Women of the Shadows Wives and Mothers of Southern Italy

WITH HAUNTING PHOTOGRAPHS and piercing descriptions,Women of the Shadowsdepicts the secluded women of southern Italy and their passionate, painful, heartrending existence. Cornelisen, who lived among these women in the mountainous villages of Lucania after World War II, reveals their struggles during a time when most of their men had to leave for factories in the industrial north. The women remained behind to work the fields. There's Peppina, Ninetta, Teresa, Maria, Pinuccia, and Cettina, all women who "have done things of which they are not proud; they know it in their hearts, as one woman said, that nothing is private, they would also agree with her conclusion: That doesn't mean you get used to it." With an extraordinary understanding of the interior lives of these and other women, Cornelisen brings them out of the shadows to tell their heroic stories in a book which truly merits the label "classic." Library Journal deemed it "required reading for all those whose work is with poor people," and theSan Francisco Chronicledescribed it as "one of those rare works that deserves a place alongside Oscar Lewis'sChildren of Sanchezand James Agee'sLet Us Now Praise Famous Men." A new introduction by the author suggests that the more things change, the more, in essence, they remain the same.Cornelisen, Ann is the author of 'Women of the Shadows Wives and Mothers of Southern Italy', published 2001 under ISBN 9781586420161 and ISBN 158642016X.