The children sat quietly, listening, hearing the stories and recognizing in these people, their ability to be grateful and happy even with very few material goods. My father was gregarious and outgoing, and he loved these gatherings. In that cold-water tenement, sit-ting around our oilcloth-covered kitchen table, what I remember is friends and family gathered together to laugh and tell stories and talk politics. We were barely holding on economically my parents had low-level jobs, but I did not feel poor, although that’s what we were. She wanted to keep us close and to make sure that we would remain close to one another even after she and my father were gone. My mother worked in a factory sewing the lining in coats by hand, but her real focus was on the family. He believed that trying to make a difference in the world was a moral obligation and he taught us to believe the same thing. My father believed it was important to help others, to be generous and open-minded. It was through my work that I came to understand how my parents’ Italian values had shaped my view of my personal place in America and in the universe. In my writing, I could say all the things I was afraid to say aloud. I tried to be invisible, but I found a way to connect with the world through books and writing. When I went to school at PS 18, I did not speak English and I was often afraid that I’d use an Italian word by mistake. My family spoke this dialect at home, so for me, the inside of the house was southern Italy. They recreated their villages and network of friends in this city where many people spoke the same dialect. Paterson was a haven for Italian immigrants and the Riverside sec-tion attracted many people from Cilento. My father arrived in Paterson, NJ when he was sixteen and went back to Italy to find a wife when he was thirty. They came from two different small villages at the top of a mountain, San Mauro and Galdo. My parents were immigrants from the province of Salerno, Cilento, in southern Italy.
How I Learned What It Means To Be Italian
0 kommentar(er)
