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The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series introduces original, significant memoirs from women whose compelling histories map the sources of our differences: generations, national boundaries, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. The series features stories of contemporary women’s lives, providing a record of social transformation, growth in consciousness, and the passionate commitment of individuals who make far-reaching change possible.
THE CROSS-CULTURAL MEMOIR SERIES
Under the Rose: A Confession
Flavia Alaya
Come Out the Wilderness: Memoir of a Black Woman Artist
Estella Conwill Májozo
A Lifetime of Labor
Alice H. Cook
Juggling: A Memoir of Work, Family, and Feminism
Jane S. Gould
Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Fault Lines
Meena Alexander
The Seasons: Death and Transfiguration
Jo Sinclair
Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian-American Memoir
Arlene Voski Avakian
I Dwell in Possibility
Toni McNaron
Published by The Feminist Press at The City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
First edition, 1999
Copyright © 1999 by Flavia Alaya
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from The Feminist Press at The City University of New York except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Quotation on page viii by Angela Carter, from “In the Company of Wolves,” from The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales. Copyright © 1979 by Angela Carter.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alaya, Flavia
Under the rose: a confession / Flavia Alaya — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The cross-cultural memoir series)
ISBN 978-1-93693-236-8
1. Alaya, Flavia. 2. English teachers — United States — Biography. 3. Housing policy — New York (State) — New York— Citizen participation. 4. Catholic Church — United States — Clergy Biography. 5. Women scholars — United States — Biography. 6. Italian American women Biography. 7. Browne, Henry J. I. Title. II. Series.
PE64.A48 A3 1999
282'.092 — dc21
[B]
99-35835
CIP
This publication is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The Feminist Press would also like to thank Joanne Markell and Genevieve Vaughan for their generosity in supporting this book.
Text design and typesetting by Dayna Navaro
Rose photographs © by Ann Alaia Woods
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 5 4 3 2 1
For Esta
For Robert
For both my fathers—
may they forgive me
sub ro·sa (sub rō’z
—American Heritage Dictionary
Contents
Part 3: The Girl of the Golden West
Photographs appear on pages 215–218 and 393–396
See! Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed,
between the paws of the tender wolf.
—Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”
