Crazy in the Kitchen

by Louise DeSalvo

  She stirs and tastes and cooks and tastes and sings, and she sings, "Oh my, no more pie; oh my, no more pie. No more pie. No more pie."

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Although this work depends in large measure upon my memories of my grandparents' stories, and upon the recollections of surviving members of my family, most notably my father, the following sources were essential in understanding my family's background and its food history: Nikko Amandonico, La Pizza; Luigi Barzini, The Italians; Robert J. Casey and W. A. S. Douglas, The Lackawanna Story; Dominic T. Ciolli, "The 'Wop' in the Track Gang," The Immigrants in America Review, July 1916; Nzula Angelina Ciatu, Domenica DiLeo, and Gabriella Micallef, eds., Curaggia: Writing by Women of Italian Descent; Ann Cornelisen, Women of the Shadows; Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic; Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America; Norman Douglas, Old Calabria; Barbara A. Driscoll, The Railroad Bracero; Donna Gabaccia and Franca Iacovetta, Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives; Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat; Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood; Patience Gray, Honey from a Weed; Edvige Giunta and Samuel J. Patti, eds., A Tavola; Edvige Giunta, Writing with an Accent; Fred L. Gardaphe, Italian Signs, American Streets; Jennifer Guglielmo, Negotiating Gender, Race, and Coalition; Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Flavors of Puglia; Ian F. Haney Lopez, White by Law; Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, The Italian American Family Album; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color; Gina Kolata, Flu; Maria Laurino, Were You Always an Italian?; Frances M. Malpezzi and William M. Clements, Italian American Folklore; Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale, La Storia; Michael J. Meyer, ed., Literature and Ethnic Discrimination; H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Southern Italy; Michael A. Musmanno, The Story of the Italians in America; Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront; Nunzio Pernicone, Italian Anarchism; Antonia Pola, Who Can Buy the Stars; Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider; David A. J. Richards, Italian American; Mary Taylor Simeti, On Persephone's Island; Pasquale Verdicchio, Bound by Distance.

  For understanding the history of Puglia before, during, and after my grandparents' emigration, the treatment of farmworkers, and their revolt against landowners, Frank M. Snowden's Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy, Apulia 1900-1922 was essential. The facts presented in "Hunger" were largely drawn from this account.

  The day I discovered that my stepgrandmother's village had a Web site— www.rodigarganico.com—I most fully realized the distance between her world and mine. I journeyed to Rodi Garganico first in cyberspace— and also to my paternal grandmother's village via www.positano.com—before the trip I describe in these pages.

  I want to thank the many people who inspired the ideas in this book, and the many people who helped me refine them. Edvige Giunta insisted that I write about my stepgrandmother. And, at a time in my life when I was ill, and uncertain that I could recover sufficiently to write again, Jennifer Guglielmo asked me to write an essay that sparked my interest in my grandparents' past. Suzanne Branchiforte organized an important conference on emigration in Genoa, and invited me to participate. Kym Ragusa shared important insights about the complex nature of ethnicity.

  This book was imagined and begun while I was Visiting Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. There, many conversations with members of the Department of English (among them, especially Kwame Dawes), the faculty at the College of Education (in particular Alan Weider), and my graduate seminar in memoir helped me believe this book could be written. Robert Newman, past chair of the Department of English, made my visit to USC possible; he listened to my plans for this book, encouraged me to write it, and sponsored readings of my work in progress. Distinguished Writer-inResidence Janette Turner Hospital, organizer of the series "Caught in the Creative Act," generously invited me to participate in classes, radio broadcasts, and public events, where I refined my ideas.

  Vicky Newman may not remember a dinner table conversation in which she helped me untangle a conundrum at the heart of this book, but I do, and am grateful for her insights. Mary Bull's sensitivity to this story, her friendship, and her response to my past work, helped me keep writing. Kimberly Angle, Pamala Barnett, Cassie Premo Steele, Ed Madden, and Anna Moore— all members of a memoir group I belonged to while at USC— listened to a very early stage of the work, and their enthusiastic response indicated that yes, I should keep writing this book. In Columbia, conversations with Allison Askins, Rick Black, Jean Bohner, and Claudia Smith Brinson were also helpful.

  This book was finished while I was teaching at Hunter College. I would like to thank, especially, Hunter's president, Jennifer J. Raab, for her enthusiastic support of my work and for the M.F. A. program in creative writing. Sylvia Tomasch, chairperson of the Department of English; Donna Masini, acting director of the M.F.A. program, and my colleagues Harriet Luria, Vita Rabinowitz, Jenefer Shute, and Trudy Smoke all urged me to complete this work. As always, conversations with the students in my seminars in writing at Hunter helped me refine my vision for this book.

  My agent Geri Thoma believed in this book from its inception. For this, and for our fourteen-year relationship, I am immensely grateful.

  Karen Rinaldi, publisher at Bloomsbury, understood the design of this book and its meaning. I thank her for bringing this book to life and for her perspicacity in editing it into the form in which it now appears. During the revision process, Amanda Katz helped shape the manuscript, refine its meaning, and eliminate its opacities, and for this, I am grateful. Greg Villepique, managing editor at Bloomsbury, led the team that brought this book into being. Julie Metz, designer, took the time to find what I did not believe existed: the perfect picture for the cover. Jolanta Benal read the revised manuscript with care and sensitivity.

  Brooke Kroeger and Alex Goren's positive response at a significant stage of the writing helped me continue. Kate Probst, my friend of forty years, has seen me, once again, through the writing of another work; she understands the ups and downs of the stages of my writing process better than I do, and knows just when to gently chide me into returning to my desk. Joshua Fausty's support has been invaluable.

  My family— Deborah, Jason, Justin, Julia, Lynn, and Steven De­Salvo— have been a constant source of support and pleasure throughout the years this book was in progress. My grandchildren, Julia and Steven, delight me with their presence, their creative spirits, and their understanding of the power of story to shape our lives.

  And, to those to whom I dedicate this book, thanks beyond my powers of expression:

  To Edvige Giunta, my writing partner and friend, who has helped me bring it to completion. Without our daily talks throughout the years, our conversations about the writing process, and the essentiality of good cooking to the fully realized life, without her support of Italian American writing and of my previous work, without her understanding of the significance of my family's history, without her insisting that I write about my stepgrandmother, this book would not have been written.

  To Craig Kridel, for our Thursday morning breakfasts— which were the heart and soul of my time at USC, and the place where I hammered out the shape and substance of this book— and for so much more. During our conversations at our corner table (over very bad coffee and very good pastries), he helped me refine and shape the meaning of this work, helped me imagine my grandfather's role in it, helped me understand its potential significance when I could not, helped me see that it could, and should, be written.

  To Ernie DeSalvo, my husband, the perfect partner for one committed to the writing life; he knows when to ask how the work is proceeding, knows when to avoid the issue entirely, knows when a dish of his specialty— stir-fried spareribs with five-spice powder— is just what this writer needs. Without his urging that I must write, no matter how feebly, while recovering from an illness I believed would sideline me, I would not now be writing.

  And to my father, Louis Sciacchetano, for giving me the gift of his recollections of our family's past. Through them, we drew closer, and as
I listened to him tell me about the lives of my grandparents, I began to understand my family's past as I have never before. Virginia Woolf once said that it is essential to write the lives of the obscure. Without my father's stories, I could not have written these people's lives. Without him, there would be no book.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Louise DeSalvo is the Jenny Hunter Endowed Scholar for Creative Writing and Literature at Hunter College in New York City. She is the author of numerous critical works and the controversial Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life nd Work, named one of the most important books of the twentieth century by The Women's Review of Books. Her memoir, Vertigo, won the Gay Talese Award for the best Italian American book published between 1993 and 1997. Most recently, she has published Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, and has coedited The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. She lives in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, and in Sag Harbor, New York.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  Linotype Garamond Three is based on seventeenth-century copies of Claude Garamond's types, cut by Jean Jannon. This version was designed for American Type Founders in 1917, by Morris Fuller Benton and Thomas Maitland Cleland, and adapted for mechanical composition by Linotype in 1936.