I Live in Southern Italy

Sunday August 31st, 2008

Priest, St. Rocco Parade, Grotteria, Italy

Today I listened to the Hail Mary In Italian. From a Loudspeaker. From a church 2km away.

I'm not a particularly religious person these days. It was not always this way. In fact, when I was younger I used to take the metaphor of us being a vessel for the Holy Spirit quite literally and had an image of a sort of gas tank somewhere inside of me that used to get a top up when I went to church every Sunday. It was in my early teens when I frequented church less often where the visualization in my head turned into a rusty mileage needle like one on an old tractor where the glass is cracked and a dead fly partially obscures the E end of the gauge. I wouldn't say I lost my faith entirely, but somewhere along the line I did grow tired of all the strict rules and peculiarities that didn't fit in with the teachings of tolerance and acceptance. It didn't make sense when I was younger and still didn't as I grew older.

St. Rocco Procession, Grotteria, Italy

This morning I attended my first mass in over 2 years; from my bed. You see in Italy if you are too lazy to get out of bed or switch on the TV or radio for a broadcasted mass, you can hear it via HUGE loudspeakers from the church down the street. Not only is the priest blasted with the amps cranked up to 11, but the congregation's response is blasted out there two. Perhaps today was a special occasion because today is St. Rocco's day and it's a BIG celebration for this community. The very fact they HAD the loudspeakers meant that they do this sort of thing pretty often.

St. Rocco is the patron Saint of Pestilence. I suspect this very poor region has had their share of diseases and it is with good reason St. Rocco is particular popular here. In fact, historians believe the Black Death entered Europe from Sicily (which is about 30 min from here) so one can be sure this region would have been quite hard hit.

Crowd, St. Rocco Procession, Italy

As the Italians do on days that hold religious significance, a large heavy statue is paraded uphill in town while the whole town gathers around to follow it, say prayers, and kiss its feet. If you watch the Godfather part II, there is a sequence with Jesus and Mary at Easter being paraded down the street with money hanging off of them. They do that here too. In other words if you want to understand Italian culture EVERYTHING you need to know can be found somewhere in the Godfather trilogy.

Faith for Sale, Grotteria, Italy

My favorite part of the day was how this became an excuse for every peddler of fake CK t-shirts and D&G belts to swoop into the city. If you didn't want a Padre Peo keychain or a pope lighter you could show your faith by purchasing one of those battery controlled puppies that do a flip and walk in the opposite direction when they hit a wall. It is rumored that St. John had five of those with him when he built the first church.

Leather Face, Grotteria, Italy

ACTUALLY, my real favorite part of the day was when an old women sprinkled some water from her balcony onto the statue as it passed by and then the statue came to life and did battle with a nearby WW I memorial. Things got pretty messy and of course numerous Minotaur showed up because this is of course an entirely different dimension. Perhaps I should have ended this entry with my previous paragraph. Is Minataur a plural?

Saturday August 30th, 2008

Medical Journals, Calabria, Italy

What remains of my father's country

The photo sets I put up on flickr and facebook are part of today's Blog Entry. Tomorrow I will write more about the history of the region as a whole.

It's hard to imagine the kind of people that my father's generations were from my perspective. When I grew up the kids who were at a disadvantage had less Nintendo games then I did. If they were really unlucky maybe they had Sega Genesis instead of Super Nintendo. My father has been working as a barber since he was 10 years old. When I was 10 I shaved my cat with his clippers, and believe me that was an entirely different kind of thing. He left his country when he was 15 without any money, little education, and went to a new country where few spoke his native language. When I was 15, I wore Bugal Boy and loved my Airwalks. I also had a serious crush on Alycia Domenico and Andrea Shrei - hellloooooo ladies!

Talking to the older generation here they still talk about Canada and America as the land of opportunity - and comparatively back then it certainly was. In Reggio Calabria, there is still little work to be found. Farming is limited by the dry climate to Olives, and various citrus fruits and there are few factories or stores in the area. In the mountains, the winters are quite cold and the summers are sometimes unbearably hot. If you are lucky you might work a few months, but then it could be a very long time before more work is to be had. Corruption in the government and local crime prohibited any investing by foreigners but now that is fading away. In recent years tourism has brought money to the region, and some of the older generations have come back with the wealth they found in North America. After a very long time, Southern Italy has almost achieved a standard comparable to the norm set upon by the European Union in other European countries.

Dried out Wine Grapes, Calabria, Italy

Walking around here on a mid-August day it's hard to imagine why anyone would leave this paradise. The natural beauty here is amazing and the history and tradition around you gives you an instant feeling of home. It's calm and relaxing and the pace of life here puts one at peace. In the words of a man who is part of my father's generation "You can't live on good weather alone - you need something else". My father left this place because his generation placed priority on family and the best chance a family had 50 years ago in Southern Italy was to make a new start in North America.

Drawing of NewYork in Abandoned Mansion, Calabria, Italy

Half of my father's family moved to Canada and half stayed behind. There is a history here and a tradition that took generations to build and I suspect it was hard for them to leave it entirely behind. If you walk around my father's old neighborhood - it seems that much of his generation has disappeared and what is left of that tradition is now abandoned. The old houses here are kept standing because the land is cheap but the permits to build are expensive. If you keep the old buildings standing, you can build new ones on your land without permits. Many of the houses my father's generation grew up in have been converted into wine cellars, tool sheds, but mostly left as they were 50 years ago. Furniture and religious relics are still found in many of the houses. Some still have yellowed black and white family photos on the wall - mostly of family members who have since passed.

Abandoned Mansion, Calabria, Italy

For me, it's sad and confusing seeing all these memories discarded; All these possessions everywhere weathered and thrown away. In Canada we have very little history, so we cherish what we have. When a 100 year old building burns down it makes national news and the community mourns. Here, I walked around a beautiful 350 year old Mansion where the wind, rain, and sun are slowly removing any trace that a family once lived there. In this Mansion, my Nono worked as a cook occasionally. Now the family who lived here has died or moved away and what is left of the wealth and prestige lay rotting or broken.

Abaondoned Mansion, Calabria, Italy

Even though I'm only 27 I often look back on my past years with sadness. It's a terrible irony that happy memories become sad with recollection so that eventually sad memories and happy memories become something we simply call our lives. Memories are important, but we can't live in a photo or interact with a pile of postcards so eventually we move on and carry our past with us as experience.

Disgarded Postcards and letters (mostly from America), Abandoned Mansion, Calabria, Italy

It's at this point of my travels where I stop and look back and appreciate all my wonderful friends at home and abroad and also the people I've met. I've collected few things in my travels choosing to collect photos and create art as I go to both bring what I experience with me and leave a piece of it behind. It really is the people that I remember the most. The generosities, the diversity, the kindness of everyone I have met and continue to meet are what make my travels and work so fulfilling.

Cooking Pan, My Nono's old Kitchen, Calabria, Italy

My father's generation and the generation before them brought their land with them not in their hands but in their blood. Canada is Italian, it is Indian, it is Portuguese, it is Australia and South America and it is China and North America itself. It is a new country where the opportunities still exist and so do the cultures that helped create it. One needs something other than the weather, and although living through another Canadian winter makes me want to drown a nun, it's where most of my family and friends are. The photos may fade and the traditions transform but our memories are also our lives and it is in everything I do where my father's country still lives.

Neighbors House, Calabria, Italy

Friday August 29th, 2008

Shipwreck, Roccella Jonica, Italy

FINALLY SOME CASTLES! IT'S ABOUT BLOODY TIME!

My cousin thought I might like to see an old shipwreck on the beach shore. My cousin was right! There is a ship that crashed into the beach and they left it there to rot away for the last 100 years. It's pretty much a ship skeleton but some of the machinery is rusting away though the hull. People sunbath underneath it and you can walk right up to it and play around if you have your proper tetanus shots.

Shipwreck, Roccella Jonica, Italy

Did I mention the beaches here are beautiful! There is no garbage floating in the water, no broken beer bottles on the beach, and no reason why I would ever want to return to Canada.

Shipwreck, Roccella Jonica, Italy

I have a pretty sharp eye these days for spotting the particular formation of clay and brick known as castles. As soon as I arrived in town I scanned the hilltops and horizon for site of any such formations and it was on the second day that I noticed one. Now if you recall, I don't speak Italian and the word for house here is "Casa". So when I got really excited and saw the castle and screamed "CASTLE" like a caffeinated school girl, I was asked if I would like to go there. I said "Si Si!" and I was promptly driven back to my Uncle's place where I am staying. A few days later I managed to mime out that I wanted to go to the big fortress thing at the top of the mountain.
Palazzo Carafa con Annessa Chiesa, Italy

As if by some joke I was first driven to a restaurant at the top of a hill right beside the castle. My look of confusion was met by an even greater look of confusion when I said I was not hungry and did not want anything to drink. As we left the restaurant, I pointed to the neighboring hill "THERE - TAKE ME THERE" and the guy who my cousin had driving me around finally drove me to the bottom of the castle. When we arrived he gave me a "Now what?" look with his half burned out cigarette dangling from his mouth and then an "oh fuck" toss of his head when I began to climb the steep hill to the top.
Roof under restoration, Palazzo Carafa con Annessa Chiesa, Italy

The walk to the top is along about 30 min up steep stairs only to find that the castle is closed for restoration. The gate had a huge space underneath so of course I didn't sneak underneath and explore the castle illegally. I also didn't take any of the photos you see posted on this blog - because I was NEVER there. Capish?

Palazzo Carafa con Annessa Chiesa


Now if you ask me the age of the castle, the empire it ruled under, or even how to get there I really have no idea. My guess is that is at least 1000 years old, but it might be a rebuild from an earlier castle because various elements of it didn't really make sense historically. Some of the vaulted ceilings look early Gothic, but a few of the sculptures look Greek and it has some Roman looking arches inside. Also I saw some tiles on the floor which looked very modern. Perhaps when it is finally open there will be some sort of visitor center where one can learn such useful facts as whose castle it was.  Great view of the city though!

Tomorrow, I will provide you with a brief history of the local area that I have come to understand from talking to locals and googling my ASS off. To make it suspenseful, I will just tell you that it might be possible that I am "Greek Ok" - and in this case it does not mean what you think it does.

Thursday August 28th, 2008

Little Girl whose name I forgot, Her family is taking care of Nono

People, people who know people are the luuuuuckiest peeeeeeeople...

My family in Italy is amazing. Half of these people here I have never in my life met, I didn't know the names of them before I came, and I had never seen photos of them before. They take care of me like I was their favorite cousin. They pay for EVERYTHING for me, everything I look at they buy, they bring me places to take photos, they introduce me to everyone in town, they pamper me like I'm some sort of child Emperor!

Nono Luigi Fuda, (Nono means Grandfather in Italian)

I feel really stupid that I never visited before, and I feel worse knowing that if they came to Toronto the best I could do is probably treat them to a budget meal at Sushi on Bloor. One of the main reasons I came to Italy is that my Nono is not feeling too well. I think he looks pretty good considering he is 96 years old. I know I told a lot of people he was 100, I really thought he was - perhaps there is some sort of Italian conversion factor at play here.

My Nono supported 9 children (4 of whom didn't make it out of childhood) on olive, figs, bread and love. He was captured in WWII when the Nazi's turned on their Allie Italy and made into a cook in a Nazi prison camp. There are lots of stories he has, but my favorite is the one where one of my uncles had meningitis in the hospital in Sicily and he didn't have any money for the boat home. Magically a 1000 Lire note flew by him on a gust of wind (which I think was the Italian equivalent of 100 bucks back then) and he had enough money to get him and his children home. If anyone knows me, they know that I am very very good at finding money on the ground so I am particularly fond of this story for its personal relevance.

Pasquale "the bulldozer" Fuda, Cousin

Next up is my Cousin Pasquale. He owns his own grocery store, employs about 25 people and he is 30 years old. He also is my sugar daddy for this trip and takes me out every single morning for coffee and for drinks at night and has yet let me open my wallet once. He does not like to wear his seatbelt even though his mini cooper will NOT stop beeping unless he does. Lastly, he does not shower in warm water and turned the warm water in the shower off. This is important information because for two days I had 30 second showers because I did not know you have to turn a light switch and a knob if you want warm water in Italy.

Luigi "whatchalookenat" Fuda, Cousin

My other Cousin Luigi is Pasquale's brother and owns FOUR grocery stores and is married with a son named after his father, Orlando. His English is decent enough and it's his house that everyone, everyday, from every point of town people points out to me. His father-in-law seems to own half the town and his wife Maria is the ONLY person in town who speaks conversational English.

Vincenzio "Diablo" I don't know his last name, Cousin

Last in my photo collection is Vincenzio. I have many many more cousins, Aunts, and uncles I could show you but these are my favorite photos so far. Vincenzio is my cousin. He is 7 years old, the nephew of Pasquale and Luigi and son of my cousin Clara. He is simply the worse behaved child I have ever met in my life. As I write this I in locked in a room, hiding from him so he does not come in and damage my computer. This kid would beat up Rosemary’s Baby (who is the antichrist in case you are not familiar with the movie). Personally I think he is incredibly smart and needs LOTS of distractions to keep his little A.D.D mind from wandering. I know he is smart because he is a genius at cheating at checkers, picking locks and sneaking out of a room where three adults are present to keep watch over him.

 

Wednesday August 27th, 2008

I'm auditioning for the role of Cinema Paradisio Part 2: DVD Paradisio

Yup, I have lots to do these days. Here is a catalog of a typical day; I wake up in the morning and I go for a coffee with my cousen, visit my 100 year old my Nono, go to the beach, read a book, eat lunch, watch Dragon Ball Z (in Italian) and then stare at shit for a few hours.


I have noticed my Italian is getting worse, meaning I have forgotten the names of various cheeses and Pasta, and everyone else around me is getting much better at English. At first I felt pretty guilty, but no more. Learning languages is a beautiful thing, but destroying a culture is soooooo much less work. Italy had a good run. We will always need people who whistle at girls in skirts and obese plumbers - so my heritage will at least live on in popular stereotypes.


For a while I was really trying to pick up the language. I was writing stuff down; I was reading my Italian language book. Then I realized I could do these people one better. I could teach them ENGLISH! I probably will never speak Italian again but these people could do all sorts of wonderful things with me teaching them English. That way, no-one will ever have to bother to learn a new language. I could be like that jerk Emperor Constantine who brought Christianity to Rome right as he dropped dead thus killing the Roman Empire and making the only gig in town for artists for the next 1000 years statue sculpting or painting old people with bubbles of light around their heads. I could be the NEW emperor of the new and improved Roman Empire!


One thing that I never realized before, that seems to have gone under my keen radar, is that Italian girls are damn hot. The Italian girls you get in Canada mostly have fake tans that give them dragon skin and I don't like driving up to Woodbridge in a VW Jedda, but here the long olive tanned legs usually lead up to what is a pretty good ass. The guys here are pretty good looking too, but let’s forget they exist for a moment. Imagine a land where the weather is beautiful, the food is amazing, men are encouraged to get fat and hairy, and women do all the cleaning and cooking and love wearing bikinis - this is the national slogan of Southern Italy! Our women are hot, and they love to cook in bikinis. If I was a sleezeball I would probably hit on some of these girls, but then again most of them are only a few generations away genetically from being my sister. Woody Allen, my mentor, guide me in my time of need!

Since this is supposed to be about my photos and not my raging hormones, I should probably mention the photos. I don't have any photos of the women here because that is all I seemed to have photographed in Paris. All the buildings I photographed are right beside my uncle's house where I am staying. I could probably photograph a square kilometer of the terrain for the next year and still not photograph all the cool stuff there is to see here. Italy is great, my family here are great and I am much too happy to create the kind of important art that can only be made by a suffering artist. Screw being an artist, I'm gonna go see how much Brio I can drink before I pass out!

 

Tuesday August 26th, 2008

I question my father's sanity...

I sat down today and read through some of my blog. I am amazed at how bad my grammar has become. I don't even have the adjectives at my disposal anymore to describe my absolute horror. All I can do is throw my hands into the air and scream "Mamma Mia" and share a pack of smokes with some ten year olds.

I always knew my father was a little nuts. I too am crazy, and for those of you who do me wrong you should know I have a strong genetic disposition to curse you and your family for hundreds of years though my offspring. I was hoping for a little bit of crazy Italian drama which would encompass the madness of the entire world, but done with some Italian class. A typical day would begin with Sicilian cement shoe stores, Columbian necktie boutiques, and perhaps a little nightclub where one can sneak in a Glasgow Kiss. Sadly, all there is to offer here are picturesque landscapes; lovely people who will feed you till you explode, and weather I would gladly kill ten elderly nuns to experience forever.

Returning to the subject of my father's sanity; this place is a tropical paradise and he is bat shit crazy for ever having left here to live in Brampton Ontario in the 70s of all places. The food ALONE would be worth staying for - nevermind the perfect hot weather. Yesterday I had a stomach ache because I ate way too much. For a remedy, they gave me strong alcohol and of course more food. I tried to reason with them saying that the food was so good; that it might be better that I enjoyed it in small portions so I can realistically try more of it. I may as well have tried to reason with them that the best place to store my knife would be lodged in the skull of a small child.

My Italian language learning is slow. I had just been working on my French for the last while and now I am trying to learn Italian. Needless to say, one of my sentences could consist of 1 part French, 2 Parts English, 1 Part Spanish, and maybe if you count that I wave my hands when I talk - 1 part Italian.

For some reason, and I don't know if it’s a running joke among the people here, everywhere I go I am shown where my cousin Luigi's house is from that point. His house is on a hill, so you can see it from pretty much every point in town. I have been shown where is house is probably about 20 times in 2 days.

There are skinny dogs and cats everywhere you look in this town, which is a crime because there is obviously enough food to feed them and all of their furry Italian cousins. Eventually you come to see cats and dogs not as domesticated pets, but as squirrels and raccoons because there are so many of them in the wild.

Also, the abandoned buildings here fascinate me. I dare not go in any of them again seeing as how the floors and ceilings seem to be made of wet bread. When a house here gets old, it isn't knocked down but simply abandoned. Add that up over hundreds of years and you get a huge village in appearance, but a small population in reality.

Lastly, the beaches here are amazing. Instead of annoying in-your-ass-crack sand, they have pebble beaches which you aren’t likely to find under your armpit three weeks later. The water is blue, and clear and at all times you can see right to the bottom. As I sat on the beach today, I realized two things. First, I still had the most body hair of ANYONE on the beach so my ape-like arms have nothing to do with my heritage. Second, without any work to do in Italy I am now officially Euro-trash and a bum.

Monday August 25th, 2008

People oblivious they were living beside a disaster waiting to happen, Grotteria, Italy

I've accidently destroyed the birth home of my father - I WISH that was some sort of a metaphor

Ok, so I am not going to tell you right away how I ended up destroying the birthhome of my father. First I will give you some background because the end of this entry is certainly worth the suspense. The above photo is of my Aunt and Uncle Pepe who looked very happy in the 5 min prior to me destroying the family home.

I began the day with a thirst for knowledge of where I came from. I wanted to know exactly what my father might have seen when he was growing up here 50 years ago. I wanted to know who lived where, and who lived there now. First I was shown house of my great grandfather Rocco.

Home of my Great Grandfather and birthplace of my current one, Grotteria, Italy

As you can see, it was a two story house which is now completely abandoned with the second floor having collapsed into the floor below. It isn't much to look at, but we are talking turn of the century Italy here in a poor village. I think it looks pretty good considering.

Next on the tour, is the chain of grocery stores which was started by my uncle Orlando and is still operating today. Below you can see the "Fuda" in the roadside sign of the newest location.

Fuda Grocery store, Grotteria, Italy

After this I demanded to see where my father, his parents, and 6 other siblings grew up. My father never failed to thrill me about how he grew up in a single room sharing a bed with 8 other people. Seeing as how he is Italian I always thought he was exaggerating. He was not. If anything he UNDER exaggerated.

As seen from below it is a single room, with furnishings still intact after 50 years having been abandoned. I was so interested in this room that I rushed in, camera in hand and starting firing away. As I moved to the back of the room, in front of the window in view, I crouched to get a great shot of the mythical bed that held my family when I heard a noise that will now forever haunt my dreams.

Deathtrap AKA Birthhome of my Father, Grotteria Italy

That noise, I have only ever heard before in movies, as I have never before taken part in such an event. I recall one such noise heard in Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx - which comically ended in a naked women exposed in her bathtub. Also, there was a movie with Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore, where they flooded an apartment and you could hear the same noise before they magically appeared in the room below.

Jesus who is pissed off and wants revenge after 60 years of neglect, Grotteria, Italy

This noise, which you may or may not have already guessed, is the sound of rotting wood and plaster giving way and falling into the room below. The additional noise, which would be in stereo if you saw this in a movie or experienced it for yourself, is the sound of a person screaming and falling the exact amount of feet it is between the floor of an upper level onto the floor below (which would also be the ceiling the room below).

I fell through what appeared to be a perfectly sound floor CLEAR into the room below. The room below is, for your comic pleasure, now a chicken coop. So if you can clear your mind for a moment, picture your humble narrator crouched, taking a photo in a perfectly normal blue room, and moments later finding himself covered in plaster, broken wood, on the dirt floor of a chicken coup complete with a newly disturbed dust cloud and chicken feathers floating through the air.

Newly installed Skylight/Trapdoor, Grotteria, Italy

Above is the hole that I fell through that was once a wooden floor with a layer of plaster on top. You can see the frame of the bed that I was taking a photo of in the shot, but what you can't see is the look of terror on my family's face as I disappeared from view and the look of shock on my face to find myself suddenly on the first story of a two story building.

Happy to be Alive, Grotteria, Italy

Unfortunately, this comic tale comes with a bit of grim comic slapstick reality. Falling through a floor hurts. It hurts a lot. I didn't DIVE through a hole, I fell through one made for my feet which got bigger as it dragged my arms through it. My arms are now VERY scratched, my arm pits bruised, and my white shirt covered in crimson blood.

I am ok. Now, I do have both the distinction of saying that I fell through a floor and lived to tell the story and also destroyed a room which was remarkably well preserved after 9 people (who are now the size of 30 I might add) either luckily didn't walk over the spot I walked on, or weakened it with 40 years of abuse.

Oh, and I suspect that my thoughts of me having gained a little weight in Paris might be well founded.

 

Sunday August 24th, 2008

Somewhere Near Naples, Italy

Hey Buddy! What the hell are you looking at?

I left Paris at 5:30 AM to get my flight to Rome. Walking along the streets of Montmartre without a soul in sight is both eerie and beautiful. The Metro itself was incredibly busy, which I am guessing were all night party people waiting to go home to have some booze for breakfast.  My flight was fast and efficient and as we made the slow descent to land into Italy I stayed glued to the window looking at the Italian landscape.
I have been to Europe four times and have yet to visit the homeland of my father. I have no excuse for it; except that I always felt if I was going to do it, I would do it right. To me this meant two things; I would have to know Italian, and I would be able to stay quite a while. I am now able to do one of those two goals knowing as much Italian as a four hour cram session on a train can allow.


Clouds, Airplane, Somewhere over Europe

Arriving at the main terminal, what struck me first was how all my stereotypes had come to life. A uniform line of nuns walked past me as I first arrive at Rome's main bus and train terminal and a handful of tank top wearing unshaven men were hanging out of a train door relaxing and smoking.  Also what struck me was how it all seemed eerily familiar.  I saw my cousin’s forehead on a young boy, my brother's eyes on an older man, and my father's lips yelling at me to stop staring at people.


Italy, A God's Eye View

The feeling of déjà vu never went away - even as I write this blog at night. I have seen only a handful of photos from my family, and despite BEGGING my father to tell me as much as he knows, I know very very little about the genetic side of me that blessed/cursed me with a predisposition to grow a unibrow and a libido that could power a lunar landing.  Looking around the landscape, everything seems to oddly fit in my schema of Italy; as if I was born with a Map somewhere in my brain.  The pieces that the Canadian Italians brought with them all fall into place here in a chaotic symmetry with the largely mountainous and lush green landscape.  Backyard grape vines, marble patios, fig trees - everything is new to me but I've seen it before in another way.

Some Old Guy, Italy

My father lived in Grotteria, in the southern province of Calabria which is very close to Sicily. Traveling on the train all sorts of landscapes roll past you like a projected background in an old movie.  Roman remains, castles from all periods of history, beautiful vineyards, burnt out warehouses, and mountains upon beautiful mountains.  My father is from the far edge of Italy where it seems the collapse of the Roman Empire probably didn't even so much as stir the dust down here.


Calabria, Italy

I always pictured in my mind a long dirt road where one would have to dodge chickens as the goat you were riding occasionally stopped to eat some discarded brio can. The area my father is from is densely populated but hardly a metropolis. It is a very urban area with little trees, and three fallen down buildings for every one left standing.  My cousin Pasquale, whom had no idea what I looked like, was easily recognizable to me seeing as his genetic pool also created my father and cousins. He speaks reasonable English, and with my background in French we were able to figure out that I was indeed the person he was supposed to bring back to his father's house.


Calabria, Italy

The family I hardly know, but who are my first cousins and my Aunt and Uncle welcomed me as if I had been expected all but 27 years ago. It's weird to think of this as part of my heritage because I have hardly embraced it before, but perhaps tomorrow I will go out first thing and buy a white tank top and a mole for my upper lip. Perpetuation of stereotypes are fun!