The Girls of Piazza d'Amore
Language: English
Pages: 161
ISBN: 1927535190
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A quintessential Calabrian love story.The Girls of Piazza d Amore traces the lives of three village girls and the forces that lead them to leave home for a new life across the ocean. Set in southern Italy in the 1950s, Connie Guzzo-McParland s short novel walks us through the piazza and the narrow alleys of her own childhood, imaginatively recreating an entire world as seen through the eyes of a young girl who accompanies her friends on their evening passeggiate to the spring water fountain and carries their love notes to the boys they love. The joys of Calabrian village life are palpable, and so are its frustrations and heartbreaks, but this is a world on the cusp of irrevocable change, as family after family is leaving. And that s what is most heartbreaking of all.
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hall balcony, waving his white handkerchief as he spoke. “They forced themselves into our homes at night, shoved castor oil down my father’s throat. They pulled off his whiskers until his skin bled raw.” The political animosity between Don Cesare and Rosaria’s husband, Don Mario, only widened an already existing rift between the two families. Though lands and ancestral houses were generally bequeathed to sons, wealthier families often used parcels of lands as dowries to secure good husbands
of stone mason, but never worked at anything more strenuous than small repair jobs around town – fountains, terraces, cemetery crypts. He couldn’t get used to the slave-like conditions in New York’s Lower East Side, where the immigrant men lived. Years later, he would say, “They called us dagos and frisked us if we wanted to go in a movie theatre or a bar. But that was before Mussolini came and made the world respect us.” He left New York City for a while to go searching for lighter work at
for. When in the village, he kept a close eye on Totu’s comings and goings. Aurora’s husband was still doing his military service, but he was on leave frequently. When Aurora became pregnant, tongues started wagging about the possible identity of the father. “It’s not fair,” Giovanna said. “Why don’t they leave the poor girl alone? One wrong deed seals a woman’s reputation for good here….” She waved her long seamstress’s shears. “I’d like to cut their tongues off.” Aurora didn’t let the
Rome. As we walked past grey stone buildings, fountains, and statues built to the scale of giants and gods, I understood Rome’s reputation for things colossal and eternal. I could not help but feel my own smallness. I felt a real sense of physical fright when I stood in front of the larger-than-life statues in St. Peter’s Basilica. Totu made us observe how each epoch had left its landmark structure on the city: the arc of Augustus, the Coliseum, Castel Santangelo, St. Peter’s. When we stood in
the Fascist government rationed bread, flour, oil, and sugar at subsistence level, and raw hunger was the order of the day. So were lice infestations and ringworm, in spite of Il Duce’s call to greatness. With all the able-bodied men away in the army, the women were left to fend for themselves, taking care of farms, animals, the old, and the young. Worried about the lack of news from husbands, sons, and brothers fighting in unknown places and for unknown reasons, they were also kept awake at
