Louise Desalvo

WINNER OF THE IASA BOOK AWARD! AMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNER! As the child of children of immigrants, Louise DeSalvo was at first reluctant to write about her truths. Her abusive father, her sister's suicide, her illness. In this stunning collection of her captivating and frank essays on her life and her Italian-American culture, Louise DeSalvo centers on her beginnings, reframing and revising her acclaimed memoiristic essays, pieces that were the seeds of longer collections, to reveal her true power as a memoirist: the ability to dig ever deeper for personal and political truths that illuminate what it means to be a woman, a second-generation American, a writer, and a scholar. Each essay is driven by a complex inquiry that examines the personal, familial, social, ethnic, and historical dimensions of identity. Collectively, they constitute a story significantly different from DeSalvo's memoirs when they first published, where the starkness of their meaning became blunted by material surrounding them. DeSalvo has also restored material written and then deleted—experiences she was too reticent to reveal before, in writing about her sister's suicide, her husband's adultery, her own sexual assault. The essays also include new material to shift the ballast of an essay as her life has changed significantly through the years. The House of Early Sorrows is a courageous exploration not only of the DeSalvo's family life and times, but also of our own.

When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn't realize her quest would take ten years, and that it would yield more revelations about the man—and herself—and the effect of his military service upon their family than she'd ever imagined. During his last years, as he told her about his life, DeSalvo began to understand that her obsession with war novels and military history wasn't merely academic but rooted in her desire to understand this complex father whom she both adored and reviled because of his mistreatment of her. Although she at first believes she wants to uncover his story, the story of a man who was no hero but who was nonetheless adversely affected by the his military service, she learns that what she really wants is to recover the man that he was before he went away. As DeSalvo and her father uncover his past piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, she learns about the dreams of a working-class man who entered the military in the late 1930s during peacetime to better himself, a man who wanted to become a pilot. She learns about what it was like for him to participate in war games in the Pacific prior to the war, and its devastating toll. She learns about what it was like for her parents to fall in love, set up house, marry, and have children during this cataclysmic time. And as the pieces of her father's life fall into place as works to piece together the puzzle of everything she's learned about this time, she finds herself finally able to understand him. Chasing Ghosts is an original contribution to the understanding of working-class World War II veterans who did not conventionally distinguish themselves through "heroic" actions and whose lives were not until recently considered worthy of historical or cultural attention. It personalizes the history of those sailors who served in the Navy aboard aircraft carriers and on islands in the Pacific prior to, and during World War II and contributes to the current vital conversation about the often-unrecognized effects of war and its traumas upon those men and their families. It reveals the lifelong devastating consequences of military service on those men and women who fell in love, married, and set up house. And it reveals the complexity of what it is like to be the daughter of a father who has gone to war.

In a series of conversational observations and meditations on the writing process, The Art of Slow Writing examines the benefits of writing slowly. DeSalvo advises her readers to explore their creative process on deeper levels by getting to know themselves and their stories more fully over a longer period of time. She writes in the same supportive manner that encourages her students, using the slow writing process to help them explore the complexities of craft. The Art of Slow Writing is the antidote to self-help books that preach the idea of fast-writing, finishing a novel a year, and quick revisions. DeSalvo makes a case that more mature writing often develops over a longer period of time and offers tips and techniques to train the creative process in this new experience. DeSalvo describes the work habits of successful writers (among them, Nobel Prize laureates) so that readers can use the information provided to develop their identity as writers and transform their writing lives. It includes anecdotes from classic American and international writers such as John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence as well as contemporary authors such as Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ian McEwan, and Salman Rushdie. DeSalvo skillfully and gently guides writers to not only start their work, but immerse themselves fully in the process and create texts they will treasure.

During Louise DeSalvo's childhood in 1950s New Jersey, the kitchen becomes the site for fierce generational battle. Louise's step-grandmother insists on recreating the domestic habits of her Southern Italian peasant upbringing, clashing with Louise's convenience-food-loving mother; Louise, meanwhile, dreams of cooking perfect fresh pasta in her own kitchen. But as Louise grows up to indulge in amazing food and travels to Italy herself, she arrives at a fuller and more compassionate picture of her own roots. And, in the process, she reveals that our image of the bounteous Italian American kitchen may exist in part to mask a sometimes painful history. Louise DeSalvo is a writer, professor, lecturer, and scholar who lives in New Jersey. Her many books include the memoirs Vertigo, Breathless, and Adultery; the acclaimed biography Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work; and Writing as a Way of Healing. Recently, she edited Woolf's early novel Melymbrosia and coedited The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. A Book Sense 76 pick in hardcover "Louise DeSalvo packs about six courses of emotional wallop into her slim memoir... A] tough, courageous story, one of hard-won wisdom and memory."-San Francisco Chronicle "Illuminate s] the difficulties of reconciling past and present...DeSalvo celebrates the table of her ancestors by savoring her own rediscovered history."-New York Times Book Review "An affecting story of immigrants in America...These recollections are tinged with pain and beauty."-Publishers Weekly "The dramatics of DeSalvo's] youth, it seems, produced a superior, dedicated writer and a determined, devoted cook who may go a little crazy in the kitchen... A] juicy, tender text, seasoned with fear, loathing, and love served Italian style."-Kirkus Reviews Crazy in the Kitchen is in the "Home

In her no-holds-barred family memoir, controversial scholar-critic Louise DeSalvo breaks the traditional silence around life for an Italian American girl coming of age in working-class Hoboken, New Jersey. Upon first publication, DeSalvo's memoir-"which sifts through painful memories of childhood incest, a sister's suicide, a mother's psychotic depression, and a father's violent rage-"enjoyed wide acclaim as an instant classic of the genre, written in "one of the most refreshing feminist voices around."-"San Francisco Chronicle"Marketing Plans: East Coast readings Extensively promoted with new anthology "Taste This: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Identity"Louise DeSalvo is professor of English at Hunter College. She has published thirteen books, including the acclaimed "Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work."

Louise DeSalvo risks all, in the company of Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Henry Miller, and Madam Recamier.By filtering the story of her own husband's affair through other's stories, she revels in the always exciting fantasy and tells from the usually painful reality of adultery.The conclusions she draws, and the balance she finds in her marriage and in others, make ADULTERY a fun, poignant, and compassionate book.

In this inspiring book, based on her twenty years of research, highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo reveals the healing power of writing. DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won't help you; in fact, there's abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging. DeSalvo's program is based on the best available and most recent scientific studies about the efficacy of using writing as a restorative tool. With insight and wit, she illuminates how writers, from Virginia Woolf to Henry Miller to Audre Lorde to Isabel Allende, have been transformed by the writing process. Writing as a Way of Healing includes valuable advice and practical techniques to guide and inspire both experienced and beginning writers.