Americans in Tuscany

Americans in Tuscany
Author: Catherine Trundle
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782383700

Since the time of the Grand Tour, the Italian region of Tuscany has sustained a highly visible American and Anglo migrant community. Today American women continue to migrate there, many in order to marry Italian men. Confronted with experiences of social exclusion, unfamiliar family relations, and new cultural terrain, many women struggle to build local lives. In the first ethnographic monograph of Americans in Italy, Catherine Trundle argues that charity and philanthropy are the central means by which many American women negotiate a sense of migrant belonging in Italy. This book traces women’s daily acts of charity as they gave food to the poor, fundraised among the wealthy, monitored untrustworthy recipients, assessed the needy, and reflected on the emotional work that charity required. In exploring the often-ignored role of charitable action in migrant community formation, Trundle contributes to anthropological theories of gift giving, compassion, and reflexivity.

Too Much Tuscan Sun

Too Much Tuscan Sun
Author: Dario Castagno
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2004-09-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0762751614

Over the past several years, "the American in Tuscany" has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, bookstores now burgeon with nimble, witty accounts of this clash in cultures-Americans trying to do American things in Italy and bumping against a brick wall of tradition.Too Much Tuscan Sun is Dario's, a Tuscan guide whose client base is predominantly American, account of some of his more remarkable customers, from the obsessive and the oblivious to the downright lunatic.

A Thousand Days in Tuscany

A Thousand Days in Tuscany
Author: Marlena de Blasi
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2005-09-27
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0345481097

They had met and married on perilously short acquaintance, she an American chef and food writer, he a Venetian banker. Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany. Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself. A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.

Local Lives

Local Lives
Author: Ms Catherine Trundle
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2012-12-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 140949277X

Local Lives contests dominant trends in migration theory, demonstrating that many migrant identities have not become entirely diasporic or cosmopolitan, but remain equally focused on emplaced belonging and the anxieties of being uprooted. By addressing the question of how migrants legally and symbolically lay claim to owning and belonging to place, it refocuses our attention on the micro-politics and everyday rituals of place-making, that are central to the construction of migrant identities. Exploring immigrants' interactions with house spaces, property rights, environmental conservation, landscape, historical knowledge of place, ideas of 'local community' and place-specific 'traditions', this volume shows how, in a fluid world of movement, locality remains a deeply contested and symbolically rich place to situate identity and to constitute the self. Thematically organised and presenting a diverse range of empirical studies dealing with migrant communities in Hawaii, Britain, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic and Albania, Local Lives reorients research in migration and transnational studies around locality. As such, it will appeal to social scientists working on questions relating to landscape, identity and belonging; race and ethnicity; and migration and transnationalism.

At Least You're in Tuscany

At Least You're in Tuscany
Author: Jennifer Criswell
Publisher: Gemelli Press LLC
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2012-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780982102374

Criswell's move from New York City to Tuscany was not supposed to go like this. She had envisioned lazy mornings sipping espresso while penning a bestselling novel and jovial group dinners, just like in the movies and books about expatriate life in Italy. Then she met reality: no work, constant struggles with Italian bureaucracy to claim citizenship, and becoming the talk of the town after her torrid affair with a local fruit vendor.

Tuscany in the Age of Empire

Tuscany in the Age of Empire
Author: Brian Brege
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2021-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674251342

A new history explores how one of Renaissance ItalyÕs leading cities maintained its influence in an era of global exploration, trade, and empire. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was not an imperial power, but it did harbor global ambitions. After abortive attempts at overseas colonization and direct commercial expansion, as Brian Brege shows, Tuscany followed a different path, one that allowed it to participate in EuropeÕs new age of empire without establishing an empire of its own. The first history of its kind, Tuscany in the Age of Empire offers a fresh appraisal of one of the foremost cities of the Italian Renaissance, as it sought knowledge, fortune, and power throughout Asia, the Americas, and beyond. How did Tuscany, which could not compete directly with the growing empires of other European states, establish a global presence? First, Brege shows, Tuscany partnered with larger European powers. The duchy sought to obtain trade rights within their empires and even manage portions of other statesÕ overseas territories. Second, Tuscans invested in cultural, intellectual, and commercial institutions at home, which attracted the knowledge and wealth generated by EuropeÕs imperial expansions. Finally, Tuscans built effective coalitions with other regional powers in the Mediterranean and the Islamic world, which secured the duchyÕs access to global products and empowered the Tuscan monarchy in foreign affairs. These strategies allowed Tuscany to punch well above its weight in a world where power was equated with the sort of imperial possessions it lacked. By finding areas of common interest with stronger neighbors and forming alliances with other marginal polities, a small state was able to protect its own security while carving out a space as a diplomatic and intellectual hub in a globalizing Europe.

Not in a Tuscan Villa

Not in a Tuscan Villa
Author: John Petralia
Publisher: Chartiers Creek Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-08
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9780615762531

Newly retired and looking for more than a vacation, John and Nancy Petralia intrepidly pack a few suitcases and head to the "perfect" Italian city for a year. Within days their dream becomes a nightmare. After residing in two Italian cities, negotiating the roads and health care, discovering art, friends, food and customs, the Petralias learn more than they anticipate -- about Italy, themselves, what it means to be American, and what's important in life.

Bella Tuscany

Bella Tuscany
Author: Frances Mayes
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2003-08-05
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0767916301

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona—and her beloved house, Bramasole—just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides. Bella Tuscany, a companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, is her passionate and lyrical account of her continuing love affair with Italy. Now truly at home there, Mayes writes of her deepening connection to the land, her flourishing friendships with local people, the joys of art, food, and wine, and the rewards and occasional heartbreaks of her villa's ongoing restoration. It is also a memoir of a season of change, and of renewed possibility. As spring becomes summer she revives Bramasole's lush gardens, meets the challenges of learning a new language, tours regions from Sicily to the Veneto, and faces transitions in her family life. Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous and evocative prose that has become her hallmark, Bella Tuscany is a celebration of the sweet life in Italy. Now with an excerpt from Frances Mayes's latest southern memoir, Under Magnolia.

Under the Tuscan Sun

Under the Tuscan Sun
Author: Frances Mayes
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2003-08-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0767917456

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special! More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters.