NEW IN PAPERBACK! The acclaimed actress and author of Jesse: A Mother’s Story tells the story of her outspoken, frequently outrageous Italian immigrant mother. MARIANNE LEONE’s Ma is in many senses a larger-than-life character, one who might be capable, even from the afterlife, of shattering expectations.
Porter Square Books welcomes local memoirist MARIANNE LEONE with her latest acclaimed work, Ma Speaks Up: And a First-Generation Daughter Talks Back.
Ma Speaks Up is a record of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, with the wrong family, in the wrong religion. Though Marianne’s girlhood is flooded with shame, it’s equally packed with adventure, love, great cooking, and, above all, humor. The extremely premature birth of Marianne’s beloved son, Jesse, bonds mother and daughter in ways she couldn’t have imagined. The stories she tells will speak to anyone who has struggled with outsider status in any form and, of course, to mothers and their blemished, cherished girls.
This event is not ticketed.