Italian Blood, Italian Heart
I’ve got both, and they color my writer's voice.
In my first letter, “Unexpected Italy” (Substack uses the term newsletter, but I prefer to think I’m writing letters to you), I described a very positive aspect of life here in Italy. To counter that, this time I was going to write about a day from hell, just so you won’t think la vita here is always of the dolce variety. But I’ll save that topic for another day. Instead, I want to do a mashup letter about Italy and writing—in particular, voice and why writers write what they do.
When I was a kid growing up in northern Virginia, my Italian heritage was a big part of my identity—probably at least in part because I didn’t know any other Italian Americans (or at least none that were obvious from their surnames). I get my Italian blood from all four grandparents, who were from the north (Lombardia) and the south (Lazio and Campania), which is why I like to say I’m a mutt. In Italian, the word would be incrocio, a cross; or, more colorfully, bastardino, a mutt or mongrel. But I digress.
Most writers and probably a ton of non-writers have heard the saying “write what you know.” This gets misinterpreted in all kinds of ways, to the point that some people think a writer has to have lived something to write about it—which would mean, if it were true, an awful lot of fiction, classic literature included, wouldn’t exist. I like to think of “write what you know” as meaning “write what’s in your heart, from a place inside you that only you can fully know.” When we do that, we create something that no one else can, something that has meaning and nuance and depth that can’t be duplicated exactly. Sure, someone else can tell the same story, perhaps even with remarkably similar characters and events. But no one else can tell it the way you can, with your voice, with your perspective and wants and needs and subtext. No one except you can voice the characters that come from your heart. In my case, that means my protagonists are always Italian American. It’s not something I think about doing; they just are. So my identity, my “what I know,” is visible in my protagonists. They share my bloodline, in a sense.
Of everything I’ve written, my current novel-in-progress is the most Italian and the closest to me personally. I’ve published one novel (curious? Check it out here) and have several more underway (including one set in Italy) that are simmering on the back burner, generating new ideas and giving me cheerful projections about the hours of research yet to be done. (I love doing research.) This current novel is a resurrection and complete reimagining of my first (unpublished) novel, which I wrote many years ago. It was an amateurish mess, to put it mildly, but I learned a lot from writing it, and I kept on writing and got an MFA along the way. From time to time I’d return to that first attempt, determined to tell the story differently (and without all the purple prose), but I never managed to find my way in. Until now.
The story comes from shreds of the paternal side of my family’s history. My father never knew his family’s story (which tormented him), so I made one up and ta-da! A novel was born, with a few ancestors and facts acting as a springboard and the rest emerging from my heart and imagination.
My dad’s family came from the Valceresio region of northern Lombardia, just below Lake Lugano, from towns with such musical names as Viggiù, Arcisate, Besano, and Cantello. (In doing genealogy research, I was tickled to discover that Cantello used to be called Cazzone, which means, in the politest language I can muster, big penis. No wonder they changed the name.) The Ossolas and Restellis emigrated to Barre, Vermont, to work in the granite industry there. Barre was and still is known worldwide for its fine granite, a mix of quartz and feldspar flecked with mica. My dad’s father and grandfathers and great uncles were scalpellini (stonecutters or sculptors) who worked in the stone sheds along with thousands of other immigrants, in the politically charged years of the early 20th century.
So what changed? After years of trying to reimagine this book, why did it suddenly become possible? I wish I knew. What happened was this: I was having lunch in Gubbio (a terrific little medieval town in Umbria; you should go there) with a politically oriented writer friend, and I told him about the book, and I went home and started writing. Somehow our conversation opened a door and I knew how to tell the story, which would become much more political, much more about defying norms. In fact, my young protagonist was going to be feminist as hell.
My Italian immigrant ancestors fought for workplace rights in a heavily unionized town in the early years of the Labor movement. Whether striking or street fighting to make their needs known, they engaged in what the late Rep. John Lewis called “good trouble, necessary trouble.” What I can do, all these years later, is listen to my Italian heart and let my voice amplify theirs.
Recommended book/s of the week:
A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
Recommended poem of the week:
“What Work Is” by Philip Levine
Looking forward to your next novel! I used to read a lot of fiction, but it had been decades of exclusively non-fiction for me until your The Wild Impossibility; I am half way through it and am totally engrossed. You're making a novel-reader out of me again!