Why am I passionate about this?
I'm an Italian-born writer living in Minneapolis. I experienced being an outsider early on in my childhood when my family moved from Naples to Este, a small town in the hills near Venice. My fascination with language started then as I had to master the different Northern dialect. I was a listener rather than a talker. My shyness was painful in life but turned out to be a gift as a writer. When I left Italy for America, once again I was an outsider, too visible or invisible, and facing a new language. I relate to estrangement and longing, but I treasure that being an outsider still gives me a sense of wonder about reality.
Rosanna's book list on the unexpected ways we find home
Why did Rosanna love this book?
This book inspired by true stories of children misplaced and stolen during World War II.
This is a deeply affecting and powerful novel on the intertwined stories of four displaced children after the war ended, who have to question their true identities.
There is great tenderness in the writing of Jennifer Rosner, where a child wonders if bats have upside-down dreams and a young woman discovers the emotional depth of photography.
"There is a moment, liquid time, just before photograph's image appears on the developing paper, when Ana conjures the faces of her parents. Their actual features have blurred in her memory but she fills in with her imagination."
Questioning memory and the present is powerful to me and others who left home.
2 authors picked Once We Were Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Ana will never forget her mother's face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organisation seizes them, believing she has their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves. Roger grows up in a monastery in France, inventing stories and trading riddles with his best friend in a life of…