Writing
—writing—
Books
— Nonfiction —
Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home
Edited by Taslim Jaffer and Omar Mouallem
Book*hug Press (2024)
In these literary travel essays, twenty-six writers from across North America share journeys back to their motherlands as visitors. Set against mountainous terrain, tropical beaches, bustling cities, and remote villages, these personal narratives weave socio-political commentary with writers’ reflections on who they are, where they belong, and what “home” means to them.
The result is a vulnerable, humorous, and insightful exploration of meanings and contradictions, beginning a conversation waiting to be had by the growing population of first- and second-generation Canadians and Americans who will find themselves within its pages. These essays navigate the intricacies of hyphenated identities with nuanced stories of heritage and a redefined sense of home. Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home is an open door to places within ourselves and around the globe.
With contributions by: Omar El Akkad, Nadine Araksi, Ofelia Brooks, Esmeralda Cabral, June Chua, Seema Dhawan, Krista Eide, Eufemia Fantetti, Ayesha Habib, Christina Hoag, Mariam Ibrahim, Taslim Jaffer, Vesna Jaksic-Lowe, Kathryn Lennon, Omar Mouallem, Dimitri Nasrallah, Lishai Peel, Omar Reyes, Mahta Riazi, Steve Sandor, Angelo Santos, Alison Tedford Seaweed, Makda Teshome, Nhung Tran-Davies, Alexandra C. Yeboah, Hannah Zalaa-Uul.
— Nonfiction —
Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language
Edited by Eufemia Fantetti, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari
Book*hug Press (2021)
In this collection of deeply personal essays, twenty-six writers explore their connection with language, accents, and vocabularies, and contend with the ways these can be used as both bridge and weapon. Some explore the way power and privilege affect language learning, especially the shame and exclusion often felt by non-native English speakers in a white, settler, colonial nation. Some confront the pain of losing a mother tongue or an ancestral language along with the loss of community and highlight the empowerment that comes with reclamation. Others celebrate the joys of learning a new language and the power of connection. All underscore how language can offer both transformation and collective healing.
Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language is a vital anthology that opens a compelling dialogue about language diversity and probes the importance of language in our identity and the ways in which it shapes us.
With contributions by: Kamal Al-Solaylee, Jenny Heijun Wills, Karen McBride, Melissa Bull, Leonarda Carranza, Adam Pottle, Kai Cheng Thom, Sigal Samuel, Rebecca Fisseha, Hege Anita Jakobsen Lepri, Logan Broeckaert, Taslim Jaffer, Ashley Hynd, Jagtar Kaur Atwal, Téa Mutonji, Rowan McCandless, Sahar Golshan, Camila Justino, Amanda Leduc, Ayelet Tsabari, Carrianne Leung, Janet Hong, Danny Ramadan, Sadiqa de Meijer, Jónína Kirton, and Eufemia Fantetti.
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Praise for Tongues:
57 works of Canadian nonfiction coming out in fall 2021 —CBC Books
2021 Best of Fall guide: Nonfiction —Quill and Quire
35 books you need to know about in fall 2021 —Toronto Star
“Astonishingly consistent in calibre, Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language is one of the finest anthologies published in recent years and should be required reading on syllabuses across the country.” —Sheniz Janmohamed, Quill & Quire
Reading List: Fall brings hearty, heady books for longer days —Stir Magazine
My Father, Fortune-tellers & Me: A Memoir is a powerful and witty coming-of-age story of fate versus free will. As the daughter of southern Italian immigrants joined in an acrimonious arranged marriage, Eufemia Fantetti weathered the devastating consequences of her mother’s treatment-resistant schizophrenia for years before moving to the West Coast to escape the constant turmoil. In her search for meaning beyond a host of ancestral superstitions—malocchio, maledictions and stregheria—she writes, cracks jokes, meets counselors, studies the sky for planetary alignment, consults her trusty tarot deck for guidance and visits her dad’s psychic healer for a prescription for prescience. Fantetti’s story is a darkly hilarious, tender chronicle of family, destiny and resilience.
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PRAISE for My Father, Fortune-Tellers & Me
“In her memoir Fantetti writes with unflinching honesty and a sharp wit about surviving a suburban Toronto childhood with a dangerously unstable mother and the curse of the malocchio (evil eye) laid upon Eufemia herself in infancy, presaging a life of turmoil. For Eufemia and her beloved father, Michelantonio, fortune-tellers and mysticism seem to offer as much useful advice as medical professionals into how to find happiness after years of violence and abuse. Utterly original and riveting, this book will tear your heart out.”
— TerriI Favro, author of Sputnik’s Children, a Globe 100 book
"Anyone lucky enough to have Italian families in their life knows that they’re just like any other family—only more so. The noble blue-collar Mezzogiorno immigrant is a character reduced to caricature by bootstrap politicians in stump speeches to corporate donors, but he deserves a better portrait: one drawn with a daughter’s love and honesty, as in Eufemia Fantetti’s compelling memoir.”
— Charles Demers, award-winning comedian and author of Property Values
"This memoir rang me like a bell, and I am still vibrating from the tolling. As a first generation Italian Canadian, many of the horrors and comforts in Fantetti’s account resonated with me: vivid, visceral, violent, but also humorous, hopeful and seeking. The character’s actions leap off the page with startlingly authentic dialogue. Each culture has its healthy and unhealthy way of dealing with mental illness, and this is a brutally honest view of the southern Italian’s modus operandi. This story is offered up like a heart torn out of the chest of the teller. There is healing surgery in both the telling and the reading."
— Lucia Frangione, award-winning playwright of Espresso and A Blue Moon
RUNNER UP FOR THE 2013 DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD & WINNER OF THE F.G. BRESSANI PRIZE for SHORT FICTION
Funny, tender and poignant, A Recipe for Disaster is populated by quirky characters who blend desire, imperfect love and comfort food into the sweet and salty mix of daily life while they yearn for the sustenance of human connection. A bemused child witnesses her mother flirt with a police officer responding to a domestic dispute call. A young woman mourns the end of a relationship, recalling the potently toxic recipe that created the disastrous union. A son struggles to accept his father’s emotional frailties and reject his passive approach to loss. A couple finally commits–to breaking up. A recently divorced woman meditates on the source of her ravenous cravings. A woman decides to end the prolonged vow of silence she took with her devout, hyper-critical mother. Six skilful and witty stories that will engage your heart.
JURY COMMENTS: Eufemia Fantetti’s slim volume of stories, A Recipe for Disaster, is more of a treat than a snack for literary foodies who like their stories fun, brisk, and effortless. The theme of food is sustained without dominating the stories; it functions like a recurring secondary character or a soundtrack. Fantetti’s storytelling is both supple and disciplined as if she were whisking plots and characters together until the reader can hardly distinguish whether characters are acting or being acted upon. True to life, that’s how disasters work.
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PRAISE FOR A RECIPE FOR DISASTER
"A Recipe for Disaster is a delicious treat. With her fresh, intelligent voice and lush prose, Eufemia Fantetti serves up stories that are at once achingly familiar and laugh-out-loud funny.”
— Ayelet Tsabari,The Best Place on Earth
"A delicious blend of dark humour and edgy insight, Fantetti's stories zero in on the emotional precipices of intimate relationships--mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, couples coming together or falling part. Fantetti has an unflinching eye and irreverent wit that exposes the surreal in the real, as well as a gift for finely honed dialogue that slices right through to the core of family dysfunction. Food becomes an expression not only of love, but of longing, resentment, despair and, ultimately, truth. A memorable debut collection."
— Fiona Tinwei Lam, Intimate Distances, Enter the Chrysanthemum
"In Eufemia Fantetti’s A Recipe for Disaster and Other Unlikely Tales of Love, the humour always arrives by way of characters and relationships that evince a dark and essentially human agony—and, vice versa, the moments of anguish nevertheless have something funny at their edges. Like the sour you crave with the sweet of the sauce, and the pain you love in the heat of the spice, Fantetti’s truths will nourish you with their magnificent mix of contradictions. Whether or not you say grace first, read this book and give thanks for the arrival of this brilliant new literary voice."
— Wayde Compton, Performance Bond
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A Recipe for Disaster: REVIEWS & EPHEMERA
An interview on ItaloCanadese by Domenico Capilongo, author of I thought Elvis was Italian, hands down my favourite title and also something I believed as a child.
A review in The Overcast as part of CanLit Fridays by the multi-talented, clearly-doesn't-need-any-sleep Chad Pelley.
An interview in The Humber Literary Review. Check out Beverly Cooper too. She was my playwriting classmate and is now a dear friend. Better yet, check it all out. It's a great new literary magazine.
A review from the Descant Magazine blog by Lesley Kenny, a writer and supremely witty woman. I was in the middle of an ESL Literacy lesson plan meltdown when this review was posted and it made my month.
A review alongside Eat It: Sex Food & Women's Writing on Pickle Me This, Kerry Clare's fabulous blog (where she writes oodles about books.) Lovely to find myself here, in delicious company!
A shout out from Ayelet Tsabari (where she also mentions the Next Wonderful Writer You Should Follow - Nancy Jo Cullen - her story collection, Canary, is deservedly getting rave reviews) and a mention by Kathy Friedman in The New Quarterly!
An interview about writing A Recipe for Disaster and the meaning of life, the intimidating world of gluten free and missing Vancouver (for all the small reasons - the ocean, the mountains, and the big ones - the people) with the tireless book promoter Joseph Planta on his site The Commentary. He calmed my nerves beforehand and is simply excellent to talk with, we kept talking after we were done. Thank you, Joseph!
A review in The Vancouver Sun (also in The Edmonton Journal) by the marvellous M.A.C. Farrant, whose writing I have long admired. I loved My Turquoise Years, (a memoir) and The Secret Lives of Litterbugs (an essay collection). I woke up as if it was an ordinary day and after checking my email, I felt the need to put on a tiara and dance around my apartment. A frantic search ensued to borrow a tiara, a ball gown and a cup of Champagne. This is what comes of hanging out with writers instead of royals, no one has any crown jewels or formal frocks to lend out, but my stars, they are the best company.
AntHologies
Click on any image below to see publication date (and link to the publisher, where applicable)
Journals & Magazines
“Not for the Faint-Hearted: Faith and Fiction at the Festival of Literary Diversity, The New Quarterly,” (non-fiction) autumn 2016
“Blood Wedding,” Humber Literary Review, (non-fiction), issue 3, Vol.2, Winter 2016/17
“The Anthropology of Fire,” Accenti Magazine, Contest winner 2011, (non-fiction), issue autumn 2012
“Alphabet Autobiografica,” Event Magazine 38.3 autumn 2009, (Winner of Event Magazine's Creative Non-Fiction contest and named a Notable Essay by the Best American Essay Series) available online at Redux: A Literary Journal, edited by the wonderful Leslie Pietrzyk.
“Loss of Appetite,” Open Minds Quarterly, summer 2008 (fiction)
