When We Were Strangers is a work of historical fiction which chronicles the emigration of Irma Vitale from Italy to the United States. Author Pamela Schoenewaldt expertly captures the struggle of immigrants and the experience of being caught between two worlds. I was so invested in Irma's story! My review will be up shortly but in the meantime check out reviews here and here. Pamela graciously agreed to guest post on my blog in conjunction with my Immigrant Stories Challenge. An Immigrant in Naples
My historical novel of immigration, When We Were Strangers, is set in the 1880s, when Irma Vitale leaves her mountain village in Southern Italy and comes to America. My “research” began in November, 1990, when I left Northern California to live in Naples, Italy with my fiancé, Maurizio, and felt the searing displacement that might have been Irma’s.
I’d been to Italy as a tourist on the customary circuit. Nothing of those sunny easy days prepared me for life in the center of Naples. I had worked in California as a freelance writer with some success. In Naples I could barely frame a sentence. Shopping, the gay experience of so American-in-Italy cinema, was complex. “You bombed this!” one man said accusingly, pointing to a church damaged by the Allies during World War II.
November was cold and rainy; our apartment unheated. We lived in coats. In the old quarters of Naples, roads are paved with basalt; buildings climbing overhead were dark with age, opening to slits of gray sky. No parks, trees or grass. I knew that in a walled medieval city, parks are an unreasonable luxury, yet I ached for California’s green.
Of course when I began the novel, I did formal research, studying ships, immigration patterns, Ellis Island and its predecessor, Castle Gardens. I read How the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob Riis, the classic (deeply racist) description of life in Manhattan’s foul East Side ghettos. I visited the Tenement Project and read Italian classics on life in the South. I used university and public library resources, government documents and online sources.
But to truly create Irma’s passage, I stripped away my immigrant advantages – education and a profession, money in the bank and a fiancé I adored – to imagine myself a young girl in an utterly strange land in which all that I knew and knew how to do was irrelevant. The experience was humbling; it was soul-changing, and it connected me forever to those who have been made strangers, those who ache for our welcome.
. My nephew and I read this book and I was surprised by how much the story stayed with him - over the few days following our reading of it, he kept asking me about the story and sitting and paging through the book. The illustrations are excellent and there is a lot to look at so it lends itself well to re-reads. The vocab is also pretty advanced and he seemed to like learning all the new words.
and 
. Without further ado, the winners are:
by Dani Shapiro is a memoir by a wife and mother who begins to wonder (well, really knows) that there must be more to life than an endless routine of errands and responsibilities and endeavors to try to find more meaning in life. Having grown up in a religious Jewish family, Shapiro struggles to reconcile the traditions of her father's Judaism with what she really believes and what will bring her purpose and comfort in her busy life. Dedicated to the goal of gaining this understanding, Dani explores her own history with religion, the practice of yoga, buddhism - searching for that kernel that will resonate and make sense of it all. She tells the story of this journey beautifully but also with some well-placed humor and self-deprecation which makes the book so readable and satisfying at the same time.
by Norman Juster and Jules Feiffer (recommended for Pre School - Grade 2)
, has a fairy tale quality about it. It tells the story of an ogre (of course) who terrorizes the townspeople as he storms through and swoops up people and eats them as snacks. His reputation is legendary:
by Beth Hoffman is the charming story of a young girl, Cee Cee Honeycutt, and the second chance she is given at a real childhood by her Aunt Tootie and the cast of characters from their Savannah neighborhood. Pre-teen Cee Cee lived with her mother in Ohio and tried to manage despite her mother's mental illness and her preoccupation with her days as a Southern beauty queen. Cee Cee's mortification at much of her Mom's behavior is made all the more poignant by her very evident love for her mother. When her Mom dies unexpectedly and her father, absent even before her mother's death, makes it clear he cannot care for his young daughter, Aunt Tootie arrives from Savannah and takes Cee Cee home with her.
by Harriet Evans. What else is on the shelf for this challenge? 
by Jill Mansell and 
by Sophie Kinsella. Mmmm, a lot of Brit Chick Lit - anyone have some other recommendations from UK authors?
