In Memory of Helen Barolini (1925-2023)

Helen Barolini, a longtime member of the Literature Club, died at age 97 on March 29, 2023. We attended her memorial service on May 1, 2023. 

In her memory, we read and discussed her novel, Umbertina, at our summer meeting, July 19. 

Only the infirmities of age stopped her from coming to meetings. During the pandemic, her daughter Niki, helped her attend Zoom meetings. Her love of literature was an inspiration for all of us.

Below is her obituary, by Alex James, published in The New York Times on April 20, 2023.

Helen Barolini, 1987, Hastings

Helen Barolini, Chronicler of Italian American Women, Dies at 97

As a novelist, a poet and an editor, she sought to illuminate rarely told stories of her immigrant female forebears in a new land.

Helen Barolini, a novelist, essayist and poet who explored the challenges of assimilation, as well as the hard-won victories of feminist emancipation experienced by Italian American women, died on March 29 at her home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. She was 97.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Teodolinda Barolini.

A native of Syracuse, N.Y., whose grandparents immigrated from southern Italy in the late 19th century, Ms. Barolini brought their journey, and those of many others, to life in Umbertina, her celebrated 1979 historical novel tracing four generations of women in a single Italian American family as they come to terms with their origins and identity in a new land, and with an ever-changing social landscape.

“It is the Madonna of Italian American literature in that it shows the transition from the Italian immigrant to American citizen like no other book of its genre,” Fred Gardaphé, then the director of Italian American studies at SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island and now a professor at the City University of New York, was quoted as saying in an article in The New York Times in 1999, when the book was reissued.

Throughout Ms. Barolini’s career, her work was animated by the belief that Italian American women were underrepresented, not only as subjects in American literature but also as authors, and that as a group they faced what she called a “double erasure, both as Italians and as women,” Teodolinda Barolini said in a phone interview.

Committed throughout her life to promoting Italian poetry and literature, she always sought to broaden the depictions of her people in popular culture beyond Sopranos-style stereotypes, while giving voice to those previously unheard.

Such beliefs inspired her influential 1985 compilation of short fiction, memoirs and poems, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women.

“I think Italian American literature belongs, interestingly enough, not so much in immigrant literature but in the kind of literature that deals with the outsider,” she said in a 1993 interview published in Melus, a journal devoted to multiethnic literature. “Jews have done this, and Blacks have done this; and they have very pronounced figures — very interesting figures that they have created of the isolated person in an alien society.”

“The Blacks, the Jews, the Irish all have their spokesmen,” she added. “Why not the Italians?”

Helen Frances Mollica was born on Nov. 18, 1925, the eldest of three children of Anthony Mollica, the son of Sicilian immigrants and a self-made man who built a thriving fruit importation and distribution business, and Angela (Cardamone) Mollica, the daughter of immigrants from Calabria.

A gifted student throughout her youth, Ms. Barolini graduated with honors from Syracuse University in 1947, and afterward traveled to Italy to study its culture, history and literature. The next year, she met her future husband, the esteemed Italian novelist and poet Antonio Barolini, in Florence.

The couple married in 1950, had three daughters, and spent a decade bouncing between Italy and the United States, where Ms. Barolini earned a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University. She also worked as a translator of Italian literature, including her husband’s short stories, which were published in English in The New Yorker.

In those early years, “I saw my husband as the more important writer,” she told Melus. “It was after I began to get more in touch with myself that I said, ‘Wait a minute, I want to write. I don’t want to just be the carrier of someone else’s voice.’”

With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ms. Barolini began work on Umbertina. The seed of the idea came on a 1965 trip to Calabria, where she discovered a heart-shaped tin sewing kit like those used by rural Italian women in her grandmother’s day.

With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ms. Barolini began work onUmbertina. The seed of the idea came on a 1965 trip to Calabria, where she discovered a heart-shaped tin sewing kit like those used by rural Italian women in her grandmother’s day.

Taking the time and setting as a starting point, she meticulously researched the historical conditions of each era portrayed in the book and infused the narrative with a feminist sensibility owing to Betty Friedan, the author of the landmark 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, and others. While outwardly a tale of diaspora, “I still think that Umbertina is more a feminist statement,” Ms. Barolini later said.

In addition to her daughter Teodolinda, Ms. Barolini is survived by two other daughters, Nicoletta and Susanna Barolini; a brother, Anthony Mollica Jr.; and five grandchildren.

In later books like Chiaroscuro: Essays on Identity and Their Other Side: Six American Women and the Lure of Italy, Ms. Barolini returned to the subjects and themes that propelled Umbertina.

 “Theirs was an epic in American life, and it should be written,” she said in the Melus interview, referring to immigrant women like her forebears, “for they who lived it kept no diaries. But we descendants can write and tell, and it’s time now before the last of them die out.”

Sharon Presents Suzan-Lori Parks

Suzan-Lori Parks

Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! Just a reminder that we will be meeting this coming Wednesday, April 19^th in the Orr Room for Sharon's presentation on the work of Suzan-Lori Parks. As per usual, the doors will open at 12:30pm. Connie will ring the bell at 1pm.
     I have never seen or read any of Suzan-Lori Parks' work, so I am very excited for this introduction. Here is a link to a reading from Topdog|Underdog in the Greene Space to give us all a sense of the sound of the language of this particular play.  — Until Wednesday! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes On a lovely but chilly April day, fourteen members of the Literature Club meet, again, in the Orr Room.

President Constance rang the bell at precisely 12:58 PM. She thanked all the library volunteers who have been so helpful in arranging for us to use the library’s facilities, during the Covid era, while we are trying to stay distanced.

The minutes were read. There was a slight correction regarding the rollout of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Our treasury is flush with $409.20.

We discussed what the club should do for our late member, the distinguished writer, Helen Barolini, and it was decided that we would send flowers to the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, where her memorial service will be held on May 1, 2023.

Joanna announced that the schedule for next year would soon be ready. The topic will be whatever the topic of a member's birth year was. She questioned whether anyone would object to revealing her birth year. No one seemed to object.

Then without further delay, the curtain rose on Sharon’s program about Suzan-Lori Parks.

Suzan-Lori Parks (hence to be referred to as SLP, following Sharon’s usage) was born in 1963 in Fort Knox, Kentucky, where her father, an Army officer, was stationed. She later lived in Odessa, Texas, while her father was in Vietnam, and then in Germany. Her experience as an Army brat, moving so frequently, would have an impact on her writing.

SLP was a terrible speller, and somewhere along the way, her advisor suggested that becoming a writer might not be a good idea. Taking this to heart, SLP studied chemistry at Mt Holyoke. But chemistry made her miserable. Then she read To the Lighthouse in an English course, and she knew that she could only become a writer. (Meanwhile, spellcheck has rendered her lexicological problem obsolete.)

Members read SLP writing about her experience being accepted into James Baldwin’s creative writing class, where she couldn’t help but read her work aloud in a very animated way. Baldwin asked SLP if she had ever considered writing for the theater. She had not. But she started the next day. By the end of the class, Baldwin called SLP “an utterly astounding and beautiful creature”.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Mt Holyoke in 1985, SLP spent a year in London studying acting, and then moved to New York City, where she worked as a secretary to support her play-writing habit. Her first full-length play, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (note that my spellcheck objected to the word Mutabilities.) won an Obie for Best New Play. Critics praised her original language and imagery.

Meanwhile, George C. Wolfe, head of the Public Theater from 1993, noticed her work, which had affinities with his own, especially his 1986 play, The Colored Museum. Thus began her long – and ongoing – relationship with Joe Papp’s Public Theater, where she is now Artist-in-Residence. The America Play introduced the notion of a black man who works as an Abe Lincoln impersonator. This idea – too good not to resuscitate – later recurred in Topdog/Underdog.

One aspect of SLP that became clear throughout the program, was her unbelievable energy. The range of her interests and projects is vast. She has written nineteen plays, she fronts a band and writes songs, sings and plays guitar. She has also written a novel. She writes about a variety of topics: from a 19th century Khoosian woman called the Hottentot Venus, to a homeless woman with 5 children, to a riff on The Scarlet Letter with an abortionist heroine, called Fucking A. For this play she created a special language, in which the phrase “die Abah-nazip” means abortion. It is uncanny and disturbing just how relevant the play is today.

Members read a selection from Fucking A.

Father Comes Home from the War, Parts 1,2 and 3, is an epic play set during the Civil War, with allusions to the Odyssey.

Members read a variety of selections, playing the characters, Leader, Second, Hero, Old Man, Homer and Penny. The names alone speak to SLP’s special talent for adapting classic literature to current issues.

SLP’s most famous play is unquestionably Topdog/Underdog. When she won the Pulitzer for the play, twenty years ago in 2002, she was the first Black woman to win. At the time, she was praised by The Guardian and named one of “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave” by Time magazine. Just this year Time named her one of the “100 Most Influential People of 2023.” And the tributes and acclamation keep pouring in.

In 2001, SLP married Paul Oscher, a blues-guitar player 16 years older. He was the only white guy in his band. They divorced in 2010, but remained close. In 2017 she married Christian Konopka, a German musician. They have one child.

In 2002 SLP decided to write a play every day for a full year. This was her first foray into tiny plays written in succession. 365 Plays/365 Days has been produced in 700 theaters all over the world, in venues as varied as street corners and opera houses.

SLP returned to this mode of writing with 100 Plays for the First 100 Days, about Trump’s first 100 days in office. She has adapted the opera Porgy and Bess for the theatre, and written a new play, Sally + Tom, about Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson.

During Covid, SLP became even more energetic, if that was possible. She hosted a free online hour, called Watch Me Work, where writers could gather to write and ask questions of SLP.

Starting on March 13, 2020 she wrote Plays for a Plague Year, one every day.

Members read 21 of the more than 300 very short playlets that comprise Plays for a Plague Year. They included: Hiatus; A Play for Dr. Li Wenliang; A Play for George Floyd; A Play for James Baldwin; Boo; Happy Topdog Day; Breathe; and I Will Always Be Your Pumpkin Pie.

I think many of us would have happily gone on to read hundreds more.

The meeting adjourned a little after 3 pm, when many members dashed home to get their tickets for Plays for a Plague Year at Joe’s Pub.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner, Recording secretary