Strangers I Know La Straniera Claudia Durastanti Elizabeth Harris Translation by Claudia Durastanti, Elizabeth Harris (translation) 9780593087947, 9780593087961, 9780593541470, 9782021020458, 9780593087954, 2021020452, 0593087941, 0593087968, 0593541472 instant download after payment.

A work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family & life.

Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia’s mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn’t be more different; they can’t even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.
 
Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern IItaly & New York City. Without even sign language in common – their parents have not bothered to teach them – family communications are chaotic & rife with misinterpretations, by turns hilarious & devastating. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she’s not even sure exists. Only books & punk rock—and a tumultuous relationship—begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her own version of the story of her life.

 
Kinetic, formally dazzling, & spectacularly
original, this book is a funny & profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.