An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
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
When my map of the world expanded across the Cooper River from downtown Charleston, South Carolina, to the tiny hamlet of Mount Pleasant (was there even a hill in the place?), my mother was building us a bungalow. She bought … 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
Think of a family as a pyramid: I’m on the phone with my oldest relative, Eleanora, 93, who lives in Dover, Delaware. She bought her first car in her late 30s, “after the war,” as the family saying goes. We … 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
At the Holiday Inn Riverview, I look down twelve stories onto a sweep of Ashley River and marsh. Charleston, South Carolina, where I grew up, is chilly this December. My parents, from Pittsburgh (father) and Hankinson, North Dakota (mother), used … Continued
In the Norman Rockwell version, a huge bronzed turkey lies on its side under carving knife and fork wielded by the family patriarch, while up and down a long table wait the solemn yet rosy faces of three generations. Way … Continued
A dear friend, retired from teaching Art History at the University of Minnesota, leads “study abroad” courses to Florence or Rome for undergraduates. Usually his students are native Minnesotans, attending the “land grant” university where their own parents may have … Continued