Cover

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Title Page, Copyright Page

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Contents

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pp. v-vii

Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-x

Joanna Clapps Herman and I would like to acknowledge the Order Sons of Italy and the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), not only for their financial support of this project but also for their dedication over the years to similar endeavors...

Introduction

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pp. 1-7

In 1974 Richard Gambino, together with Ernest Falbo and Bruno Arcudi, founded Italian Americana. This historical and cultural journal followed the wave of interest in Italian Americans that had been building in the previous decade and that became particularly...

Ancestors / Prose

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pp. 9-91

My Father’s God

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pp. 11-21

Upon the death of old Father Ambrose, the Bishop of Denver assigned a new priest to St. Catherine’s parish. He was Father Bruno Ramponi, a young Dominican from Boston. Father Ramponi’s picture appeared on the front page of the Boulder...

The Actor Prepares

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pp. 22-28

For instance, the Actor awakes to an empty bed. He has been drifting in and out of consciousness and has followed the dead-end trails of every dream he might have dreamt reluctantly, even heartlessly. At the moment, he cannot sleep: his mind is attentive...

The Night Maggie Saw God and Sal Barnum Too

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pp. 29-34

Maggie, Peggy, Margie. These were all names Michela had assumed in her quest to become American. Born Michela Guerrisi, she said, ‘‘I died. I wanted to hide under my desk and never come out when my teacher called my name for the roll in...

Sizes

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pp. 35-40

‘‘ I don’t care what you heard your girlfriend Mary told you. I don’t think the Escort or the Chevette or the Rabbit or even the Cockroach, and I don’t care what else you call them in Japanese, is not the right size, any of them.’’ ‘‘But I want...

An Etruscan Catechism

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pp. 41-53

The priest plows a straight line with the assistance of one white ox and one white cow, the furrow he makes acknowledged by all Etruscans as a sacred boundary. The city stands watching, reverent, attentive; the engineers stand ready to build and to tunnel...

Lamb Soup

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pp. 54-72

Ever since Nonna Nedda, the toothless, blind old grandma who could foretell your marital future after you prepared for her a bowl of soup, informed my dear mamma that I was destined by age eighteen to marry a man riding a dappled horse, I feared that I’d end...

Marco’s Marcoroni

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pp. 73-75

At a recent conference of maverick scholars in far western China the well-known Italian sage, Giovanni Topolino, presented the thesis that the Chinese were the Italians of the Orient. Before he had a chance to dot his exclamation point, Lu Po, a famous philosopher...

The Guest

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pp. 76-91

Ancestors / Poetry

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pp. 93-117

East River Nocturne

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pp. 95-99

On the Square

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p. 100

Autobiography

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p. 101

Tea at Aunt’s

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p. 102

Cento at Dawn

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p. 104

L’Esiliatu / The Exile

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p. 105

The Cellar Twenty Years Later

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p. 106

Minotaur

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p. 107

The Garden of the Apocalypse

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p. 108

In the Golden Sala

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pp. 109-110

Father’s Days

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p. 111

In Tunis I Walked through Halfaween

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p. 112

Shinto Mama

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pp. 113-114

Spanish Steps

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pp. 115-116

Nana’s Earrings

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p. 117

The Sacred and Profane / Prose

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pp. 119-163

Against Gravity

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pp. 121-131

My father sat behind the wheel of the immense white Buick, driving us patiently through the city streets toward the Walt Whitman Bridge, and then, after we had crossed it, swiftly through New Jersey beneath a wide cataract sky, the light that day...

My Friend, Angelo Ralph Orlandella

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pp. 132-140

My meeting with Angelo Ralph Orlandella in 1938 began a friendship and collaboration that has continued and grown stronger for more than fifty years. At the time, I was a twenty-four-year-old Junior Fellow at Harvard University, carrying out a sociological...

That Winter Evening

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pp. 141-152

This story, presented as a framed engraving of its time, is in truth a pretext for remembering and describing the life of our old village and its people—real or imagined—in that small corner of the world where we spent the most beautiful years of our...

Sanctifying Grace

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pp. 153-163

When Dante O’Brien left Holy Redeemer Seminary in September 1959, he disappeared for a few days; then he showed up out of the blue one night to a standing ovation at the Parkchester Cafe´. The regulars, all neighborhood guys, were shaking his hand...

The Sacred and Profane / Poetry

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pp. 165-173

Luisa and Buffalo Bill

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pp. 167-168

The Concept of God

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p. 169

My Father at Eighty-five

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p. 170

The Caves of Love

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pp. 171-172

Linens

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p. 173

Love and Anger / Prose

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pp. 175-240

The Two Uncles: An Addendum to Mount Allegro

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pp. 177-181

The day I returned from Sicily, my father telephoned me to say that my Uncle Nino was dying and wanted to see me. My father had no great love for my uncle, but he urged me to come as soon as possible. I took the next plane to Rochester...

The Prince of Racalmuto

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pp. 182-188

A man’s presence could provoke an anger in me that would last for days. His presence in my mind was an unanswerable offense because I did not know in what way I had been offended. I saw his face in the store windows I passed. I felt his presence in the flush...

Wild Heart

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pp. 189-194

I had just finished junior high the summer after President Kennedy died. It was the time of big hair and wild hearts. At least I had big hair. The biggest. I made it into a dime-store ritual, buying steel ratting combs, large velvet bows, three-inch bobby...

A Conversation with Camille Paglia

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pp. 195-208

Christina Bevilacqua: Having grown up Italian American and female, I was curious while reading your book to think about how someone else who grew up Italian American and female...

Big Heart

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pp. 209-219

He came out of the back, his apron bloody. The butcher Mr. Ribalta had the biggest belly I had ever seen. When he leaned into the case to grab a handful of hamburger or lop off a rope of sausage, his stomach grazed the meat. I wanted to poke his fat, to see if my finger...

Permanent Waves

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pp. 220-232

‘‘When we move to Medford, ’’ said Terry, ‘‘can Bobby drive me to work?’’ Carmine looked at the girl. His wife always referred to Bobby DiFazio as the compare’s son; the children more frankly called him Terry’s boyfriend. Carmine didn’t...

Perfect Hatred

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pp. 233-240

Sometimes for what seemed like no apparent reason Anna took a complete and intense dislike to someone the moment she saw the person. Another woman, Anna’s age, moving into her line of sight wearing a blue business suit, might look at herself...

Love and Anger / Poetry

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pp. 241-257

Inside the Inside of the Moon

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pp. 243-244

Why I Drive Alfa Romeos

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p. 245

Walking My Son on the Beach

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p. 246

The Skeleton’s Defense of Carnality

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p. 247

Birth and Death / Prose

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pp. 249-293

A Marvelous Feat in a Common Place

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pp. 251-254

My cat wasn’t much to look at and wasn’t very polite either, having introduced herself the first time years ago when my apartment door had been left wide open on a hot summer day, coming inside from the trash barrels in the alley where she had lived...

Where It Belongs

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pp. 255-258

When the baby was born, the mother asked the midwife to take the afterbirth outside. ‘‘I can’t,’’ Alfonsina whispered. ‘‘You got a girl. Don’t you want her to stay home...

Unraveled

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pp. 259-269

Why Mrs. Natoli knitted in the cellar, poking away with those needles just to let it unravel, was beyond me. When her knitting got as far as her lap, she started all over again with the same loopy yarn. Watching her rip it out was like seeing someone...

Mama Rose

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pp. 270-274

My grandmother Mama Rose stood four feet ten inches, had ten children, twenty-one grandchildren, flaming red hair until the day she died at the age of seventy-five, and liked Elvis Presley, her hometown of Naples in Italy, ‘‘As the World...

Cairns

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pp. 275-282

The last time I saw Uncle Louis he sat quietly by a sunny window in the living room of my in-laws’ apartment. My mother- and father-in-law had arranged a luncheon in Uncle Louis’s honor, but almost no one spoke to him...

Card Palace

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pp. 283-293

Denise, a petite, dark-eyed woman with the gift of gab, inherited the Card Palace from her mother’s brother Frank, who, like everyone else in the family, succeeded in keeping secrets. After reaching a certain age, the family stopped asking Frank...

Birth and Death / Poetry

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pp. 295-300

Planting a Sequoia

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pp. 297-298

E´si riuniscono, questi vecchi . . .

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p. 299

Grandmother in Heaven

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p. 300

Art and Self / Poetry

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pp. 301-316

Cape Clear

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p. 303

Language Lesson

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pp. 304-305

Lizard-Tree

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p. 306

Athletes of God

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p. 307

Libretto

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pp. 308-310

Books, how silent you are

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p. 311

Requiem for a Practical Possum

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pp. 312-313

Self-Portrait as Woman Posed on Flowered Couch

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p. 314

Happenstance

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p. 315

War Song

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p. 316

About the Authors

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pp. 317-329