Header image credit to Gracie Lolicato.
The Ascolta Italian Women are launching a second book, Stories from La Tavola. And yes, there will be pizza.
The group of intergenerational Italian-Australian and Italian-affiliated women has been meeting to share and write together on zoom since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
A follow-up to their first book, 2021’s Stories from the Inside, the anthology is a wonderful example of collaborative resilience in the face of a global crisis. It represents women from migrant cultures by sharing the voices of women of all ages, from their 20s through to their 70s.
At its core, this new collection is about food. Food as metaphor for pleasure, pain, obligation, envy, and love. Food to comfort, cure, curse, and connect. Food as celebration, consumption, communication, and rejection. Food as recorded and passed-down recipes, in cultivation, harvesting, processing, preserving, cooking, and eating. Food looms large in all cultures, particularly for migrants, across generations, and for women.
Via short stories, poems, artworks, and photos, women’s presence in Italian and migrant cultures in Australia and Italy are explored, along with the connections between food, belonging, and longing in Italian and Italian-Australian migrant cultures.
Stories from La Tavola will be launched on Sunday 6 March 2022, alongside the biography by Maria Fantasia, My Father’s Story … Through My Eyes, and the e-book 100 DAYS, 100 RECIPES: Cooking with Mamma by Giuseppina Marino-Leyland.
All three books will be launched by former MP, Vini Ciccarello, a pioneering Italian woman, former Mayor of Norwood, and the Member for Norwood in the House of Assembly of the Parliament of South Australia in 1997, re-elected twice in 2002 and 2006.
The launch will feature short speeches from authors Maria Fantasia and Pina Marino-Leyland, as well as a small selection of women from the editorial team. Book signings will be available, and of course, no Italian event would be complete without the aforementioned pizza!
Paperback copies of Stories from La Tavola will be available for sale at the launch, with profits donated to charity.
Everyone is welcome, either in person or via Zoom. To reserve your place or pre-order books, please email [email protected].
The details:
Stories from La Tavola Book Launch
Date: 6 March 2022
Time: 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: San Giorgio La Molara Community Centre, Payneham, SA.
To watch the launch via Zoom:
Meeting ID: 828 8406 5748
Passcode: 512 821 98