Tina DeRosa | |
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| Born | Antoinette Marie De Rosa October 20, 1944 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | February 3, 2007 (aged 62) Park Ridge, Illinois, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Mundelein College University of Illinois at Chicago |
| Notable works | Paper Fish (1980) |
Tina DeRosa (also De Rosa; 1944–2007) was an American writer best known for her 1980 novel, Paper Fish . She also published poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction.
Tina DeRosa was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 20, 1944, one of two children of Anthony DeRosa, a police officer, and Sophie (née Norkus) DeRosa. She grew up in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood, and attended Holy Guardian Angel Grammar School and St. Mary's High School. [1]
As a child, when she realized she could not be a priest or an altar boy, she decided to become a writer. [2] She credited her father, who was artistic himself, with inspiring her. [3]
When she was 17, she and her family were displaced by urban renewal. Over the next four years, she lost her father and her paternal grandmother, an Italian immigrant. She channeled her feelings of grief and loss into her writing. [3]
DeRosa earned a bachelor's degree from Mundelein College in 1966, and a master's degree in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1977. [4] She later said in an interview that she felt "completely lost" during her first two years at Mundelein, being one of only about three people from her neighborhood who went to college. At UIC, she taught composition classes while working on her master's thesis. [2]
After graduating from Mundelein, DeRosa worked briefly as a social worker. She took a secretarial job at the Chicago Tribune , and within three months was writing articles for the newspaper. [2]
DeRosa struggled for eight years, off and on, before completing her autobiographical novel, Paper Fish. [3] Assisted by grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, the novel was first published by Wine Press in 1980, and was nominated for the Carl Sandburg Award. [5] An Italian-language edition, Pesci di Carta, was published in 2007. [4]
She was a writer in residence at the Ragdale Foundation from 1977 to 1982. [5] She subsequently published two volumes of poetry and a biography of Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini, and wrote at least one more novel. Her writing has appeared in journals such as MELUS and Italian Americana , and in anthologies such as Helen Barolini's The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (1985). In 1995 she won the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. [1] She earned her living at various jobs in the Chicago area, including communications director at the Urban Transportation Center of UIC and administrative assistant and editor for biomedical researchers. [4]
During her final years, DeRosa lived in Park Ridge, Illinois. In 2005, she converted from Catholicism to the Greek Orthodox religion. She died on February 3, 2007, aged 62. [1]
DeRosa is often classified as an Italian-American writer, and Paper Fish in particular is considered an important work of Italian-American literature. DeRosa herself chafed at such labels:
All of the political stuff comes from the critics....I'm a writer who happens to be a woman and happens to be Italian-American. I'm not a feminist. I'm not an Italian-American writer. I'm just Tina and I'm just a writer. [6]
Her papers are on file with the University of Illinois at Chicago library. [4]
Mundelein College was the last private, independent, Roman Catholic women's college in Illinois. Located on the edge of the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods on the far north side of Chicago, Illinois, Mundelein College was founded and administered by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1991, Mundelein College became an affiliated college of Loyola University Chicago. It has since become completely incorporated. Mundelein College was located just south of Loyola's Lake Shore Campus.
Achy Obejas is a Cuban-American writer and translator focused on personal and national identity issues, living in Benicia, California. She frequently writes on her sexuality and nationality, and has received numerous awards for her creative work. Obejas' stories and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Fifth Wednesday Journal, TriQuarterly, Another Chicago Magazine and many other publications. Some of her work was originally published in Esto no tiene nombre, a Latina lesbian magazine published and edited by tatiana de la tierra, which gave voice to the Latina lesbian community. Obejas worked as a journalist in Chicago for more than two decades. For several years, she was also a writer in residence at the University of Chicago, University of Hawaii, DePaul University, Wichita State University, and Mills College in Oakland, California. She also worked from 2019 to 2022 as a writer/editor for Netflix on the bilingual team in the Product Writing department.
Little Italy, sometimes combined with University Village into one neighborhood, is on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois. The current boundaries of Little Italy are Ashland Avenue on the west and Interstate 90/94 on the east, the Eisenhower Expressway on the north and Roosevelt to the south. It lies between the east side of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in the Illinois Medical District and the west side of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. The community was once predominantly Italian immigrants but now is made up of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds as a result of immigration, urban renewal, gentrification and the growth of the resident student and faculty population of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Its Italian-American heritage is primarily evident in the Italian-American restaurants that once lined Taylor Street. The neighborhood is home to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame as well as the historic Roman Catholic churches Our Lady of Pompeii, Notre Dame de Chicago, and Holy Family.
The Feminist Press is an American independent nonprofit literary publisher of feminist literature that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. It publishes writing by people who share an activist spirit and a belief in choice and equality. Founded in 1970 to challenge sexual stereotypes in books, schools and libraries, the press began by rescuing “lost” works by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Rebecca Harding Davis, and established its publishing program with books by American writers of diverse racial and class backgrounds. Since then it has also been bringing works from around the world to North American readers. The Feminist Press is the longest surviving women's publishing house in the world. The press operates out of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Helen Frances Barolini was an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often wrote on issues of Italian-American identity. Among her notable works are Umbertina (1979), a novel which tells the story of four generations of women in one Italian-American family; and an anthology, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (1985), which called attention to an emerging, and previously unnoticed, class of writers.
Karen Tintori is an Italian-American author of fiction and nonfiction. Her books cover a wide range of human experience, from the mysteries of the Kabbalah to the lives of Italian American immigrants. She writes both as a solo author and in collaboration with New York Times best-selling author Jill Gregory.
Cris Mazza is an American novelist, short story writer, and non-fiction author.
Connie May Fowler is an American novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter, and poet. Her semi-autobiographical novel, Before Women had Wings, received the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award. She adapted the novel for Oprah Winfrey and the subsequent Emmy-winning film starred Winfrey, Ellen Barkin, Julia Stiles, and Tina Majorino. Remembering Blue received the Chautauqua South Literary Award. Three of her novels were Dublin International Literary Award nominees. Her other novels include Sugar Cage and River of Hidden Dreams. The Problem with Murmur Lee was Redbook's premier book club selection. Her memoir, When Katie Wakes, explores her family's generational cycle of domestic violence. How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, a novel oft compared to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway in term of its structure, was published in 2010. Her latest book, a memoir titled "A Million Fragile bones," will be published April 20, 2017 by Twisted Road Publications. It explores her life on an isolated barrier island and the horrific impact and aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages.
Chicago and its suburbs have a historical population of Italian Americans. As of 2000, about 500,000 in the Chicago area identified themselves as being Italian descent.
Paper Fish is a 1980 novel by Antoinette "Tina" De Rosa (1944–2007), published initially by Wine Press and re-published by The Feminist Press in 1996. The novel is set in Little Italy, the Italian community around Taylor Street, in the Near West Side, during the 1940s and the 1950s. Connie Lauerman of the Chicago Tribune described Paper Fish as an "autobiographical novel". The book's main character is Carmolina BellaCasa and the book is centered on her family. The primary relationship in the novel is between the main character and Doria, her grandmother. Other characters include Carmolina's father and mother and her ill older sister.
Mari Tomasi (1907–1965) was an American novelist who portrayed the lives of Italian immigrants in Vermont. Literature professor Thomas J. Ferraro calls her "the first significant Italian American woman novelist." Tomasi also worked as a journalist and local historian, and served a term in the Vermont House of Representatives.
Marion Benasutti was an American writer. The daughter of immigrants from Northern Italy, she was born in Brandy Camp, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Philadelphia. She learned English in school as a child, and never finished high school, yet enjoyed a successful writing career.
Diana Cavallo (1931-2017) was an American novelist, educator, playwright, and performer.
Octavia Waldo is an American writer and artist. She is best known for her 1961 novel, A Cup of the Sun.
Like Lesser Gods is a 1949 novel by Mari Tomasi about the Italian-American stonecutters of Granitetown, and their dedication to the work despite the danger of silicosis. Originally published by Bruce, a small Catholic press, it was republished by the New England Press in 1988 and 1999.
Umbertina (1979) is a feminist novel by Helen Barolini. It tells the story of four generations of women in one Italian-American family. It is the first novel by an Italian-American woman which explores, in depth, the connected themes of gender and ethnicity.
Edvige Giunta is a Sicilian-American writer, educator, and literary critic.
Carol Bonomo Albright is an American author, editor, and educator in the field of Italian-American studies. She has published many books and articles on the subject, and taught classes at the University of Rhode Island and the Harvard University Extension School. She was editor-in-chief of Italian Americana, a peer-reviewed cultural/historical journal, for over 25 years.
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