I Love You Like a Tomato
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
I, Letticia ChiChi Maggiordino, will put to GOOD use the power of the Evil Eye...
ChiChi Maggiordino will do anything to get God's attention. She will hold her breath, stand on tiptoe for an hour, walk a mile backward, climb all stairs on her knees... anything. When her grandmother teaches her how to use the Evil Eye, telling her it's how Jesus Christ made his miracles and how the Italians got rid of Mussolini, ChiChi realizes it's what her prayers have been missing. Now she can get started on the business of making her mother happier by helping her find love, and healing her brother's weak lungs.
But ChiChi's family lives in Minneapolis, and it's the 1950s. For an Italian immigrant family, sometimes it seems like nothing can make life easier. ChiChi's mother still pines for her husband, a long-dead American soldier; ChiChi's brother is disdainful of her sacrifices and penance-he doesn't understand what his older sister already knows, that sometimes God needs to be bribed.
When her grandmother passes away, ChiChi steps up her search for meaning and happiness, but it seems to be fruitless. And she struggles, the way so many women do, because her love for her family is suffocating, even while it fulfills her.
It's not until she meets two Italian dwarves, and they teach her of the ancient clown tradition, the commedia dell'arte, that she comes to understand that in order to make everyone else happy, she herself must be happy.
But first she must find her own way in the world... and learn to accept that not even the power of the Evil Eye can keep people from changing.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A prolific author of nonfiction, children's literature and poetry (Slow Dance on Stilts), Giordano produces a raucous, crowd-pleasing account of a Sicilian immigrant girl who grows up in the Twin Cities after WWII. Leticcia Sapponata Maggiordino "ChiChi" and her younger, asthmatic brother, Marco, and grandmother Nonna follow ChiChi's mother from their peasant village to America, where they settle in the rough Italian ghetto of Tar Town. ChiChi devotes herself to keeping her sickly brother alive; the two live by their wits (and fists) in the ethnically diverse Catholic neighborhood, defending each other from gangs who abhor the Italians, while remaining wary of their mother's ferocious temper. Gradually, the family assimilates into American 1950s life: Nonna finds a suitor at the local grocery store; Mamma runs through a succession of hapless married boyfriends who adore her cooking; Marco excels as an artist; and ChiChi assuages her need for affection by milking laughs, becoming the prot g e of a pair of aging Hollywood dwarfs who teach her commedia dell'arte. Giordano paints her characters in broad, exaggerated strokes: Mamma sings "O Sole Mio" at restaurants; ChiChi masters the use of the evil eye as vendetta. It's pure corn, but the effect is uproarious. The conclusion has Marco headed with his model wife to Hollywood as ChiChi hits the stage in New York. A sequel seems just around the corner.
