At this point in the book, Gillan still finds ways to address family and memory, but the subject never grows stale because she finds new details, new memories, and new observations to include in the poems. She writes, “My son is handsome, like my husband and grandson/They look like cookie-cutter men, the three of them/my husband obviously the oldest since his illness/left his face lined and drawn/and my son looks/exactly as his father looked at thirty-seven. Growing Up & Growing Old in Italian-American Families Johnson, Colleen on. In the collection’s title poem, “What We Pass on,” Gillan draws resemblances between her son, husband, and grandson, which illustrates the ways that traditions, mannerism and looks are passed on. Stories navigating the commplicated terrain of race in America, from acclaimed writers like Toni Morrison, E.L. But even when the poems shift to other characters, past generations still echo, which shows how the past is always linked to the present and how one generation influences the next. as was writer Helen Barolini and poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan. Gillan roots the poems in strong narrative details, while sometimes blending personal history with broader social and political issues. The 1 Compare, for example, the following poems included in her 1995 collection entitledWhere I Come From: Public School No. Maria Mazziotti Gillan Biography - Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community Colleg. Maria Mazziotti Gillan's poem gives voice to those children who sit quietly in the classrooms of New Jersey, feeling ashamed and uncertain of the place they come from and the traditions they hold dear. Italian Americans served in the American Revolutionary War both as soldiers and officers. The second half of the collection shifts to poems about being a mother, grandmother, poetry mentor, and wife to an ailing husband.
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