The blizzard postponed this event, but we eventually convened for some lively discussions. Sadly, recent events 🍉 have resulted in heavy security measure to access the Columbia campus, once a more inviting and porous part of the city fabric.
My memoir AFTERLIFE OF A KEPT BOY touches on two diasporas: the southern Italian of the early 20th century, when my grandparents made the crossing, and the Bolivarian diaspora of the 2010s, when Venezuelans fled dire crises, considered the largest South American diaspora in the world (through the experiences of Machito, my ex)
From Chapter 10: “Color Chart” pages 187-8:
When the Rizzos moved to California, they settled in Sunnyside, a working-class neighborhood with a large Sicilian population, among them the extended family of one Giuseppe DiMaggio, a fisherman who had brought his trade to the waters of the San Francisco Bay. One of Giuseppe’s sons was Joe, the swarthy baseball hero. It was when Marilyn
Monroe was dating Joe that my grandmother met her, through her ties to the DiMaggio family. The adulation of Joe as an athlete by a broad swath of Americans represented a shift away from the othering of Sicilian Americans. Joe’s much-touted “class” undermined prevailing narratives
about Sicilian immigrants. As I learned about DiMaggio’s arc of acceptance, this note rang familiar. I remembered family friends talking about my grandfather’s “class.” It was one of those back-handed compliments inferring stereotypical expectations of Sicilians. In published historical accounts, Sicilian immigrants had been called “filthy,” “sneaking
and cowardly,” and “lawless.”
Many thanks to my co-panelist Daniel Lee, Aaron Hamburger, and Thomas C. Spear (a reunion, as we had met decades ago on the East Village scene), and to Hang Dong of CQA for organizing.