I have read very few ethnographies written for a student audience that were such a pleasure to read – a pleasure because of the grace and clarity of the writing style, the richness of the descriptions, and the nearly seamless weaving between analytic, theoretical, personal, and ethnographic passages... Texas Tavola provides a moving account of the labor and love involved in the creation of altars to St. Joseph in a Texan Sicilian American community.

Jennifer Sime, San Diego Mesa College

Texas Tavola is a deeply personal look at what it means to belong to a tradition, a family, a place, or to many, across time and space. Sturm braids together her analytical expertise as an anthropologist with loving attention to the Sicilian folk Catholic tradition of building altars to St. Joseph (tavola di San Giuseppe). The altar is an act of devotion made edible: every element painstakingly prepared and carrying generations of meaning. A moving account of diaspora, identity, placemaking, and kinship.

Amanda Hilton, Syracuse University

Accessible and engaging, Texas Tavola is essential reading for those in Italian American and Italian Diasporic Studies; the book is a reminder that Italian American traditions did not and do not begin and end at Ellis Island and Northeastern urban centers and that Italian immigration has had an influence on communities throughout the United States. Texas Tavola would be an excellent choice for both undergraduate and graduate interdisciplinary courses in anthropology, religious, women's, Italian American and Italian studies programs focused on women's belonging and creativity, religious and cultural traditions, and immigration. This book is an important contribution that refocuses attention not only on women in the Italian diaspora, but also on those southern Italian immigrants in the United States who ventured beyond the Northeast.

Nancy Caronia, Loyola University Chicago