Being a talented writer and digging in past generations of their family history of emigration is like receiving an inheritance, a legacy far more valuable than many material goods.
Melania Mazzucco, one of our most talented and award-winning authors, listen to stories of his father Robert and uncle blind Amedeo on the vicissitudes of Diamond, a boy of twelve years and years of life that has nines. The two children start in 1903 by Tufo of Minto in the province of Caserta to reach Uncle Lamb, father of the girl and the boy's uncle.
The first stage is that of American gauntlet of Ellis Island, off the island of Manhattan where immigrants were subject to strict controls, if not brutal and merciless, with the risk of being branded with an X on your back and beautiful returned home.
And here begins the epic story of the two anti-heroes of the book, and other memorable characters: Rocco, Nicola said Coca Cola, Cichitto, Lena, Jeremiah, all the streets - at the time - the most infamous of the city.
Uncle Lamb lives in Prince Street, now one of the most chic streets of Soho, and sublets for parents and relatives because "has always had a keen desire of dollars" and Life is put to work immediately: "Today, cooked Vitarelli ".
The neighborhood is marked by the boundary of Houston Street, beyond which the signs outside the local flower No Niggers, Dogs, Italians (I have to translate?).
But kids, you know, are kids, and they go around. And with their eyes, the author tells the New York of the early twentieth century from the point of view, not privileged, the Italian immigrants.
There are skyscrapers under construction, and Diamond and friends violate yards, climb and dream of reaching the top, even if only to spit it down. And discover the city, the real one, not far but it seems so far away from the "tenements".
"They passed under an arch with the inscription Macy's and entered the realm of light. Life had never seen such a place, nor would see him in later years. She would never have crossed the border to Houston Street."
Yeah. In the story, as expected, there is only wonder and adventure. Oppression, disease and death, suffering and poverty, crime, illiteracy and the difficulties of love are the themes and events discussed in a frank, but also with great humanity and a sense of "sweet crude" that on several occasions dilutes the dramatic situations without becoming dull.
And this has helped greatly to overcome my instinctive cowardice by the player who escapes from the anguish of family stories and daily life - almost always dramatic when they finish a novel - in favor of other narrative genres.
Life, written in 2003 and recently reprinted in the series "Extra" of the Rizzoli Bur (the image relates to my issue, that of 2007) uses an exhaustive search of the author, with acute observations of contemporary chapters on change in the city, letters, photographs and documents in the novel, recently reprinted in the series "Extra" Rizzoli Bur
A draft of the complex, but rigorous emotional, with the title character real and memorable (maybe because unforgettable true).
Life , Melania Mazzucco, Extra Rizzoli Bur, 2010
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