The Sound of Silence: How Memory Becomes Text in TINA DE ROSA'S Paper Fish

Abstract

Many Italian American women have emphasized the need to break the silence which envelopes their culture by writing about their experiences, thus making themselves heard within the American literary canon. Tina De Rosa's beautiful and complex novel Paper Fish demonstrates the pain of this silence by focusing on an Italian American family that is suffering within a society that views them as “Other.” Carmolina is the girl at the center of the novel, and the relationship she has with her Italian grandmother allows her to achieve independence as a young woman without sacrificing the culture of the past. The following essay examines how the Italian American tradition is preserved through memory and then committed to text through Carmolina's character in Paper Fish. As a third generation Italian American, Carmolina struggles to develop a solid sense of identity despite inhabiting an “in-between space,” a situation that causes anxiety for many children of immigrants because they are part of two different cultures but do not fully belong to either one. In exploring this delicate balance this essay concludes Carmolina achieves a stronger sense of identity not only by learning of her Italian culture but also by inhabiting an authorial role and therefore her memories which are put to text ensures that the immigrant's struggle is not forgotten.