SOURCE: “Wayward Witness,” in Nation, Vol. 262, No. 25, June 24, 1996, pp. 33–4.

In the following review, Laurino considers the role of memory in An Accidental Autobiography.

When Barbara Grizzuti Harrison guided readers along the terrain of her mother country in Italian Days, describing with equal agility luminous works of Renaissance art and the palette of colors in an antipasto, she provided a clue to the way she collects, catalogues and tells a story. Recalling how a stroll with her daughter in Rome reminded her of a scene from Little Women—the first book she read after her daughter was born—Harrison explained, “This is how memory works; it curls, it is baroque.”

Sinuous curves of memory weave their way through An Accidental Autobiography. Using food, housekeeping, collecting, traveling and men as starting points for her reflections, she retraces her childhood in the Italian-American community in Bensonhurst and the harrowing years from...