Part II, "Summer 1949 – Late July," chronicles the efforts of residents of Carmolina's neighborhood in searching for her, since she has run away from home.

Carmolina decides to run away from home, and in Part V, "Summer 1949 – Late July," she goes on a streetcar and goes to a neighborhood described by Bona as "unfriendly to ethnics.

De Rosa stated that she had been "dealing with terrible grief and sorrow" and needed to "talk to" her deceased relatives, "so I would sit down and write about them.

[2] Michael Anania, a writer who served as De Rosa's mentor while she studied for her master's degree in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, read some early versions of her work.

[10] Lauerman stated that there were times when De Rosa "tried to find her voice" and had "abandon[ed]" it on some occasions, and also that she "struggled" during the writing process.

[2] An excerpt of Paper Fish was re-printed in The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women by Helen Barolini.

[12] Lauerman wrote that the book had become unknown after the print run ended,[2] and Edvige Giunta, the author of the afterword of the 2002 Feminist Press printing of Paper Fish, stated that the novel was mostly "excluded from literary history" and that it and De Rosa "remained in the shadows for fifteen years.

"[11] Lauerman had stated that "Only a handful of Italian-American scholars kept "Paper Fish" alive by mentioning it in dissertations and essays and circulating photocopies of it.

In June 1995 he sat next to the director of the Feminist Press, Florence Howe, while attending a working class studies conference in Ohio.

[13] Mary Jo Bona wrote an article about the book that was published by MELUS, the academic journal by The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.

[11] Lauerman wrote that when the book was first published, "people turned [De Rosa's] head, telling her she was brilliant, a genius.

[11] The Sandburg Award is a literary prize from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library given out every year.

[2] Writer Louise DeSalvo gave a quote to Florence Howe for the book jacket, stating that Paper Fish was "the best Italian-American novel by a woman in this century".