, and I’ll say— Pazienza
. . . pazienza, and they’ll run to show respect.
(Romano 22) The imagined
grandmother in this poem defies all Anglo-American notions of woman as the
passive object of male desire. She is neither young nor beautiful. She is not
“feminine” as feminine is defined in Anglo-American culture because she does
not dye, cut, or perm her hair; she wears neither perfume nor make-up. Her
clothes are practical not designed to attract men. Her voice speaks sharply
and ungrammatically, and yet the American born granddaughter sees this woman
as someone to “admire” and “envy.” The granddaughter feels a “thrill” knowing
someday she will be exactly like her grandmother. Jessica Benjamin
suggests that for children the “ideal love of the child for the father
reflects the child’s longing to be recognized by a powerful other as being
like him” (88). Benjamin suggests that in the Freudian economy that powerful
other is always the father. In Romano’s poem the speaker is developing this
homoerotic bond with a powerful female figure who is her own “boss,” not intimidated
by Anglo-American culture and its construction of women as passive objects of
male desire. The grandmother’s
power is symbolized by her position “at the head of the table,” by her
control of her destiny, “be my own boss,” by her tools, “an apron . . .
safety pins and sewing needles / stuck to the bodice, change and keys / in
the pockets, keys to every room in the house.” There are no powerful male
figures in the poem. The grandmother does not exist in relationship to men
but in relationship to community. She is presiding over a table filled with
generations, with her children and their children. Another poem that
depicts a grandmother whose agency is assumed by her granddaughter is Gigi
Marino’s poem “Angelina” (in Barolini 101–05). It is a rather long poem, too
long to quote here. The grandmother portrayed in it has agency in many areas
of her life. In the first stanza she defies the Anglo-American conception of
Woman. She shops for live chickens, kills them herself, cooks them, and
serves them to her family. She is not afraid of rats, but devises a way to
protect her children and grandchildren from them by stuffing the drain pipes
in her basement with rags. She fulfills all the American and Italian peasant
cultural requirements for women who are housewives; she washes clothes,
makes her own pasta and bread, cleans her house, and makes a special Sunday
dinner. She also breaks the American cultural gender-norm that married women
do not earn money. Angelina makes aprons and sells then door to door. With
the money she is able to buy a house. She does not leave the roaches that
were dwelling in that house before her arrival to a husband to exterminate;
she picks them off the walls herself. She tries to abort her baby and does
not consider that to be a sin, thereby denying the power of the patriarchal
Catholic Church to define what is and is not a sin in her life. When this grandmother
begins to age, she loses her sight and then she loses her mental faculties,
but in the eyes of her granddaughter, never, when she is confined to a
hospital bed or even when she is in her coffin, does she lose her agency.
When she is blind, she can still identify people by their voices. When she
loses her mental faculties, she is still in control of her life because she is
not locked into her room, but dressed in street clothes at bedtime to make
her midnight walks less embarrassing. When she is in her coffin, the speaker
expects her to “jump out” and “demand to walk that church aisle by herself
. . . stopping . . . to tell strangers, ‘I love you’” (in
Barolini 105). This grandmother
resists the classification of woman as someone defined by her relationship
to man. When men appear in the poem, they do none of the things the dominant
hegemony expects of them. The grandmother’s husband does not provide for her
(she earns the money for her house), protect her from life’s harsher
realities, control her money, or decide whether she should or should not have
an abortion. In the persona of this grandmother we have a person with agency
whose agency occurs in intersubjective space. In the last stanza of
the poem the granddaughter assumes the power of her grandmother by repeating
the behavior of her grandmother in making bread for her family: I bless my dough
each time I make bread— four hands punch it
down: Mine, young and
strong, and two old skinny
ones. (105) There are many other
poems written by Italian/American women that depict a homoerotic bond between
empowered immigrant peasant women and their granddaughters. A few others not
discussed here are: “Grandmother” by Grace Cavalieri, “Knitting” by Barbara
Crooker, “Tablecloth” by Maria Fama, “Women in Black” by Paula Thompson, and
“The Chopping of Wood” and “Vendetta” by Rose Romano. One cannot help
wondering why there are more poems about grandmothers than about mothers and
why the women writers perceive themselves to be more like their grandmothers
than like their mothers. I would propose that the children of immigrants
readily perceive their parents’ difference from the dominant hegemony and
feel punished by the dominant culture for having such non-conforming
relations. They deny their Italianess, but the third-generation individuals,
the granddaughters, do not experience the stigma of not fitting in and have
positive memories of immigrant grandparents. Most of these women writers
began to write in the late l960s and after when the feminist movement pushed
its way into American culture. The Italian/American women writers readily saw
the ways in which their grandmothers had defied dominant culture gender norms
to the horror of their own daughters but to the delight of these
granddaughters who wished to defy gender norms themselves. Temple University Works Cited Anzaldua, Gloria.
“La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” 1987. American Feminist Thought at Century’s
End. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993. Benjamin, Jessica.
“A Desire of One’s Own: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Intersubjective Space.” Feminist Studies/Critical Studies. Ed.
Teresa de Lauretis. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. de Rosa, Tina. “An
Italian Woman Speaks Out.” Attenzione
(May 1980): 38–39. Barolini, Helen,
ed. The Dream Book: An anthology of the
Writings of Italian American Women. New York: Schocken, 1985. O’Hara, Daniel T. Radical Parody: American Culture and
Critical Agency after Foucault. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. Romano, Rose. Vendetta. San Francisco: malafemmina
p, 1990. |