Framing a Life: A Family Memoir

Ferraro's grandmother immigrated to the U.S. in 1890, one of many poor southern Italians who had to learn to negotiate in a strange culture with a language they could neither understand nor speak. It's a story that makes her granddaughter's election to the House of Representatives and subsequent nomination as the first female candidate for the vice presidency all the more remarkable. With the able assistance of Whitney, Ferraro provides a moving and lively account of her grandmother's life in a New York City tenement with her husband and ten children. Ferraro's mother, Antonetta, married well, but the untimely death of her husband forced her to move from an affluent suburb to the South Bronx, where she worked as a beadmaker by day and a cook by night to send Ferraro and her brother to private schools. The author credits her own successes as a lawyer and elected official to her mother's hard work, sacrifice and love. Unfortunately, when Ferraro's narrative leaves her family to recount her experience as Walter Mondale's running mate, it deteriorates into a superficial political autobiography on a subject she covered better in Ferraro: My Story (1985). Ferraro presents herself as a wife and mother first, disingenuously describes her perfect family life and argues that questions about her husband's financial dealings were groundless and sparked by sexism and anti-Italian prejudice. It seems clear that Ferraro hoped this book would help position her in a November fight for Al D'Amato's Senate seat, but as Ferraro failed to win the Democratic primary and will not run, only the family history has much resonance. (Nov.)