Define Books To I Love You Like a Tomato
| Original Title: | I Love You Like a Tomato |
| ISBN: | 0765345889 (ISBN13: 9780765345882) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Marie Giordano
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 400 pages Rating: 3.78 | 568 Users | 82 Reviews
Details Regarding Books I Love You Like a Tomato
| Title | : | I Love You Like a Tomato |
| Author | : | Marie Giordano |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 400 pages |
| Published | : | April 19th 2004 by Pan Macmillan South Africa (first published 2003) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Book Club |
Ilustration In Favor Of Books I Love You Like a Tomato
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.
Rating Regarding Books I Love You Like a Tomato
Ratings: 3.78 From 568 Users | 82 ReviewsCriticism Regarding Books I Love You Like a Tomato
I quite enjoyed this book! Having taught in Italian neighbourhoods for most of my career, the language and common phrases felt like coming home. I worked on construction as a labourer, on an Italian crew, for a couple of years before going back to school to become a teacher (in the 1960s), so again, these characters had life for me.Chi-chi was so much like girls I taught, and even the author's name was almost the same as three different cousins I taught, although all of them were Marias. HerThis is an enjoyable tale of a family that immigrates to Minnesota from sunny southern Italy at the end of WWII. The mother, grandmother (Nonna) and two children are rejected by the American father's family. The father is dead. The family struggles to survive and move to an Italian American neighborhood. The children are exposed to prejudice. The young bot, Marco, has a serious type of asthma and is not expected to live long.ChiChi(Leticia), the older sister looks after her brother and their
ChiChi Maggiordano, the main character and heroine, narrates this story in first person prose like a memoir of her childhood from birth in Italy immigrating with her family to Minnasota,USA in the 1950's. In my opinion it is truley a classic, coming of age, charming book about the struggles and heartbreaking disappointments of not only immigrants but growing up in general. ChiChi describes her veiw of life, family, friends, her feelings of love, joy, sadness and frustration in cartoonic 1950's
This book drew me to it because of its title ... honestly! It was such a great surprise because it is so well written. The book takes place in the 1950's. It depicts the struggles of an Italian immigrant family trying to fit in to their American homeland. I loved the pacts the young girl made with God as she tried to bargain for the health of her brother.
A strange book! The narrator, Chi Chi, grows up with a secretive Italian mother and a sickly younger brother whom she feels responsible for. She does all kinds of bizarre things to insure their happiness, like standing on one foot while repeating 100 novenas, or almost cutting off her face. She's a strange, talented girl. Her particular reality is hard for me to understand. This is the first book in a trilogy. I haven't decided if I'll be reading the others.
This writing read exactly like it came out of an MFA program workshop (and I do not count that as a good thing). The historical aspect of the book was its only kernel of worth for me.
A thick book (the beginning of a trilogy, apparently) about a family of Italian immigrants to Minnesota, told through the lens of a young girl who struggles with racism against Italians, poverty, and dealing with thinking she needs to hold the world together. It took me a little while to get the hang of the language--in the beginning it was written from a little girl perspective with a lot of Italian thrown in -but I did end up quite enjoying the characters and story. I didn't realize it was a
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