ebook img

Sicily: The Hallowed Land PDF

202 Pages·2000·0.74 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Sicily: The Hallowed Land

Sicily: The Hallowed Land Legas Sicilian Studies Volume V Series Editor: Gaetano Cipolla Printed and bound in Canada Other volumes in this series: 1. Giuseppe Quatriglio, A Thousand Years in Sicily: from the Arabs to the Bourbons, 1992, 1997; 2. Henry Barbera, Medieval Sicily: the First Absolute State, 1994; 3. Connie Mandracchia DeCaro, Sicily, the Trampled Paradise, Revis- ited, 1998; 4. Justin Vitiello, Labyrinths and Volcanoes: Windings Through Sicily, 1999. Ben Morreale SICILY: The Hallowed Land A Memoir © Copyright Legas 2000 No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without the written permission from the copyright holder. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morreale, Ben. Sicily, the hallowed land: a memoir/ Ben Morreale. p. cm.— (Sicilian studies ; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-881901-23-8 1. Sicily (Italy)— Social life and customs. 2. Morreale, Ben—Homes and haunts—Italy—Sicily. I. Title. II. Series. DG865.6 .M68 2000 00-023950 Acknowledgments The publisher wishes to gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a generous grant from Arba Sicula that made it possible, in part, to publish this book. We are also grateful to Carlo Puleo for the use of his painting “Si- ciliani DOC” for the cover. Carlo Puleo, La Pittura, Palermo, Ila Palma, 1999. For information and for orders, write to: Legas P.O. Box 149 3 Wood Aster Bay Mineola, NewYork Ottawa, Ontario 11501, USA K2R ID3 Canada To My beloved Carol Wilkerson Pace e amore Contents METHOD AS PROLOGUE ..................................................................9 POINT OF DEPARTURE ....................................................................15 THE TIME OF THE GREEN MICE ...................................................31 DON BALDASSARE ............................................................................51 TIME AS A GENTLEMAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HERD .......67 LU RABBI SCHWARTZ .......................................................................87 MALANNI OR HARD TIMES ..........................................................121 RETURN TO SICILY .........................................................................131 HARD TIMES ....................................................................................145 THE WARS .........................................................................................161 ENDINGS...........................................................................................175 AVA GARDNER’S BROTHER-IN-LAW ...........................................187 7 METHOD AS PROLOGUE I’ve spent a good part of my life as a participant among Sicilians. I participated in such things as my own birth on Christie Street, where Roosevelt Park now stands on New York’s Lower East Side, of a mother and father both born in Racalmuto, Sicily. Although I was not a partic- ipant-observer in the meeting between my parents, I was told, in later informal interviews, that they were brought together on Stanton Street, called “Stantoni” by the Racalmutisi of that generation. They had not known each other in Racalmuto although their families lived only a few vaneddri away; my father in a two-story house (a sign of some wealth) near La Baruna (a sign of considerable poverty), and my mother in the Via Cavour, also in a two-story house. From the beginning I participated in Sicilian church affairs such as baptisms, confirmations, marriages, funerals and Sunday school run by Irish priests. I participated in and observed the social activities on the roof tops of the Lower East Side that smelled of asphalt and coal dust, where I flew kites and later observed the older people of my generation being assimilated through music. They were models for me. I interviewed hundreds of Sicilians and Southern Italians in those tenements, especially the young girls who took care of me while my mother went to work sewing spangles and sequins on the fashionable dresses of those times. These young girls lovingly fondled me as they learned to be mothers. The taught me my first words of English from comic books of the times. In this time too, I was a participant of the role of the older women: Sicil- ian, Baresi, Calabresi. In the countless interviews by the large black coal stove I learned of the good-natured warmth of those old women. Even as a child I asked, “Don’t you think it is immoral to give so much love and affection to the first born male?” They looked at me with eyes sud- denly gone dull, like some animal trying hard to understand, but finally giving up the effort. And I knew that in that question there appeared the first spores of change, of a conflict of values, of culture. One old woman whom here I shall call Comare Rosalia, simply threw me up in the air when I asked the question, then hugged me, saying, “My little Ameri- canu, my water-washed Americanu.” I was fair-haired and light skinned then. “When you grow up you’ll have a big Cadillac with one of those 9

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.