Miss Giardino

by Dorothy Bryant

   Faithful followers of Dorothy Bryant's work revere this subtle, lyrical, and moving novel, originally published in 1978, as a rare testament to the inner life of a teacher and of an older woman struggling to rediscover her place in a world which, increasingly, seems to have no need for her.

   As the novel begins, 68-year-old retired teacher Anna Giardino wakes up in a hospital after having been found lying unconscious in front of Camino Real High School in San Francisco's Mission District, where she taught for 40 years. She cannot remember what has happened and is unsure even of who she is. In the week  that follows, Anna Giardino slowly regains her memory, and the events of her past gradually unfold in a series of flashbacks.

   The daughter of working-class, Italian-American parents, Anna recalls her bitter girlhood fights with her father, a tyrannical man hardened and defeated by the struggles of immigrant life; her devotion to her mother and feelings of loyalty toward her family, which clash painfuly with her need for growth and escape; and, above all, her longing to read and to embrace education, which in turn inspires her mission as a teacher. Resolving to teach her students at all costs, and determined to help them break through the barriers imposed by class, race, and expectation, Miss Giardino becomes the epitome of the incorruptible older teacher: strict and exacting, she is feared and detested, but respected-and sometimes even loved.

   Memories of the relationships which punctuated Anna's mostly solitary life also resurface: her first college romance, crossing class and ethnic lines, with a charming but self-absorbed classmate; a passionate but confusing affair with a Mexican man she met while on vacation; and an intense, deep love for a student, which-although the feeling is returned-can never be openly expressed.

   Visits to the hospital from old friends, old lovers, and a former student, as well as an unexpected letter from the student she had loved, unleash a myriad of ambiguous feelings. For as the past and present merge and intertwine, Anna acknowledges that she has arrived at the end of her career estranged- from herself, from her profession, and from the very students she sought to enlighten. Only when she recalls and confronts the events surrounding her mysterious "accident" does Anna reach an understanding of her experiences and feelings and a real acceptance and affirmation of her life.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Dorothy Bryant was born in San Francisco in 1930, second daughter of Joe and Giuditta Calvetti, both born in Balangero, a factory town near Turin, Italy, and brought to the United States as children. Bryant became the first in her family to graduate from college, and she earned her living teaching (high school and college) until 1976. She began writing in 1960 and has since published a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction. Her plays have been performed in the Bay Area and beyond.

Bryant is known for her mystical, feminist and fantastic novels and plays that traverse the space between the real world and her character's inner psyche or soul. Her book The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You was described by Alice Walker as "One of my favorite books in all the world".

Reviews

[Sarah Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dorothy Bryant's range as an author is amazing. I've been reading her for over 40 years and still stumble across books by her that I didn't know about. She was an indie writer way before it was trendy. I'm not sure she ever went mainstream..which explains why her books are often out of print or hard to find.

Miss Giardino is about a San Francisco teacher who finds herself in a hospital bed suffering from a non-lethal head injury. She is amnesiac but only about the circumstances surrounding her assault. Otherwise, Miss Giardino will spend the rest of the book reminiscing about her life, career and her family. Eventually, the mystery of her injury is revealed.

Bryant was known for her feminist writing. One never feels clobbered over the head [no pun intended] by her feminist prose. She simply writes strong, believable and intriguing female characters who live the live of their age. In the case of Ann Giardino, she was raised in a poor Italian immigrant family at the turn of the 20th century and became the only child to go to college. This made her an outcast in her family so much of her life she is a solitary soul teaching in her own San Francisco high school for her entire career. She has few friends and very few romances. Never marries. Her life is teaching. And here's where the book delivers. There is quite a bit of philosophizing about teachers and women teachers to be exact. And about school administrations and politics. This might sound dry but Ann Giardino is a passionate teacher and she is very convincing about her teaching methods. Some of my favorite parts were the ones where she talked about her experiences in the classroom.

Most of us probably had a teacher like Ann Giardino in high school. If you ever wondered what was going on their lives outside of school, you'll be surprised.

There is quite a bit of interior monologue but you won't get bored. Bryant's dialog is masterful.

[Jacquelyn Fusco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this even though I feel like if you described it to me, I might think it would be boring. It's very reflective. A lot of the book is the main character recalling scenes from her past and although she was a schoolteacher who never married and lived a somewhat unadventurous life, it was still very interesting. It never dragged. The character of Miss Giardino is a very interesting one to me. She's relatable in some ways (even though I was never a great student like she was and I hated strict teachers). It's interesting to me to read about someone thinking about themself so much because of course I think about myself and question the meaning of my life, how other see me, how to be happy, etc. so it is interesting to read about someone else's thought process. Also, for a strict but fair older teacher (born in the 1910's), she is actually quite open minded, well-read sociologically and otherwise, and leftist - though she may or may not identify that way. I'm very glad I read this piece of Italian-American literature.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Storytelling at its best--I could not put this book down. Another thing I enjoyed about Bryant's novel is that it's set in San Francisco (the Mission District), and novels set in SF are hard to come by.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is a bit of a sleeper - in that it is quiet but powerful.
We are privy to a week in Miss Giardino’s life, starting with an accident of which she has no memory… But as she tries to recall, we are taken along with her life memories.
Although she is of another era, I could relate to much of her experiences, and feel changes to the educational hierarchy (and good-old-boy system) are not that far in the past
However the best part of this story is Miss Giardino herself, as she examines her past, her path. In that one week of retro-inspection, she takes a leap in her life and it so …. Refreshing, inspiring? To be taken on that journey with her.

[Lola · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
Though written some years ago, it's still entirely modern and fresh. Shows the conflicts that true and dedicated teachers face in challenging students and administrative apathy.

[Juris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dorothy Bryant's MISS GIARDINO is an excellent narrative in which a woman must reinvent herself and find out who she really is. The novel opens up with the protagonist, Anna Giardino, in a hospital bed with amnesia after suffering some kind of attack.
The novel is broken up into single days and lasts the duration of a week. Bryant skillfully uses flashbacks as Anna must remember who she is. The flashbacks, or memories, are italicized and written in first person point of view. In a sense, two stories are being told, but they do come together to tell one big one.
The novel spans over fifty years including Anna's memories starting back from childood to the novel's end.
This is a great novel for anyone looking to see what it was like for an Italian-American woman making it from the 1920's to the 1970's San Fransico.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an overlooked gem of a story. I think what Bryant has done created a brilliant character study that looks at the emotional chasm created by the misunderstanding between immigrants and their first generation off-spring.