Taking it Home: Stories from the Neighborhood

Taking it Home: Stories from the Neighborhood is the third collection by Tony Ardizzone. Published in 1996 by the University of Illinois Press/Sunsinger Books, it was a Finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize. of the twleve stories included, six were previously published in the author's first collection The Evening News.

Plot

These tales of an Italian-American neighborhood on Chicago's North Side during the 1950s and '60s go further than the usual picturesque ethnic memoir, with Ardizzone taking them that extra step through added complexity and carefully chosen language. The narrator of "Baseball Fever" recalls how, as a young boy, he confused Catholicism and baseball into one entity, leading to a unique perspective on religion: God "had several legions of good angels (my first lesson in the concept of a deep bench) waiting with drawn swords behind him." Meanwhile, the somewhat slatternly Bobbi plans to seduce her chaste Catholic boyfriend in order to bond with him forever, but instead she angers him in "The Daughter and the Tradesman." In "The Language of the Dead," a boy insists to a "fat Christian brother" that he was not the one who instigated a fight during a school basketball game that resulted in over $300 in damage. And "Ladies' Choice" describes the rituals of attending Sunday night dances for kids where "You don't have to be a Catholic to get in, but Catholics pay fifty cents less."

Contents

Baseball Fever

Nonna (also appeared in The Evening News)

The Eys of the Children (also appeared in The Evening News)

My Mother's Stories (also appeared in The Evening News)

Ritual

The Language of the Dead

The Man in the Movie

The Daughter and the Tradesman (also appeared in The Evening News)

World Without End (also appeared in The Evening News)

Ladies' Choice

Idling (also appeared in The Evening News)

Holy Cards

Reviews

"These tales of an Italian-American neighborhood on Chicago's North Side during the 1950s and '60s go further than the usual picturesque ethnic memoir, with Ardizzone taking them that extra step through added complexity and carefully chosen language. All these stories distinguish themselves through empathetic portrayals of unexceptional people described in exceptional language." -- Publishers Weekly

"Tony Ardizzone's neighborhood is the North Side of Chicago and, more specifically, the Italian Catholic neighborhoods that flourished there. In a dozen highly polished tales, Ardizzone describes a world that revolves around the church, the family, and work, in that order. Ardizzone's characters are no strangers to tragedy, physical violence, or prejudice, but he writes about them from an attitude of affection, not anger or regret. These stories will have an appeal far beyond the 'friendly confines'." -- Booklist

"These stories by Tony Ardizzone are distinguished by a quality that I have long admired in his writing: the solid way his fiction is grounded in the American experience. Ardizzone is a writer who writes out of love rather than anger or contempt, and his emotional palette is fittingly broad. Yet his great affection for his subjects never blinds him to the tough realities and inequalities of life on American streets; rather, it leads him to gaze more intently and to see deeper." -- Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago