Jessica Kluthe
Between 1870 and 1970, twenty-six million Italians left their homeland and travelled to places like Canada, Australia, and the United States, in search of work. Many of them never returned to Italy.,Rosina, the Midwife, traces the author's family history, from their roots in Calabria in the south of Italy to their new home in Canada. Against this historic background, comes the story of Rosina, a Calabrian matriarch and the author's great-great-grandmother, the only member of the Russo family to remain in Italy after the mass migration of the 1950s. With no formal training, but plenty of experience, Rosina worked as a midwife in an area where there was only one doctor to serve three villages. She was given the tools needed to deliver and baptize babies by the doctor and the local priest, and, over the course of her long career, she helped bring hundreds of infants into the world.,Enhancing the stories and memories passed down through her family with meticulous research, Kluthe has, with great insight, created not only Rosina's story, but also the entire Russo family's. We see her great-grandfather Generoso labouring through the harsh Edmonton winter to save enough money to buy passage to Canada for his wife and children; we glimpse her grandmother Rose huddled in a third-class cabin, sick from the motion of the boat that will carry her to a new land; and we watch, teary-eyed, as her great-great-grandmother Rosina is forced to say goodbye, one by one, to the people she loves.,The author's quest to find the details of Rosina's life, despite the separation of place and time and the uncertainty of memory, has created a poetic elsewhere story and a charming memoir that is at once a Canadian story and a Calabrian one.
Nonfiction,History,Cultural,Canada,Cultural,Italy
Rosina, the Midwife