Abstract

Girotondo is the Italian name of the children's game, ring-around-a-rosy. The word giro has connotations in Italian, that this novel develops as symbolism. Giro may be translated as a turn, a tour or a circle, so fare un giro is to take a short ride with the aim of returning to the starting point. Gira e rigira is to go around in circles; mettere in giro , to spread rumors; while una presa in giro is to be taken for a ride or to be fooled. With these nuances in mind, the novel presents a group of people whose traditional lives have been disrupted by the process of immigration, and who live a somewhat disjointed existence. In presenting the story of three women of different generations, all living in Montreal but connected by their origins in the same Italian village, and who have been traditionally kept silenced, the novel aims to reveal that the harmony of community was fractured as much by the mind-set present in the village of their past as by the realities of adjusting in a New World. Added to the protagonist's search for her true identity and for self-realization is her obsessive need to write and record the phases of her family's immigrant journey. Through a discussion between an editor to whom she shows her work and the publisher of an ethnic press, the novel also attempts to raise questions related to the writing of the immigrant experience, as well as about living it.