An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
It was my mother’s term, the snooty, smalltown mayor’s daughter from North Dakota–riffraff. Whom she meant, years ago when I began to hear her choice of words, I don’t know–maybe some of my teenage friends. But now it pops up … Continued
When my sister and I received our allowances as kids, each week’s outlay probably amounted to a quarter. In that distant era, when a loaf of sliced bread cost a nickle, and a bottle of milk not much more, a … Continued
By third grade I couldn’t see the chalkboard. My mother took my sister and me on the Charleston city bus from The Old Citadel to the oculist’s office on Rutledge Avenue. Eyesight, insight, hindsight: almost always my preferred sense. As … Continued
For someone born nostalgic, language almost immediately acquired tactile, scenic compatriots. I’m sitting under my mother’s ironing board, listening to her sing to the slap-hiss of the iron above my head: “Lavender’s blue, dilly, dilly, Lavender’s green.” I’m probably two … Continued
We hardly ever received messages on Isla. We had no cell phones then; nothing ever collapsed at home, except once, during our late February vacation, 2003. Then I returned from strolling to town and found that the “Office” at Posada … Continued
An Italian-American who immigrated to the U.S. when she was twelve recently returned from visiting long-time friends in Rome, Milan, Parma, and Bologna. “They don’t remarry,” she said, “because they don’t divorce. They find ‘un companio’ and have children together.”Though … Continued
Out of the darkness of dreams rises my sensation of dialing. I’m trying to form my parents’ last phone number in Charleston. Area Code: 843, then 766… That’s as far as I get. During my mother’s last fifteen years, living … Continued
Flying into Charleston’s airport the December after Hurricane Hugo struck in late September 1989, I stared down at miles of the Francis Marion Forest snapped like matchsticks. My mother had kept up running reports since she drove my father the … Continued