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by Irene Sardanis (Author)
Irene Sardanis was born into a Greek family in the Bronx in the 1940s in which fear and peril hovered. Her mother had come to New York for an arranged marriage. Her father drank, gambled, and enjoyed other women--and then, when Irene was eleven, abandoned her family altogether. Faced with their mother's violent outbursts in the wake of this betrayal, Irene's older siblings found a way out, but Irene was trapped, hostage to her mother's rage and despair. When she finally escaped her mother as a young adult, she married a neighbor, also Greek, who controlled and dominated her just like her mother always had.
But Irene wasn't ready to let her story end there. With therapy, she eventually found the courage to leave her husband and pursue her own dreams. Out of the Bronx is her story of coming to terms with the mother and past that terrified and paralyzed her for far too long--and of how she went on to create a new life free of those fears.Author Biography
Irene Sardanis is a retired psychologist. She was born in New York to Greek immigrant parents. She has been published five times in Sun Literary magazine and in many anthologies, the most recent of which is The Magic of Memoir. Dr. Sardanis has attended writing conferences in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Mendocino, Pebble Beach, and Berkeley. Occasionally, she moonlights as a jazz vocalist. She resides in Oakland, California, with her wonderful husband, John.
