Though Louisa Ermelino's collection of short stories, Malafemmena, is short--16 stories amount to fewer than 160 pages--it is epic in its scope, spanning continents and cultures, time and space to bring to life a series of nuanced and fascinating female characters. Through a kaleidoscope of sex, drugs, romance, marriage, violence, secrets and lies, Ermelino (The Black Madonna) brings several women to life: an Italian American is kidnapped at gunpoint by her fiancé's sister; a pair of girls backpacking through Europe decide what to do about an unwanted pregnancy; an Italian woman longs to keep her son by her side for his entire life; a young girl travels to Istanbul with her lover and a heroin addict.
Roughly translated, "malafemmena" means "bad woman." In the popular Italian song of the same name, a man sings, "women like you/ don't want to stay for a man/ honest like me." The "women like you" in Ermelino's collection certainly do not stay, be it for a man or for any other reason--though not because they are bad or evil. Instead, they are non-traditional or in trouble or, occasionally, both. They are unmarried, they have unwanted children, they travel alone, they do drugs and they mock convention. But they are warm and sincere, trying to determine how to live and how to love as women in a world of shifting morals and dangers. "How can you protect yourself when your heart is split in two?" one woman ponders, traveling with her newfound lover, asking the question that beats through the entirety of Ermelino's slim but powerful collection. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm