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Devoted to a life of intense contemplative prayer, the Carthusian monks guard their solitude jealously and rarely allow visitors to live with them. The author of this book, an American priest, was privileged to spend four months with the Carthusian community in Calabria, Italy, the resting place of the founder of their order, Saint Bruno. He followed the daily regimen of the monks and wrote home to family and friends to share his experiences. The priest's journal allows readers to get a deep sense of what this life of prayer feels like: he describes distinctive features of the Carthusian vocation and offers insights gained by a life devoted to silence and solitude. There are books that explore the Carthusian way of life, but what makes Report from Calabria different and unique is that it is more like a series of short notes sent home from a foreign land, a sketch book rather than a finished canvas. But sketches have an appeal of their own: they offer a freshness of impressions and can entice us to study their subject more deeply. The text is accompanied with beautiful photographs of the daily life followed by the monks of Serra San Bruno. The contemplative vocation - bracing and yet deeply human - comes alive in this account of four months in which very little happened but yet a lot was going on. It is an invitation to readers to not only gain an insight into monastic life, but to clear some space in our busy lives to encounter God more deeply.
Out of Calabria is the story of a privileged Calabrian family that emerged from poverty by a circumstance of war and the unswerving fortitude of one man; and of how the young women of his family refused to bend to the mores and traditions of the times, pitting them against their social order and their own father. Caterina and Concetta Zinzi each rebelled against their famed and highly esteemed father when he attempted to force the traditions of the times upon them, arranging their marriages to men of his choosing, based on dowry and family background. Raised as high spirited and independent women, both daughters sought out the men of their own preference and forced their will upon their controlling father. The doggedness of their pursuits resulted in their decline in social status and their eventual emigration to the United States. Caterina's attraction to a handsome field hand leads her into heated disagreement with her father, who is bent on marrying her to a man of wealth and promise. Moreover, he harbors a secret about the man she loves that would never allow him to be accepted into the Zinzi family. Concetta's man, also of very modest means, is required by his greedy family to marry an elderly rich woman, forcing him into an unhappy and faithless marriage; and, eventually, to a bigamous relationship with Concetta. To escape the influence and outmoded customs of Calabrian society, both women find that they must leave Italy. There, they experience the travails and attainments of Italian immigrants in turn-of-the-century America. It is a story of contradiction, of rebellion by women in a society that presumed their obedience and adherence to tradition. And, it is a story of the enormous love that is possible between a man and woman, when they forsake everything to be together, flouting tradition in the face of disgrace and family disharmony. It is a story from out of the past that is relevant even today. Taken from real life occurrences in the author's ancestral maternal family, it is reminiscent at times of aspects of Melania Mazzucco's Vita and the coarse brutality of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
The first cookbook from this little-known region of Italy celebrates the richness of the region's landscape and the allure of its cuisine, featuring recipes for easily accessible, fresh-from-the-garden Italian food from a Calabrian native.
An effortlessly artful blend of travel book, memoir, and affectionate portrait of a people Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy—a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during the scorching summers while the sea crashes against the cliffs on both coasts. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy. Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into international tourist redoubts. A grandson of Calabrian immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide to all things Calabrian. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella—and the reader—into its secrets: how to make soppressata and 'nduja, where to find hidden chapels and grottoes, and, of course, how to steal a fig without actually committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue—at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy and unpretentious sense of life that, now as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.
Popular, compact guides for discovering the very best of country, regional and city destinations.
Calabrian Tales is a unique story of inexplicable injustice and poverty, avarice and survival based on true family incidents that were revealed to the author in his youth. The book's chief character is the author's great aunt, Marianna, who became the mistress of a wealthy noble. The lifestyle she adopted repeatedly shamed her relatives until living in Italy became unbearable for them. Eventually, the author's father, Raffaele, fled his beloved Italy in the face of constant shame, and settled in the U.S. His son, author Peter Chiarella, grew up in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. There he heard the stories about life in Calabria from his grandmother, a principal character in the book. After her death, the stories kept coming, both from his father, also a character in Calabrian Tales, and from his mother, who had listened in on Nonna's recollections over a period of fifteen years. The stories of people who lived in what may have been Italy's poorest region, blend with the historical struggles of the times in a combination reminiscent of certain aspects of The Godfather and the ignoble humanity of Angela's Ashes. "Twenty-two unforgettable personalities interplay in this picaresque page turner. Each one will fascinate you uniquely." -- Anthony Kilgallin, author of Napa Valley Picture Perfect "Calabrian Tales evokes the memory of stories I heard growing up among elder Italian immigrants." -- James L. D'Adamo, author of The D'Adamo Diet "A most intriguing and compelling read." -- Joseph D. Sabella, MD
An authentic guide to the festive, mouthwatering sweets of Southern Italy, including regional specialties that are virtually unknown in the US, as well as variations on more popular desserts such as cannoli, biscotti, and gelato. As a follow-up to her acclaimed My Calabria, Rosetta Costantino collects 75 favorite desserts from her Southern Italian homeland, including the regions of Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Puglia, and Sicily. These areas have a history of rich traditions and tasty, beautiful desserts, many of them tied to holidays and festivals. For example, in the Cosenza region of Calabria, Christmas means plates piled with grispelle (warm fritters drizzled with local honey) and pitta 'mpigliata (pastries filled with walnuts, raisins, and cinnamon). For the feast of Carnevale, Southern Italians celebrate with bugie ("liars"), sweet fried dough dusted in powdered sugar, meant to tattle on those who sneak off with them by leaving a wispy trail of sugar. With fail-proof recipes and information on the desserts' cultural origins and context, Costantino illuminates the previously unexplored confectionary traditions of this enchanting region.
The nature of traditional Mediterranean societies and the effect on them brought about in the twentieth century, has long been debated; but in general stem from an assumption of the relatively homogenous nature of traditional peasant society. Pino Arlacchi demolishes that assumption by demonstrating that within the Italian region of Calabria there existed not one but a range of 'traditional' societies.
A massive bestseller in its native Italy, and a book that can justly be compared with Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah, Blood Ties is a terrifying account of the 'ndrangheta's criminal activities over the last four decades. Originally from Calabria, this sinister organization has - like the Mafia in Sicily and the Camorra in Naples - a vicious hold over northern Italy and much of the rest of the country, too, a stranglehold that is growing every day. Told to the authors by an insider, Pippo di Bella, a 'pentito', a former member of the gang now turned state's evidence, it reveals many hitherto unknown operations, as well as throwing new light on well-known cases from the past. It shows an organization which retains and strengthens its position through corruption, drug smuggling, gun running, violence, extortion and kidnapping. Visceral, compelling and terrifyingly readable, it paints a brutally vivid picture of the most dangerous and powerful of the Italian mafias, one which demands to be read.
"Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy's scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming and writing poetry. But one chilly morning, as though from a dream, an impossible visitor appears at the farm. When Claudio comes to her aid, an act of kindness throws his world into chaos. Suddenly he must stave off inquisitive onlookers, invasive media, and even more sinister influences"--