The Self and the Other: reaching out through a Bridge of Leaves

Diana Cavallo is an Italian American woman writer of great sensitivity and exquisite capacity to render the complexity of feeling. In her novel,A Bridge of Leaves, she explores the power of memory to heal her characters from the state of illness and distress they experience during their quest for the discovery of their own selves and of the mode of relating to others. With this novel, she makes a brave, and mostly successful attempt, at breaking down the wall of indifference too often surrounding people, closeting them in a claustrophic reality. In this way she tries to ease the difficult transition of those who come from a different world and feel the past lives of their forefathers weighing like stones on their young, innocent shoulders.